Futuristic Guns

[Nightcrawler]

Being a gun geek, this has become a frustrating sticking point.

See, while I very much enjoy writing, I seldom ever get around to actually writing stories. I don't have the time to really focus on them like I'd prefer to, and I'm such a perfectionist that I'm endlessly rewriting them (and thus rarely finish the short stories I start).

I don't have any designs on being a career writer, or publishing a novel, or any of that though, so it doesn't matter.

However, one thing I do before I start writing a story is I sit down and create the setting. Science Fiction is one of my favorite genres, and creating sci-fi worlds can be quite the intellectual exercise (gives me something to turn over in my head when I'm shovelling horse crap in the morning down at our farm).

I don't prefer science fiction settings where the technology is TOO advanced. Take Star Trek, for example. Teleportation. Matter-to-energy conversions. Holographics indisinguishable from reality. AI more intelligent than the human mind. Everybody wearing beige, gray, or purple.

Technology is often the plotline of the show; how many episodes did a technical malfuction serve as the basis for the plot? How many times where they saved by a Deus Ex Machina technical innovation?

You tend to see that in science fiction.

So, I tend to shy away from making things so advanced that you have handheld weapons that can vaporize things. I like my guns anyway.

The problem I run into is what KIND of guns? See, firearms are pretty good at what they do. However, I can't very well have people in my story, which may take place more than a hundred years in the future, running around with Glocks. It doesn't seem to fit; I mean, will we have cars in a hundred years? Sure. Will they be identical to my Oldsmobile Delta 88? I hope not. I can't have a setting where everything has advanced EXCEPT the firearms. It'd be like having a story set in 1989 where all of the characters carried cap and ball revolvers.

So, if you all don't mind, toss out some ideas. I'm on Christmas break, and don't have much else to do with my free time. What kind of changes do you think you'll see in firearms? (Let's stay away from all the doom and gloom stuff about mandated internal locks, smart guns, and all of that; I know about all of that kind of stuff, I'm more interested in practical changes).

So what do you think? Caseless ammunition? Non-metallic cartridges? More complicated guns being just as reliable and rugged as Kalashnikovs? Computerized optics?

One thing I think would be interesting would be advances in propellant technology to the point where cartridge sizes could be reduced. Imagine a round the size of a .30 Carbine cartridge having the power of a full-house .308!

 

[Standing Wolf]

I don't have any designs on being a career writer, or publishing a novel, or...

Trust me, please: you don't even want to think about fourteen-hour stretches at the keyboard.

 

[Nightcrawler]

Trust me, please: you don't even want to think about fourteen-hour stretches at the keyboard.

You're right; (unless I'm playing, say, Half-Life, Operation Flashpoint, or Halo...) I'm quite content pursuing my masters and, eventually/hopefully, my doctorate in Political Science.

After which I'll be qualified to be a manager at Denny's...

It'd help if I could draw, too...

 

[Nightcrawler]

For Example

Observe this. It's the semiautomatic battle rifle from Halo 2, courtesy of Bungee Software. It's just plain cool, and looks futuristic; fits in in a setting that might also include things like robots and starships, whereas a Kalashnikov might look out of place.

 

[pax]

You tend to see that in science fiction.

No, you tend to see that in Star Trek.

pax

 

[Nightcrawler]

No, you tend to see that in Star Trek.

I was trying to be diplomatic.

 

[G.I.Jew]

Well, think about it this way: A hundred years ago, there were modern firearms that are much like the ones we have today. There were bolt-actions, lever-actions, revolvers, and some semi-automatic firearms, which were becoming the major breakthrough. Think about the emerging technologies there are today in firearms and how they will be used in a hundred years. Bolt action rifles have been the same for about a hundred years, and the only major advance for bolt-actions has been in stock materials and quality of optics. Most of the firearms that we use today use basic technology that is very old. Blowback firearms, such as the Luger were developed before the 20th century, and gas-operated firearms have been around since World War 1. However, the most important advancements since then have been related to changes in battle tactics. The STG-44 and SKS were developed because of changing doctrine. Try to think about how wars will be fought in the future, and how small arms will be utilized.

 

[Nightcrawler]

Well, that depends on the setting.

Let's think of a setting where you have starships, and space colonies, and all of that.

If you have starships, you have orbital weapons. Satellites today can count eggs on a table; in 200+ years, they'll be able to do a lot more. Tanks and artillery pieces won't survive in the open; they'll be obliterated from orbit. The same thing would go for infantry caught in the open. (Much the same ordeal forces facing the US today have to deal with; hang out in the open, you're blown up by artillery).

Besides, probably not much use for a tank in a starship corridor.

So in this kind of setting, you're probably looking at mostly close ranged, infantry-on-infantry engagements.

Just about any set of modern infantry arms would work in this kind of setting.

The big problem with this is trying to think of what I want guns to do that they can't do now, and I can't think of anything that's feasible. I mean, you can already kill a man at 800+ meters with a rifle. You can't SEE much further than that.

See, this is why I'm trying to come up with ideas. In reality, it's entirely possible that armies will still be using 9x19mm, 5.56x45mm, and 7.62x51mm in a hundred years. Maybe with synthetic cases, though...

 

[yayarx7]

As the world climate evolves I think what we will see is the emergence of more Policing type weapons for the military. More focus on less than lethal devices, or a selectable lethality of the projectile. Sort of a multi barreled firearm where you select from a standard projectile or a rubber or perhaps a tear gas round. One barrel could hold those fancy air-bursting grenades with programmable range.

Maybe the future will bring much, much more precise weapons. Something along the line of individual targeting in a crowd, like if you compare WW2 bombings to those in the Iraq war. Sort of computer guided missile like that old Tom Seleck flick Runaway.

 

[Nightcrawler]

The problem with "guided" bullets ('cause this has been mentioned in other discussions) is you have to have some way for them to steer themselves, which requires a pretty sophisticated guidance package, a target recognition package, and all of that. All of this and it has to fit onto a 150 grain, .30 caliber projectile, and has to be cheap enough to produce literally millions of them.

Perhaps a "SMART GUN" from Aliens would be more in order, where teh GUN aims itself instead of the bullets?

 

[DougCxx]

Other people are worried about caseless ammunition, I'm worried about gunless ammunition: if you can make a bullet that doesn't need a case, then why not make bullets that don't need guns? How about making two different types of "solid propellant" a fast-burning one and a slow burning one. Then you make a one-shot pen-gun style weapon out of the slow-burn material, and load it with fast-burn and a bullet. So when you need to use it, you point it at whatever and pull the trigger, and then you toss the now-empty pen-gun on the ground, and in five seconds or so poof! all that's left is the bullet in the target.

~

 

[iapetus]

Bullets made from denser materials (stable super-heavy elements?) giving better armour-piercing ability maybe?

Better propellant giving more powerful shots?

Smaller cartridges with the same or better performance, meaning larger capacity magazines?

Explosive bullets?


High-tech alternative guns?
- Rail guns
- Lasers (zero recoil, almost silent, no shot deviation, probably high power consumption, good for sniping)

- Plasma weapons
Don't know what these would be like, and there is a lot of variety in different authors opinions. Some treat them as ultra-powerful weapons; in Babylon 5 they had almost no penetrating power, and were used when you didn't want to risk puncturing spacecraft hulls. At university, we had an "Inductively coupled plasma mass-spectrometer", which used a "plasma torch" to heat and ionise chemical samples. It looked like a big, red, blowtorch flame, and made me think that plasma weapons would be high-tech flame-throwers.


Even if there are better weapons in the Future, contemporary firearms should still be useful, unless against better armoured troops and vehicles (or aliens). In fact, most "laser" and "blaster" and "phaser" type weapons in popular sci-fi seem inferior to modern weapons.



Perhaps you need to decide what you you'll be shooting at before you decide what guns.

 

[Amish_Bill]

With the obvious improvements in power cell technology (batteries) I would think that the railgun idea would gain momentum.

Recoil (or whatever mechanism) from the round being launched could snap the next projectile off a solid stick of projectiles and load it - sort of like a nail gun. Heck - if the projectile stack is under spring pressure, maybe you can use the magnetic field of the launcher to seperate the top round from the remaining stack at the moment of launch. The next would automatically be advanced into launch position. With a magenetic railgun system, the need for a fully enclosed "chamber" is removed. You just have to get the slug into the right place

 

[AJ Dual]

Here's some ideas.

Gas or liquid bi-propellant guns. Its constantly computer self-programmable with OICW-like rangefinder, fuel is infinitely adjustable so slugs or flechettes can be fired at anywhere from 300fps to 3000 for desired ranges or effects.

One guy has actually invented the bulletless SMG, it uses "blanks" but the empty cartrige case is forced further into the chamber and is fired by the blank chambered behind it. Short range, terrible ballistics, but up close, devastating "cookie cutter" effect.

The "Wireless Taser" already exists now. It uses a UV laser to create an ionization path in the air, and the charge follows the path to the targed. A workable "stunner" based in real technology now.

How about somebody pulls out a Glock as a family heirloom, as a minor plot device?

Shape memory alloy bullets that optimize thier ballistics. Bottail spitzer through flight, but turns into a JHP right before impact. Perhaps bullets are tightly coiled springs that fragment explosively on impact, but stay together on firing, and in flight.

Not exactly a gun, but a weapon:

Automated "crab mines" microflyers, and other mini-ROV's and RAIV's (Remote AI Vehicles) will probably figure heavily in future infantry combat, image recognition, body heat, sound, or ammonia seeking, some are still passive observers for intel, others have weapons or explosives, perhaps netguns, foam, pepper non-lethals too. Besides ROV's the soldiers deploy Anti-ROV's of thier own for defense etc. Battlefield success comes down to managing robots and systems, one soldier "checkmating" another with his own personal rifle is now rare, and a big deal or plot point.

 

[seeker_two]

Everyone's has already given you such good advice, but I want to add something, too.

Metalstorm is developing some interesting firearm technology that might work in your sci-fi novel. Multi-barrel pistols that can fire lethal & less-than-lethal projectiles. You reload by swapping out barrels.

One thing to consider: If you're setting this story on a starship, you'll want to be sure that your bullets don't puncture the hull or ricochet wildly around the place. Special ammo would be necessary in your "real world" just like it is in the real world (i.e. shipboard operations).

Good luck!!


(P.S. I've always been more of a Star Wars/Babylon 5/Space: Above & Beyond/Firefly fan. More emphasis on characters than weapons. )

 

[Archie]

Couple of thoughts...

A beam weapon that uses something along the lines of a 9v NiCad battery. Gets ten shots or so from a standard battery, then one must reload (replace battery).

Rifle using a compressed gas cylinder and uncased bullets. Sort of a high-tech repeater air rifle.

Most quality current firearms will still be lethal forever. I expect someone will be making a 1911 handgun in one hundred years.

For deep space, either 50 BMG or 20mm cannon poking a craft full of holes will still be utile. No trajectory to worry about, either.

Another current technology to expand upon is the "small projectile-high velocity" theory, like the FN57.

Any thing you do, remember this: The weapon has to have ample power to dispatch the adversary (does not matter if they are humans, cape buffalo, or bandersnatchi); it has to be directable, either by sights of some form, or a programable on-board computer; and it must be "handy". I think the current term is ergonomic.

 

[Preacherman]

A few thoughts...

1. Standard bullet technology depends on rifled barrels for accuracy. If you want to make a "smart" round, with built-in guidance, it's going to have to be fired from a smoothbore barrel, rather than one with rifling. Imagine trying to stop the projectile spinning at umpteen thousand revolutions per minute so that it can be guided onto a target!

2. The speed of the projectile is a major factor in accuracy. A bullet that gets to its destination faster allows less time for the target to move, and also diminishes the effects of gravity, wind, etc. For this reason, I suspect that a railgun-type system will have very significant advantages in future weapons, simply because it will be able to get a typical projectile up to velocities three or four times higher than anything achievable through explosive propulsion systems.

3. The targeting system for small projectiles is much more likely to be weapon-based than projectile-based. The problems of miniaturization, shock-proofing, etc. are bad enough in smart artillery and mortar rounds: they're infinitely more complex in tiny rifle bullets. I know of several companies, in several countries, that are working on a weapon mount with integrated fire-control hardware and software that can take into account factors such as GPS positioning, altitude, air density, temperature, humidity, angle of shot, range, and even the rotational effect of the earth. When coupled with a 20mm. cannon, for example, these systems can fire a 5-round burst and be confident of getting 3 rounds right where they want them at a range of 2,000 yards or more. I suspect this development will continue, and will be miniaturized to the point where it can be used with a man-portable battle rifle.

4. I think that over the next twenty to thirty years, charged-particle beams will begin to approach viability as weapons systems. Right now, they're in the laboratory stage, whereas lasers have developed to the point of being usable (in large configurations - see the Air Force's missile-targeting chemical laser carried in a modified 747). However, particle-beam weapons will charge ions, rather than intensify a beam of light, and hold the potential to be much more destructive than a laser in a much smaller weapon. I wouldn't be surprised if some form of man-portable individual weapon using a charged-particle beam were available in the 2030 to 2050 timeframe.

5. Oddly enough, I don't think handguns are too likely to share in all these advances. The handgun is NOT a fighting weapon of choice - it's a backup to more capable systems, or alternatively is used because it's portable enough to have on one's person, rather than sitting in a cupboard. I suspect handguns will continue to be "weapons of last resort", and whilst they will benefit from some of these advances, I don't foresee them becoming miniaturized particle-beam weapons in the foreseeable future.

 

[natedog]

I like how HALO's weapons are done (I don't like the fact that the assault rifle has a maximum range of like 25 yards, is less accurate than the shotgun, a regular magazine holds 60 rounds, it takes all 60 of those rounds to kill anything, and the whole package is in 7.62x51mm). They still use regular centerfire ammunition, and many calibers that are available today are also in the game (.50BMG, 20mm, 7.62x51mm, 8 gauge ), but the weapons have more advanced sighting systems (the pistol has a 2x scope the size of regular night sights, and the sniper scope has built in NVGs and a range finder), electric ammo counters on the guns, and advanced materials (a lot of polymer, and I'm assuming futuristic alloys. BTW, this game takes place in 2552 AD. There are plasma based weapons, but they're entirely used by the Covenant (aliens).

 

[PaladinX13]

How far in the future?

How "realistic" and how stylized? Halo is far from realistic, the implications of some of the technology suggested should ripple elsewhere but doesn't. But it's stylized... like, say, Star Ship Troopers (movie) or Star Wars. If you're honest with yourself, you probably want a future with guns rather than a "realistic" one where nano-technology, etc. make such things less relevant (like designing a "high tech" sword in this day an age... we simply don't even if we can). Basically, if you want guns and hard scifi plausibility... don't go too far into the future (an even then it's hard not to be "quaint" in the way Jules Vern was, since we see only through our present day lens).

Near future, you must look at near future technological advances and see how they would influence the firearms industry. Low level industrial nano technology (especially in the fields of "electronics", computers, and materials), carbon nano-tubes, etc. (these alone radically change the possibilities). Personally, I'd stay away from any kind of person power source leap (ie. the Battery Dilemma... the implications of tiny portable power would ripple like mad and be hard to track realistically- IMHO). There is a temptation to want rail/coil guns just for the sake of it, but portable power will do so much more than that and if you miss it you might kill the "hardness" of your scifi (again, if you just want to do fantasy/scifi you can do whatever you want).

Politics and culture give you "outs" against normal scientific progression. Sometimes, despite "logic", a culture will develop a hightech sword (say, Star Wars) or geo-politics might cause infantry weapon development to stagnate so you can still have more fantastic scifi weapons as an upper limit- but a pratical/realistic limit of what most everyone has or experiences.

The main thing is to tell a good story, then 99% of your readers will forgive all else.

 

[Nightcrawler]

Sometimes technology stagnates. Examples? The first 5,000 years of human history, for example. We advanced more between 1900 and 2000 than we did between 3,000BC and 1AD. It's not that we're any "smarter" now; the human mind has been about as evolved as it is now for 40,000 years, they say.

Look at the Dark Ages. Technology not only stagnated, it regressed. For almost a thousand years.

The last 200 years of human history have been innovation after innovation, breakthrough after breakthrough. We tend to think that it will always be this way, that we'll advance by quantum leaps ever 200 years.

This may not always be the case.

So it's quite possible that in a hundred years, we'll be using advanced rifles firing advanced centerfire cartridges. Military technology advances because we need it to; The P-51 is obsolete because an Su-27 is harder to shoot down than an Bf-109, hence the F-15. However, a person's hide isn't any thicker than it's ever been, and we've been able to harness more than enough power to kill a man with a firearm.

 

[Nightcrawler]

With Halo (I really liked the weapons), the reason some of the technologies haven't rippled is because we didn't develop them. From what I'm given to understand from Bungee's story page on their website, things like synthetic gravity and faster than light travel were retro-engineered from captured Covenant ships. We can make artificial gravity on a starship, but we can't make a hover-cart because we don't know how to micronize the technology. The Covenant, in turn, stole the technology from the Forerunner race, and due to religious zealotry are completely uninclined to improve on it in any way (to do so would be blasphemy).

 

[AJ Dual]

How about a shotgun with a shape-memory alloy or pizeo electric choke?

In a more mundane sense, I wonder why they haven't invented an auto shotgun shell?

It would be like a conventional shell, but would be rimmless like .45 ACP 9mm etc, and have an extended front crimp that gave it an FMJ-like ogive.

Since current autoloaders work well enough, I suppose that's a solution in search of a problem.

 

[Dave Markowitz]

An interesting and very possible development that Jerry Pournelle posited in one of his stories was the abandonment of assault rifles firing intermediate rounds in favor of full-power battle rifles. The reason? The widespread adoption of body armor made from a new material called "Nemourlon."

Something like this is a very realistic possibility, IMO.

 

[PaladinX13]

Yes, sometimes things stagnate but it's unlikely to do so for a far future stretch... as even the periods you've listed technology has generally accelerated. There are also milestone periods where certain information has been so completely spread it ought to be impossible to put the tech back in the box (sort of a post-apocalyptic "re"-history- like "Wings of Honneamise" or "Planet of the Apes").

People like Mike O'Dwyer, demonstrate that regardless of necessity, people will apply present-day technology to their limits as much as possible to the leading weapons platform (so he develops firearms versus lightsabers). The point is, if you're going to have things like shields and FLT, nanotech, etc. it would be very odd to have firearms stagnate (or even remain firearms).

Of course it doesn't necessarily matter. I doubt people were bothered by whatever Jules Vern's imaginary devices were powered by even if it seems silly today. If you go the action scifi genre it won't matter since there are conceits people are willing to accept regardless.

 

[joeislove]

Anybody seen Cowboy Bebop? It's set a couple hundred years in the future. Spike, one of the main characters, is an interplanetary bounty hunter. In one of the recent shows, I saw a close up of his gun. It was a H&K USP.

Keep in mind that the 1911 has been around for almost a hundred years. I have no problem believing that people will still be using Glocks and 1911s in a hundred years. People will probably still be arguing about which is better, whether or not Glocks are more prone to exploding, and whether or not night sights are worth the money.