how long do you think it will be until brass and bullets are thing of the past?

Han used a Broom handle Mauser with a laser conversion kit. He also shot first. On a more serious note I think reloadable polymer casings are in the very near future if brass prices continue to increase.

even in the sci fi movies they keep cartridge firearms get used. It is an ingenious and efficient design. period. we still have books even with digital technology. why? because they are so damn useful and simple. I like my loud noisy machines. I am not voluntarily turning loose of my V8 either for an electric car. Even if it gets impractical I will save up my pennies for the gas to take it out for a spin. Men we are living in a golden age right now. a V8 and a 45. what could be better than that?

Even if particle beam or other Flash Gordon weapons become the norm there will still be a place for lead projectiles. This is due to the fact that even if weapons improve human beings will still bleed profusely when punctured by said projectiles.

I think Remington tried eletronic ignition on a rifle a few year ago; I don't think it went over too well. I don't see laser beam weapons anytime soon because of cost and effectiveness.

We've seen seen a lot of cartridges and calibers come and go; I don't see people beating doors down for the .30 Remington or those new Winchester SSM cartridges either. The cartridges that have been good will be around for a while.

The brass and bullets can be separated. A "bullet" is nothing more than moving mass bringing kinetic energy with it.

You could do away with powder and brass by going to something like the DREAD. 8,000 FPS and 120,000 round per minute? That sounds like a pretty good replacement right there.

The idea is so simple and so brilliant, amazing how often that's the case. It's idiots who make things hard.

What was that quote by the famous crazy-haired dude?

"I'm not sure what the third world war will be fought with, but the fourth will be fought with sticks and clubs."

I think Remington tried eletronic ignition on a rifle a few year ago; I don't think it went over too well.

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If I remember right, they also developed caseless ammo. It went down the same hole!!

I don't know if they're still available somewhere, but about thirty years ago I used to reload Herter's 100% polymer shotgun hulls --no metal at all, not even for the primer pocket.

I'd get maybe three or four reloads out of them. They were real pretty transparent blue when new, but after the first firing they were dirty and not so pretty, but still reloadable

Major disadvantage is they required a top wad with a light taper crimp --no star crimp allowed.

I bought them largely as an experiment. After the mouths started to split I trimmed them off and loaded them with light pest loads.

Now we're talking here about maybe 10 or 12 thousand "psi," not the 40-60 thousand of a modern high-intensity rifle load, but given better support around the base of a plastic cartridge, it may be possible to contain that kind of heat and pressure. After all...

...progress happens.

And we now have aluminum cartridge cases.

And it wasn't that long ago that the very best fishing poles were made of fine bamboo, golf clubs had all-steel shafts, automotive engine blocks were made of cast iron, and rifle barrels had to be all-steel tubes.

I'm still waiting for Coors to come up with a rifled porcelain gun barrel.

Maybe next month.

As long as I have my flintlock, I got ammo, heck can make everything for it.

Navy is already (ok been for a while) working on Rail-guns...

Battery technology has been sucking, but carbon nano tube capacitance batteries are already past proof of concept, more a cost issue now. (Those that don't know "capacitance" batteries are limited by their surface area, which has been exponentially increased by using carbon nano tubes) Imagine a "regular" battery that discharges normally, and then you "recharge" it in 30 seconds or so.

You never know what the next best thing is going to be. From reloading every chamber on a 6 gun to using paper wad shells, to brass casings... a lot has happened in that 50 year span or so in that area. Agreed it hasn't changed much since.

The whole problem w/ hand held energy weapons is power. Gunpowder was around for a LONG time before anyone thought to use it as a weapon... and from the invention of gunpowder (what was it called before guns?!?! hehe) to now... how long is that? More advancement in just about everything has been done in the last 150 years than in any time previous to mankind. Who would have envisioned Nuclear Power Reactors in 1800? (granted that is like 200 years ago.. hehe) that being said who would have envisioned it in the year 1066? Just can't tell when innovation is gonna take a flying leap into the wonderful.

One of my favorite short stories i've read involved a guy who "accidentally" invented a power brick of this "material" that could store enough energy in a brick the size of a cigarette pack that would run his car for a year. I think the premise also included fairly easy regeneration of the energy of the brick, basically making the energy way cheap. So mass storage and quick/cheap recoup of the energy. Slightly larger one for his house... etc. In the story basically started world war III because the invention in and of itself would disrupt the economy of the world SO much that it would be "worth" it to go to war because one country had it and how bad that disrupted the balance of power. Strike first or get conquered last kind of thinking.

Read some articles on case-less ammo for "wall of lead" scenario's for the military. Basically have a lil truck or something w/ a bunch of tubes full of the caseless ammo. 30 rounds a tube... can put a wall of lead in front of a missile or something, anti personnel etc... each round was lit off electronically. No idea if the idea has gone past research into feasibility discussions.

As for good old lead and powder... even star-trek/star-wars work on the premise that different types of weapons offer different types of feasibility. If your "shields" protect against energy weapons, but suck at projectiles, which do you think your enemies will attempt to use. Starwars did the missle stuff less than star trek w/ the photon torpedo's... (and photon torps basically became energy weapons anyway before they struck right?)

The new battle star galactica doesn't look like they even bother w/ energy weapons.

oh well - all energy weapons/advancements/etc will require a leap of logic/research/ideas/breakthroughs that change the basic cost/availability equation of energy. If we say, find a way to convert small amounts of mass to energy at a time in a controlled manner... the mass to energy equation gives a LOT of energy. Imagine if someone found a way to do it a molocule at a time or something in a small package... wham... ray guns. And for the projectile mass accelerator crowd... hand held rail guns of varying "caliber's" hehe.

done w/ my novela

J/Tharg!

After we've stopped using iron as a primary buillding material.

Until Jesus come's back..

Show me a working prototype, and maybe then I'll believe the hype. I just don't see good 'ole fashioned powders, brass, and bullets going anywhere soon.

It won't be until the next technology can be microstamped.
If the next technology is an impulse energy beam or a beam of light of some sort then the weapon will have to imprint the s/n of the weapon onto the intended target.
I'm picturing a barcode shooter.

Of course it will always be around. They will be phased out of regular use by something "less barbaric", but muc like carburators and wide whites, there will also always be a group of us that long for days gone by and the tools and toys that went with them.

Lot's of technology available, but none is as cheap, reliable, and general-purpose as brass and lead.

Every electrical engineering student makes the following calculation:
A good quality D-cell contains 18 Watt-Hours of energy; this is 64000 Joules;
A typical handgun bullet has around 500 Joules of kinetic energy;
Therefore, a single battery should provide energy for around 100 shots.

Of course, it doesn't work that well. First problem is getting the 500 joules of energy out of the battery in a millisecond. Difficult (not impossible) to do. The bigger problem is applying the energy to the bullet efficiently. Various magnetic launchers exist, all rather inefficient.

A better weapon might be tasers that use ultra-violet lasers to make a pair of ionized (conducting) channels thru the air. This would allow greater range and more follow-up shots. Several companies have indicated they are working on such devices; the fact none have made it to market suggests difficulties with the idea. Tin foil would make a viable defense, unless the charge is sufficient to vaporize the foil.

World wide, it won't happen during the lifetime of anyone alive today.

As far as commercial availability in some U.S. states, it could be just around the corner . . . for us civilians. Still haven't gotten around to that cache.

While I don't think that conventional firearms will go out of style anytime soon, I do think that it is only a few decades (maybe even only one) before energy weapons become commonplace on the battlefield. I think that within 20 years it will be possible to build (but maybe not field) a man-portable laser 'rifle' (and I use rifle loosely). My brother is currently working on technology that will make chemical lasers much more powerful and effecient. He is doing this reseach in a lab (college), not his garage, btw.

As stated before, the Navy is already developing railguns. They expect to be fielding them around 2015 if all goes according to schedule. These railguns have the potential to replace cruise missiles in a lot of situations, which is much more cost-effective. A $1000 chunk of steel beats a $1,000,000 cruise missile anyday. They have similar destructive capability, with the very high speed and mass of a several-ton railgun slug causing similar destruction to the explosives of a Tomahawk.

Yetanothersam brings up another good energy weapon idea-the electrolaser. Just as he said, a low-power laser is used to ionize the air to create conductive channels. A large electric charge is then sent down the channel into the target. The problem here is with the batteries as modern technology isn't quite capable enough.

I'd actually like to see caseless ammo become popular. I know it's been experimented with, but it never really caught on

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The ammo companies would jump at the chance to avoid having to spend money on brass. Unfortunately if we see the end of brass it will probably be when it's replaced with steel like the comblock uses. Caseless ammo was a pretty major failure. 19th century cases have the enormous advantage of removing both heat and crud from the chamber. Without that you have powder residue and even worse heat staying with the firearm instead of being ejected away.

The change is going to have to be the propellant. That's what led to the last round of innovations in the 1890's. Every firearm since then has been a permutation of 19th century technology, no matter how high tech the outside is made to look.

watch the old tv show, firefly. see the episode heart of gold. secondly, i thought the laser tech was out cause all you need is a mirror. we si-fi nuts have thought threw all this stuff. (yes, i am a nerd)

500 years?

The change is going to have to be the propellant.

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Seems like the next logical step.

I was doing some thinking the other day on the whole caseless ammo thing and got to thinking that a propellant that was "stacked" in a manner so that it would bur then touch off an endothermic reaction after the bullet had left the barrel then we might be able to get around the heat problems.

I'm not sure we're ever going to see that, but it wouldn't surprise me if somebody experiments with it in the next 50 years.

I do think somebody will revisit caseless ammo again. Now that battery operated optics are a bit more acceptable perhaps an active cooling system would become acceptable. Think tiny fans sitting in channels cut out of the receiver around the chamber area pumping air back toward the shooter.

When/if that proves not to be enough receivers will probably start to look like CPU heat sinks in the computer world.

Plastic cases sound good, lighter, cheaper, perhaps the molten plastic could even be part of the sealing process. In practice plastic cased ammo just doesn't seem to be working yet. I won't be expecting that to change soon.

As far as energy weapons go, I don't see anything to indicate they're approaching feasible.

well, at the time of the civil war, the sharps rifles issued to sharpshooters accepted a paper cartridge, which you loaded into the breech, closed it, placed the primer, cocked the hammer and fire. The paper cartridge was consumed in the process. This was basically early caseless ammo. Look how far we have developed that technology (hint, not very far)

but seriously, that is the next direction I see cartridges going. Projectile, explosive charge, starter charge. the starter charge will be triggered via electricity (again, something that was played around with but never got anywhere)

What ever the future of small arms holds, you can bet your sweet bippy that any radical new development will be off limits to common people such as you and I. Look at the advancements in firearms made in the last century. Automatic fire, silencers, even features that made them more compact like detatchable butstocks and shorter barrels. All unobtainable for the comon man.