Do firearms ever become obsolete?

[Happiness Is A Warm Gun]

Popular Science ran an article about weapons of the future way back in june or july of 2004. One of the questions was wether lasers could be deflected by mirrors or not. I thought to myself "What a silly question, or course not! I was right, although a mirror reflects light energy it can do nothing about heat energy directed at it. All a mirror is is a piece of polished metal behind a sheet of glass. It would simply melt/explode depending on the energy of the laser.

That is not exactly true. Lasers have no heat. They simply emit light. When the light strikes something it produces heat. The reason why mirrors or any object struck with high energy laser get hot is no mirror is perfect.

The mirror in your house reflects only about 90% of light that hits it. The other 10% is converted into heat due to imperfections in the mirrior. So if you shot your house mirror with a 10w laser it would convert 1w into heat and raise temp of mirror.

The problem with military lasers it is fairly easy to raise the reflective index of the target "enough" to make the laser ineffective.

Take the ABL (airborne laser). It is designed to shoot down enemy short range and medium range tactical missiles. It features a megawatt laser as the kill laser. The laser is so massive it takes up a 747 and requires a chemical reaction to produce the energy needed. Despite that and it's advanced targeting and beam shaping system it only has a range of 300-600km.

That is without countermeasures. A missile is not very reflective (converts most light to heat). Take the same missile and shine it to a mirrored shine and it may take 2x the energy to burn a hole in the skin and destroy it. Want even more protection, have missile dispense and IR opaque gas. With a gas that blocks out 75%-80% of lasers energy it would take 4x-5x more energy. Want even more protection. Rotate the missile. Now instead of burning a single point in the missile you are burning a band around the missile. That will take about 3x more energy. Now if you put all these counter measures together you can quickly require an astranomical amount of energy (more than the ABL) can provide. What can the laser do to overcome it.
1) shorter range results in more energy to target.
2) larger laser (except the ABL already takes up a 747)
3) multiple lasers (except the single ABL has costs billions to develop and is vulnerable to being shot down).

So $$$ is on the side of the defender. Each $ the defender spends make take $20-$30 to overcome.

Militarized Lasers are a dead end in all but a limited niche applications. Even in those applications they may not be useful.

 

[Happiness Is A Warm Gun]

Railguns are one technology that could eventually start replacing firearms. Even if/when they do it will be a trickle down technology going from battleship guns down to fighter planes, and tanks, down to large crew serve weapons and finally down into small arms.

The major 2 problems with railguns are:
a) energy. railguns use a lot of energy. There is no convinent method to carry around large amounts of energy. Second railguns need the energy very fast (in a <1/1000 of a second). A nuclear reactor has enough energy but is delivers it very slow. Designing a system that has a large amount of energy, and can deliver it very fast will be a challenge.

b) damage to the rails. The US Navy has built a test railgun that can fling a 70lb project at 8x the speed of sound. When it impacts it delivers more energy than a 500lb bomb. The problem is the rails are heavy damaged when each round it launched. A large amount of R&D will need to be pumped into material science to deliver rails that can handle the energy without being damaged.

Both of these challenges are beyond current science. They will require some sort of breakthrough which may happen in 10 years or not happen in 50.

Rail gun deliver massive amounts of firepower due to their ability to accelerate objects to amazing velocities. A .50 caliber railgun would not only have the kinetic energy to penetrate a bunker or tank armor it would have no recoil. Even on full auto it would have literally no kick. It could be managed with no more difficulty than a .22LR.

 

[Sistema1927]

While most every weapon system has been made obsolete by improved technology, I can't think of a single weapon ever devised by man that I would want a determined adversary to use against me.

 

[HB]

For example, in the wide ranging ammunition niche, the brass cartridge rendered cap and ball entirely obsolete.

I would say no, it didn't. "Primitive" firearms give you an extra season to hunt, compete, or just play. Maybe for military use but not for many civilians. I thinks front loaders were pretty common up to the 1900's.

I would say no guns become obsolete for recreational use, or even limited military use. A Mosin-Nagant rifle is still a capable killer in the mountains of Afghanistan, but it has a harder time competing against more modern weapons. A rock is still better than a fist and a lot of people are still being killed by brick's, rocks, etc., they just aren't as effective as a gun. I still feel that a pump shotgun is THE best gun for home defense in almost all situations, yet it is out classed in firepower by semi's. Gun's serve particular roles for different people, and as long a people want that gun. And I don't think there is a gun that nobody wants

HB

 

[Artiz]

Do firearms ever become obsolete?

Since the shoe is, will it ever become obsolete? No, because we all need footwear to live as the firearm to survive. -Me

 

[boilingleadbath]

Railguns, unless you put some sort of recoil reduction system (rear facing rockets, for instance) most certainly do recoil.
They have to - they make stuff go out the front.

Not very harshly, given how low their muzzle momentum/launcher mass ratio is, but then that's also true of a .223 rifle with a few hundred pounds of lead clamped to it.