Future Firearms technology trends?

[Hugo]

When are we going to get those phasers from Star Trek or blasters from Star Wars? My guess is 50 years at least, but I could be wrong. Not that what we have now is bad but the technology seems due for a leap forward. Metal quality and alloys have definitely improved but for the most part things are not too different. Overall quality is definitely better now than 50 years ago.

I bet John Browning would love the stuff HK makes simply for the clever designs. Hiram Maxim would freak if he saw an MG-42 and it's freaky sound (a shame its makers were so evil). What do you think these firearm pioneers would think of firearms technology today?

I think we can all agree they would dope slap Sarah Brady and give other anti firearm rights groups a long talk. That and they both would love the History Channel.

 

[doctorhumbert]

Right now, I think most of the improvement will be on optics/sighting devices. I really want to see head mounted sighting device via camera on the rifle. It would have to be compact,rugged,and reliable of course.

Screw laser blasters. I think what we need is homing bullets. Just select a target and press the trigger. No aiming required.
I think it's possible through either mass shifting bullet, or miniature missile technology.

 

[Andrew Wyatt]

They. Need. ACOGs With. LCD. Screens. put the LCD at the same focus as the reticle.


have the input for the screen be some kind of standard connector. now, you can put LLTV, laser rangefinders and all that jazz on a rifle, and still have a weapon that has a decent sighting system when the batteries go dead.

 

[BerettaNut92]

More detachable mag shotguns.

 

[Black Snowman]

There are only a few possible improvments that could drasticly change weapons in the near future in a practical way that I can think of.

Materials technologies: Lighter stronger more effective materials. Currently being applied to projeciles more than the firearms themselves. For example the new "smart" bullet. The material stays solid during a point originated impact but fragments in a fluid. Penetrates armor then explodes like a frangible. Scary stuff.

Energy technology: If someone finds a way to make room temperature super-condutors or to store or produce massive amounts of energy in a portable form, magnetic accellerators become practical as a battle field weapon. Lasers too become a practical deployable weapons. If the advancement is extreme enough man portable energy weapons and plasma weapons become feasable.

They've already done the homing bullet on an experimental level with the .50 cal rounds. Laser guided just like the smart bombs.

Something I'd like to see on the civilian market is sabot flachette guns with smooth bores. Just because the military can't use em doesn't mean we can't. They would be awesome high-velocity guns and it wouldn't wear like an SOB. Great for target and varmit shooting.

 

[Iain]

Bullpups.

You guys are behind on this one, and if you adopt the XM8 then you will be even further behind. Longer barrel, shorter overall length. FAMAS is reputed to be a good weapon.

Less realistically for the time being. Some of the ideas on the OICW program were good, air-burst grenades and stuff. Caseless ammunition is an interesting one.

Things not likely to change too much. Your biggest change is likely to be a new cartridge that you will again force NATO to adopt against the wishes of the other NATO countries

Course someone could neck a 7.62 case down to a .17 round made of depleted uranium and guide it with a laser beam... or some other crazy fantasy.

 

[Crownvicman]

I'm not sure about the bullpups.

I think most improvement will be in the materials weapons are constructed from. I see plastic cased ammo as something coming along in the near future.

 

[geekWithA.45]

Bullpups are an advance????

Since when are awkward reloading ergonomics a step forward?

And those of us who shoot lefthanded beg to differ.

We eat enough brass as it is, without it being thrust directly into our throats.

 

[Werewolf]

Smart Optics!

With the state of miniturization being what it is it shouldn't be too difficult to build a telescopic sight that does the following after it is accurately bore sighted:

1) Prior to a shooting session enter the type of ammo into the sight
2) Lase Target
3) Using temp, humidity, baro, wind and range values (from sensors built into the sight) calculate selected ammo trajectory
4) using internal servos automatically adjust reticle accordingly so that shooter always keeps center of reticle on target

The math required to the above is easily programmed into a handheld calculator like the HP17B I have so a good external ballistics program with an EEPROM data storage area for holding a wide variety of ammo data could be put on just a single chip.

Servos are getting smaller and smaller so adjusting the reticle position is a really trivial engineering problem.

Maybe the computer part could be in a unit connected by IR or a small cable that is in the shooter's pocket if it would be too large to put in the scope.

I have no idea what a setup like the above would cost but it is definitely doable.

 

[Skofnung]

I agree that most advances in the next few years will be in the field of optics and or sighting systems.

We have been using the same cartridge system for the last 13 decades or so. We have refined that system, but until someone comes up with a more reliable and cost efficient method of detonation than the percussion cap, all of the improvements will be to the platform iself. Electronic ignition has it's merits, but you must have a power source to use it. Caseless ammo looks cool, maybe they will get that system working well.

This is just conjecture on my part, but I can't see "laser" type guns being as viable a "man stopper" as projectile weapons. Sure, burn a hole through a guy and he will die eventually, but seeing as though we are made the way we are, projectile weapons that crush bone, cause blood loss, and strike the CNS make more sense to me, even in the long run. I know Iknow, laser guns will be able to burn a man to a crisp in an instant, but that technology is way on down the line, at least in man portable configurations.

Now directed energy weapons, like a gun that could "short-out" an individuals bio-activities, that would be cool.

 

[Andrew Wyatt]

You guys are behind on this one, and if you adopt the XM8 then you will be even further behind. Longer barrel, shorter overall length.

with a bullpup, you either have 1. the inability to shoot left handed, or 2. the inability to clear malfunctions without dissassembling the weapon.

 

[Black Snowman]

Bullpups add complexity and complexity is generally not good. If they were such a great design we'd see a lot more of them. Just about everything has been tried from a design standpoint.

On the "Smart Scope" front you wouldn't need servos at all, you could do it all solid state with a projected dot or reticle. You need power for everything else anyway. Then just have one fixed circle in the reticle to be the zero at 100 meters in case the power or other system fails. That way the shooter would also get feed back on how much they were adjusting their shots.

 

[Werewolf]

On the "Smart Scope" front you wouldn't need servos at all, you could do it all solid state with a projected dot or reticle. You need power for everything else anyway. Then just have one fixed circle in the reticle to be the zero at 100 meters in case the power or other system fails. That way the shooter would also get feed back on how much they were adjusting their shots.

Excellent point - I just wonder why no one has made one yet - the technology exists and I bet there'd be a demand.

 

[Tag]

Very interesting thread guys,

I'd like to see magnetic accelerator (rail-gun) technology used in conjunction w/ some of the optical advancements mentioned above. Used with depleted uranium rings or flachette rounds they would make one hell of a sniper rifle, able to shoot through walls, houses, cars, bunkers, ext. Tank mounted versions would be very hard to defend against...

What about a light saber?

 

[uglygun]

I was going to make the comment about range finding "smart optics" but somebody beat me to it.

As for the way it could work... Perhaps something like a Burris Balisti-plex reticle but with LEDs that would light the points on the reticle that correspond to the correct zero for the estimated range?

Instead of having the actual zero be changed through servos it would be solid state like somebody else mentioned. But could also be something like a balistiplex reticle or that which you find in a Trijicon ACOG scope's balistic reticle, only combined with a laser range finder and illuminated reticle. If the laser range finding system or the LED illumination failed, the optics could still be used as a backup with the basic reticle that had been mechanically zero'd already.


Swarvoski made a range finding scope meant for use on rifles some time back, I remember the promotion going on when they first came out, things were so expensive that they came with something like a Weatherby rifle.

 

[Snowdog]

I think projectiles will eventually give way to a type of weapon so radical that it would have been difficult to comprehend before its debut.

It should be understood things that are difficult to conceive today (due to our current technological understanding) will become commonplace in the future.

If someone were to ask an Imperial Roman general what kind of siege weapons the distant future held, rockets and bombers wouldn't have crossed his mind as that template of weaponry had not yet existed. It likely would have been a lighter weight onager with double the capacity and twice the range. Nothing more than improving upon the familiar.

Therefore, I'm convinced limiting imagined weapons-of-the-future to mere improvements to those already existing blinds one to the possibilities.

I'm also convinced if we were to see the weapons in use as little as twenty years from now, I think we'd be impressed. I'm sure projectile weapons will still be there as the standard, but I think we'd see an emergence of an unimaginable freaky new technology completely alien to familiar concepts that will set the foundations for future weaponry (as the matchlock did for modern firearms).
In two hundred years, this same freakish techology very well may have been refined and perfected to its limits, itself becoming antiquated and giving way to something far greater and complex. Were we to catch a glimpse of that mysterious world, we'd certainly be out of our element.
We would be that unsophisticated Roman general, and we'd know it.

I'll say traditional projectile firearms will reign for perhaps another twenty years, but "this too shall pass".

 

[geekWithA.45]

Snowdog's post reminds me of something....naturally, the link is long gone from my mind.

The gist of it was that someone was working on a way to generate coherent, columnated _sound_.

As a laser is to a lightbulb, this thing would be as to a loud speaker.

The idea was to generate a sound loud enough to disrupt tissue, but confine it to a small column projected from the device.

Sounds like an ouchie to me.



As for me, though...the juries out on this sort of thing till I see it. I sorta catalog it alongside Tesla's deathray....interesting if true, if not, still interesting.

 

[DougCxx]

Depends on what use you are speaking: as far as "things used against criminal suspects", I would bet eventually there will be stun-gun type devices that work, even from a distance--and without "taser"-style wires. Something that produces a narrow, pointable EMF signal precisely tuned to disrupt muscular control, not the simple electrical shocks that present devices give (-even though they claim otherwise....). When this happens, regular police will give up their duty guns because they won't need them.
---I also will bet that within 50 years the police will be able to track any motor vehicles at all times by GPS, as well as shut them down/lock them/unlock them remotely. The "tracking" part of that future has already begun with OnStar and LoJack, and people pay extra for it because they see having it as an advantage.
---Also I can see great use of networked monitoring systems, as the video cameras in London today, but much more automated--as that system is hugely expensive to operate and of questionable use. Sensors to detect speeding cars, mics that can automatically detect and pinpoint gunshot blasts, cameras that automatically "turn on" when a nearby car or building alarm is set off. Privacy advocates will wail, but most people simply won't argue against this stuff, and it will make a huge difference in many types of crime--but as old crimes decline, new ones will arise.
-----------
As far as "sporting purposes", aside from caseless ammo I don't see much, aside from possible sporting uses of the "super stun-gun" mentioned above. The point of recreational shooting isn't necessarily to do things the most efficient way. So as far as "solving practical problems", caseless ammo would qualify beacuse it would potentially eliminate reloading errors as far as overloading and incorrect propellant, and the "super stun gun" could be used to safely remove pests or animals without risking making holes in anything nearby.
~

 

[ShaiVong]

oooooo I can hardly wait!

As for the laser beam being less effective as a projectile: Imagine a hand held 50W or better laser that can project half second beams at a time. Think of how much you (Read: I) shake or wobble while sighting offhand at 100 yards... In a half second or more you could cut somebody to ribbons just by your muscle twitch dragging that laser all over them. It would be like getting hit with several shards of high speed razors!

Microwave guns would be cool too; werent they thinking of that kind of stuff for crowd control?

Particle cannons! How about a beam of charged particles rippin through you!

Gee I hope they get to working on this stuff before we dont have the freedom to enjoy them! :banghead:

 

[Nightcrawler]

Aside from blowing up fruit, you probably wouldn't have much fun with a microwave gun. It wouldn't do anything ot a paper target.

Microwave guns for crowd control? That's SERIOUS crowd control. You know what happens when you explode a potato in a microwave? That's basically what a microwave weapon would do to a person. Literally cook your insides, giving the target what could probably be considered one of the most painful deaths imaginable.

I suppose seeing rabblerousers literally roasted alive would be a deterrent to rioting, though. *shrug*

As far as particle beams, you're looking at more of a weapon of mass destruction than you are a small arm. Lightning is a form of a particle beam, it's just not a direct one. Lightning can blow stuff up pretty good. That's basically what a particle beam would do. It'd require some INCREDIBLE advances in technology to make one that's manportable and safe to use. But an orbital battery of sufficiently powerful paritcle beams could make our current nuclear arsenals seem like kid stuff.

Lasers are more doable, but have serious drawbacks. A rifle bullet, for example, isn't deterred by smoke. A laser is. A rifle bullet can defeat light cover (except, of course, magic fragmenting 5.56mm, which won't penetrate three layers of drywall and sheetrock ); a laser would expend its energy on whatever it hit. This would include body armor.

On the plus side, though, lasers have advantages. No leading of the target is necessary, for one, and they'd lack any recoil. The sound would probably be like a loud hiss (vaporizing water in the air), but would probably be quieter than a gunshot. They'd be safe for use indoors and such, as they'd be incapable of overpenetrating a target.

 

[Black Snowman]

The crowd control versions of the microwave guns are at a frequency specificly designed to not signifigantly penetrate skin. So, only the tissue down to the first nerve endings it actually "heated" but doesn't generate enough heat to actually harm the person. It just feels like they're standing next to a huge bon-fire. Saw it on "Modern Marvels" the sonic weapon too. Although it's in much earlier stages of development.

A somewhat uncommon sci-fi weapon that has been touched on but not mentioned specificly is a "nerve scrambler" which is an EMP weapon designed to disrupt the nervous system with power levels ranging from muscle twitching to instant brain death. The technology to produce this weapon isn't even on the horizon at this point.

I like this thread. So Snowdog begs the questions "Who wants to think far enough outside the box to come up with this new weapon?" Many of the things discussed may be military or law enforment successes and applications but not very fun for the average shooter.

Laser gun, how stead can you hold it. No bang, no zip. Just a nice hole in your paper. Magnetic accellerators have potential since they're still a balistic weapon, you'd still get a nice sonic boom from them and probably a fun little hum from the magnets. Plasma weapons get my vote for replacing full autos as the "fun gun". Burst of short lived white-hot plasma that can vaporize almost anything. Heck ya, now that's a fun addition to Knob Creek

 

[Nightcrawler]

Hey Black Snowman, do a search on The Firing Line for a thread about Plasma Weapons. I had much the same curiosity, and fortunately there was a physicist (Bog) who answered a LOT of my questions.

 

[Dave R]

Meanwhile, back in this decade...

I would like to see an advance in propellants. Last major advance there was a century or so ago.

More potent propellants would give us smaller cartridges, smaller magazines, and smaller/lighter firearms. Imagine a .22lr case with the velocity of a .223. Or maybe a .45acp case with the power of a .45-70.

OTOH, I'm sure particle/lazer weapons will get here eventually. My giuess is the limiting factor is battery/powerplant size and lazer component size foe a uselful level of power.

An amateur futurist could probably plot the rate of decrease in size/weight of batteries and lazer components, and make a reasonable forecast about when they get practical.

 

[mrming]

Current cases are mostly empty air. Your only putting 20 some odd grains into a 223 case.. you'll notice a double charge, but its still empty air. If you can make it work without having to keep the air intake to maintain the pressure curve great but.. I suspect you'll windup with a massive increase. Great, so you've increased your carrying capacity. Maybe even enough to warrent switching everyone over to FA. New tactics, but its still a pretty mild change.. just going from broadsword to a rapier. Different tactics and techniques, same methodology and priniciples.

I'm betting on focused sonic weaponry. Sonic vibrations already can have a noticeable effect (speakers in riced out cars, flashbangs, etc), and as a previous poster pointed out. A light bulb is to a laser as a speaker is to.... our next step in weapon development. Sound power drops exponentially with distance (if im remembering correctly) so range will be limited. However, if it is effective its going to be destructive to flesh, able to damage things that currently qualify as cover, and maybe even be a streaming weapon rather than pulsed. That could cause a major tactic rethink. Most people with sonic boomers, and a handful with sniper grade assualt rifles in a 6mm? Or perhaps everyone with a caseless 6mm / sonic boomer. Under a 100 yards and need FA? Use the boomer. Past that? Use the 6.

Think about it. Instead of having survivable sweeping fire from current FA, you've got a constant stream. If your emitter ever crosses the path of the target, its toast (presuming its in range and these aren't rushed into the field before they are suitably powerful. Think a 12 gauge with infinite size load at a constant velocity, but with better range and cohesion). If it works like I'm thinking, fix and manuever doctrine could become very costly in urban enviroments. I could be wrong, but it'd probably be the end for heavy machine guns too. A SAW in 6mm would have the same advantages in a urban enviroment and weigh less. for distance work, and the 6/boomer combo rifles would allow everyone to be both a hyper-effective SMG and a rifleman.

Police could finally be deprived of lethal weapons except for a few extremely special duty units. Defense against it? Counter sonic's probably wouldn't work.. not enough of a response time, and the emitter for the counter would have to be just as powerful as the original weapon. Dampening ? It'll look funny walking around in 3 feet thick dense rubber. Dampening with metal/ceramic hybrids isolating the individual? Well... now we are talking about mobile armour suits. Dealing with that isn't a civil matter, but a military one.

Being a fool, I doubt lasers will ever rule the battlefield. Sonics impart energy by forcing the next atom to vibrate. Lasers work by passing a coherent stream of photons. To my primitive mind, it would seem two very different technologies. Lasers would fall into the same catagory as particle projection. Why push photons when you can push protons or neutrons? More mass, more inherint energy

 

[c_yeager]

Whatever great new things are in store for the future of weapons you can be assured of one thing, it wont find its way into OUR hands anytime soon. They are already outlawing things even before they exist "just in case"