Futuristic Guns

[PaladinX13]

With Halo (I really liked the weapons), the reason some of the technologies haven't rippled is because we didn't develop them.

True for some tech, but take- for instance- the fact that you have a highly computerized, miniaturized, powered armor. He's got the capability to store a fully sentient AI in that suit. Put it all together and the Master Chief should be the walking equivalent of an AimBot (along with near Neo-like bullet dodging). But because it's action scifi we accept the conceits (short range, low damage, aiming, explosions, tracers, etc.) along with all other action-gun conceits. Nothing wrong with that, just saying it isn't "realistic" as much as it is stylized (you can believe it and have a reference to accept it, but how closely does it mirror a likely reality?). So depending on the story you want to tell it might not be an issue.

Modern fighter planes/helicopters (especially helicopters) already have look-only guns/missiles. With ranged weapons, precision is everything. So... given far future powered armor and computers, it's hard to imagine missing.

 

[PaladinX13]

Anybody seen Cowboy Bebop? It's set a couple hundred years in the future.

It takes place 2071 AD... that's near future SciFi. I don't expect guns to be phased out in my lifetime (I'm optimistic about my lifespan, heh ). Bebop has its own scifi holes but it's totally a style anime so it's not an issue. Scifi-wise, the premise is how would Earth be impacted if it not only suddenly figured out FLT but had to use it (I believe the moon blew up during the experiments and devastated a lot of Earth, right?).

 

[Nightcrawler]

Well, you have to stylize it a little bit, I think, otherwise you don't have a lot of room for imagination. Besides, one could go mad trying to accurately predict what WILL happen in the future.

Besides that, sometimes the REAL future isn't all that interesting. Think back to all those sixties movies, and what they imagined we'd have in the first years of the 21st Century.

Where's my jet pack? Where are the flying cars? Where's the moon base? Where are the video phones that don't require a handset? Why are TV and computers still separate? Where are the household robots?

The "future" is now, and it's LAME.

Anyways, I cooked up an idea for a family of "futuristic" weapons. They're not terribly different than what we have now, except more complicated designs are just as reliable, there are better optics, etc. Made of advanced alloys and such to be light, but strong. The weapons themselves, in general, don't require power sources to function, though. In a future where EMP grenades might be common, that's a dumb idea. (It's a dumb idea now.)

I made 'em caseless just to be "futurely". Style.

 

[Roadkill Coyote]

• Throwing out legislative and social pressures is a mistake. Those are the pressures that dictate what many of us on this forum own, and carry. Those pressures, or the lack of them, will continue to dominate the design of personally owned weapons for the forseeable future. Without the current arbitrary limitation on caliber, how many people in this forum would own things greater than .50 caliber? Politics and perception don't just shape the weapons either, they effect their use as well. What is a socially acceptable use of force may be pivotal to the weapon chosen, and to the discarding of a technically superior option.
  
• As to companies, why shouldn't there be a Glock in a hundred years? Colt has been making guns for longer than that, and the Beretta family has been at it for more than four hundred. Of course the product may change, but there is no reason short of TEOTWAWKI to suppose that many of the companies around today won't be players.
  
• Tying in with the social and political side, the human factor will continue to influence weapons as well. Until we make a better human being, combining lethal and less lethal capability in a single platform is a very bad idea. Our children and grandchildren will make mistakes in stressful situations, just like we do. Their policies and training will, barring a dramatic change in the value of human life, continue to try to prevent accidental deaths. The technology will still have to fit into that human limitation.
  

 

[Nightcrawler]

Why shouldn't Glock be a player? I don't know, why doesn't Winchester Repeating Arms company exist anymore? See, it's a name, but the guns are made by USRAC, which in turn is owned by FN, which is owned by the Herstal Group. Winchester Ammunition is owned by the Olin Corporation.

In a hundred years Glock may merely be the subsidiary of another company; it might be a name, or they may not make guns at all anymore. Remington stopped making handguns.

Besides, I don't like to use existing name brands in my short fiction, unless it's a little blurb that just my friends and I read.

Anyways, who'd want one of these:

Caseless Machine Carbine, caliber 5.6x25mmCAR

Bullpup select fire weapon; Four column magazine holds 50 rounds. Semi or 900rpm. 5.6x25mm performs very similarly to 5.56x45 out of a 12-13" barrel. Weapon weighs about 3.5 pounds empty. Can be safely cleared without firing, and is equipped with a loaded chamber indicator. Fitted with a tritium holographic refraction sight usually, can be fitted with a variety of optics. Mounting rails for all sorts of other do-dads, like weapon lights and such. Overall length is 24".

I bet I could sell a few of these things to the same folks that are drooling for an M4 carbine...

 

[Roadkill Coyote]

Besides, I don't like to use existing name brands in my short fiction, unless it's a little blurb that just my friends and I read.

Well, that's why its called fiction I guess.

See, it's a name, but the guns are made by USRAC, which in turn is owned by FN, which is owned by the Herstal Group. Winchester Ammunition is owned by the Olin Corporation.

So you call your Model 70 a Herstal, or a FN, or a USRAC, or a Winchester? Sure its just a name, but your writing stories, and they're full of 'em. The question is which ones will seem realistic or believable.

 

[Nightcrawler]

Well, that's why its called fiction I guess.

Well, I like coming up with my own designs in sci-fi. Also, sometimes big companies dont' like it when you use their brand names and don't give them money. A lot of recent computer games have had "generic" examples of real-world guns, never listing the manufacturer's name (Rainbow 6 III, for example.) Not an issue unless something gets published, though.

 

[Freedspeak]

Sci Fi weapons

How about high velocity low diameter guass/fletchette weapons? needles fired in a small rail gun. A very nice personal weapon for defense.

For major weapons systems try some from the Hammers Slammers stories.

As for cartridge rounds, I think the current ones will be reworked for a long time (re: Pallas, by Smith).

 

[Nightcrawler]

How about high velocity low diameter guass/fletchette weapons? needles fired in a small rail gun. A very nice personal weapon for defense.

You see this on all of the role playing game websites and stuff. It's only been attempted once.

The problem with an excessively light projectile, even at high velocities, is that it's momentum is so low it will have a difficult time penetrating thick barriers, or mulitple ones. One fence? No problem. Thick logs? Gonna be a problem.

Unless anybody has test data to prove otherwise.

I'm not saying these won't come about, and for the sake of variety I'd certainly incorporate them into my stories, but they're not ideal, in my opinion.

I'm debating whether or not to have catridge-firing weapons firing familliar cartridges to us. I mean, might not be uber-futuristic, but at least I don't have to try to make up how my futuristic weapons work...

*sigh* Either this is really hard or I'm not very creative.

In any case, in regards to L. Neil Smith. I study political science in college. I pay thousands of dollars to go to school and study this stuff; I don't need political ideaology preached to me in my off time, too. Whether or not I agree with what Mr. Smith has to say, I tend to patently dislike political fiction, especially political sci-fi. The only real exception is has been 1984 by George Orwell.

 

[NukemJim]

I have no problem believing that people will still be using Glocks and 1911s in a hundred years

I agree with above.

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

I am not so sure on this one. Plastics, as well as other materials have been known to do funny thing in the long term aging process that were not picked up by testing using "accellerated aging".. IIRC Museum of Modern Art in NYC has had problems with some of its exhibits specificly a windshield bubble for a 1950's era helicopter.

There is a much larger database on how metal will age sometimes it can be worse than plastics, the WWII Zero used an aluminum alloy for structural support that now you can sometimes push a screwdriver into it.

This is not Glock Vs 1911. This is long term untested plastic life (way beyond the designed life cycle of the gun) Vs Metal life with a long history.

I'm not aganst plastic handguns ( I own several including one Glock ) but I am not that confident that current plastics will last a century.

The above is my opinoin only and as always can be in error.

NukemJim

 

[Roadkill Coyote]

*sigh* Either this is really hard or I'm not very creative.

Dude,
Your trying to get ahead of the curve in a subject thats beyond hard. Think about it, modern small arms are the evolutionary product of people doing each other dirt for centuries. If there were easy answers, we'd all be watching the military in 'em on CNN, or carrying them under our coats. Keep sluggin'

 

[Preacherman]

The problem with an excessively light projectile, even at high velocities, is that it's momentum is so low it will have a difficult time penetrating thick barriers, or mulitple ones. One fence? No problem. Thick logs? Gonna be a problem.

I'm not so sure about this... we've all seen reports of how a straw, caught in a tornado, can be blown into (and penetrate) a plank. If you drive a projectile fast enough, I suspect penetration might be pretty spectacular. For example, a shotgun flechette driven at 10,000 fps instead of the 1,300 or so fps it gets out of a shotgun... hmmm!

 

[Nightcrawler]

Penetration's only part of the lethality equation, though. The projectile has to actually do something to the badguy once it gets through his armor.

Take the Steyr ACR. 10 grain flechette at almost 5,000 feet per second, for a whopping 555 foot points of energy. If anything, it'll slide clean in and clean out of the target.

People consider fragmentation necessary for 5.56mm to be really effective, otherwise "it's just a .22". 5.45mm is supposed to tumble in flesh to make IT more effective.

555 foot pounds isn't going to create the shock effect that rifle rounds normally create. A flechette isn't going to expand, tumble, or whatever; it's designed specifically NOT to tumble, but to stay on course.

That said....flechettes in a shotgun, assuming there were enough of them and they were moving fast enough (unlike many of the currently available flechette shotgun rounds) could really mess somebody up. One itty bitty hole clean through is one thing; two dozen itty bitty holes is another entirely.

 

[ctdonath]

Self-guiding bullets are, given a couple decades of development, entirely possible. Efforts are already underway based on existing technologies. Initial efforts require "painting" the target; I forsee future efforts being "fire-and-forget". In neither case need the bullet not spin.

In the first effort, the conical bullet is hinged in the center, with piezoelectric crystals used to push/pull the tip in the appropriate direction, and photosensors "seeing" the laser-"painted" target and adjusting accordingly. Spin is inherently compensated for.

In the second, I can see an actual imaging sensor (camera) mounted in the bullet, and enough superminituraized electronics determining the deviation from the target, compensating as above and taking spin & approach into account.

 

[ctdonath]

One popular sci-fi weapon is the "monofiliment" - a single molecule, several feet long, usually with a weight on one end and a handle on the other. Theory is that it's the ultrasharp edge of a knife, with none of the supporting structure. Used like a whip or bolo, it just cuts thru everything. (Nicely demonstrated in the movie Johnny Menomic.)

Attach a few of these to a bullet, and you'd have an amazing weapon: the bullet mass & volume would be the same, but once fired the bullet would, thru centrifical force, fling out monofilimant tendrils up to several feet long. Air resistance should be minimal, at least for normal combat ranges. These tendrils would slice thru pretty much anything. Imagine a bullet that shreds anything within a 2-foot cylinder surrounding the bullet path.

Not terribly unrealistic: development of "buckytubes" is well underway, providing ultra-thin ultra-strong molecular threads far finer (and thus sharper) than most knife edges. A weapon by-product of development of the "space elevator"...

 

[PaladinX13]

*sigh* Either this is really hard or I'm not very creative.

Not at all, this is why I was inspired to start that "Designs going back in time" thread. If you could know exactly what future designs were coming, you'd be skipping the evolutionary process that tends to drive most firearm development... otherwise you'd be inventing the gun itself. Like Brown imagining something like a Glock as his first design or some Chinese man inventing a repeating lever action rifle the instant he learns about gun powder. Yeah, leaps like that are theoretically (and historically) possible, but most people don't expect it in their fiction (or could even comprehend it in some cases... imagine if we had put our level of computing in the original Star Trek series).

That's why, to me, the focus should be gestalts/tech ripples. You give the readers one technology (regardless of how it works- that's a "black box") then give them logical implications of that technology.

ctdonath, I wrote a novella (a Halo one incidentally- though during it's production before the game was released and more a strategy game than action) with a similar round concept, lemme dig it up:

FFF rounds. The marines had a colorful interpretation of the letters- something about aerial intercourse- but FFF stood for Ferro Fibrous Filament. "Ferro Fibrous" as in the ferro fibrous cables which made up the "muscles" of power armor or cybernetic parts. An electric pulse through a ferro fibrous cable causes it to contract much like an actual muscle would. "Filament" as in the tightly coiled ferro fibrous micro-filaments which would react to a bioelectric pulse by pinwheeling out into a porcupine of stiffened razor wire. It was the perfect solution to the counter-terrorist's dilemma: Power versus Penetration. The round needed to be powerful enough to kill instantly but penetration needed to be carefully gauged to be able to go through cover and terrorist body armor without shooting clean through an unarmored tango and wounding a hostage.

The F3 round could be hot-loaded for maximum penetration because the expanding round would use the tango's body as a breaking system. The F3 bullet could pass through glass, sheet metal, bone, and armor... only when it hit something with a pulse would the carnage begin. Imagine molecule thick threads of living wire whipping around your insides, slicing through soft internal organs and passing through bone like butter. A few hundredths of a second later, you've grown a bloody nine-inch pincushion of micro-filaments inside you. When you expire, your bioelectric pulse would go with you and the ferro fibrous filaments would return to their "soft" state. The marines liked to call F3 round victims "Slushies" because of the sound of sloshing flesh as a F3 round was retrieved from the dead... no exit wound, just a flesh bag of mangled meat and liquefied viscera.

So why didn't the marines use them? One factor was that maiming was often preferred over killing enemy infantry. Another was that F3 rounds weren't very versatile. A smaller issue was that many troops felt superstitious about carrying F3 rounds. Unwarranted fears of instability- that the F3 could set off at any time- or of enemy reprisal- even though the gruesome death was, ironically, more humane than a stomach wound- abounded throughout the military. But the main reason? Cost. The bottom line was that the manufacturing of F3 rounds was extremely costly averaging thirty rounds of standard assault rifle ammo per one F3 cartridge. Still, the F3 round's capabilities could not be ignored so the marines keep a small stash of them.

Ferro-fiberous is a misnomer borrowed from BattleTech but I'm a sucker for alliteration. The funny thing is about 3-4 years after I wrote this I saw an article either in Scientific America or Popular Science about researchers creating basically the same thing (bullets that expand in response to bio-electricity... not the whole genre gore thing, heh).

 

[Penforhire]

Here's the problem I see with ANY real individual weapons (handgun/rifle) technology advancement:

Our society is advancing surveillance systems and reduced individual rights (e.g. "to bear arms") at a high rate of development. In terms of the LIKELY future this means individual engagements are less probable. Do something wrong (robbery) and you're either caught immediately or a street lamp mounted weapon fries you on the spot.

I expect there will always be unmonitored regions (the "underworld") but there will be no incentive to significantly improve weapons beyond where they are now. Ammo will get smaller but maintain lethality (just to carry more without reloading). Perhaps we'll have more non-lethal weapons.

As mentioned above, the military will have orbital capability to destroy selectively, from individuals to city blocks. That's where real technology will go.

Now, a personal force field would be too cool and would alter the proposed scenario if it resisted the government's methods of force.

 

[Dionysusigma]

Hmm...

The CX4 and G36 is to Halo 2's battle rifle as the original Colt Peacemaker is to a S & W 500...

Plus, HK's new PDW looks like it'd fit right in with Halo:

Think of the possibilities. Also keep in mind that in the 60's, sci-fi writers and fans thought we'd be traveling around in rockets, flying cars, etc. The technology for al that was budding back then, and people saw them as possibilities for the general public by the year 2004. But that hasn't happened... we still use the same technology for guns as we have been since WW2, and porbably will continue to do so for a while.

 

[Combat-wombat]

Bullets made from denser materials (stable super-heavy elements?)

Yeah, there is the theory that around Element 115 there is an "island" of elments that are super-heavy but stable. That might work.

 

[MicroBalrog]

You know, powered armour and cyberaugmentations will make FAR bigger weapons possible. Think 12.7'mm select-fire rifle.

Other than that, you will still see AK's in space.

 

[PaladinX13]

Think of the possibilities. Also keep in mind that in the 60's, sci-fi writers and fans thought we'd be traveling around in rockets, flying cars, etc. The technology for al that was budding back then, and people saw them as possibilities for the general public by the year 2004. But that hasn't happened... we still use the same technology for guns as we have been since WW2, and porbably will continue to do so for a while.

That's true, but that's still relatively near future... separations of only 2-3 generations at most. With something like Halo (Marathon took place ~2470... Halo 2500+) we're talking 500 years into the future. Plus we're already in the Information Age where tech generally accelerates (versus the 60's where they were still on the tail end of the Industrial age... thus the emphasis on the mechanical) and barring a cataclysimic Dark Age, our weapons ought to be much further out there five centuries from now (especially with advent of nanotech- which, unfortunately, makes a lot of the future much more abstract... like trying to convey the impact of telecommunications and computers to people just discovering electrical current). Just my opinion.

If you're doing near far future (say more than 100 but less than 200 years into the future), you can play with more than "building a better gun" type questions and ask more, "what is a gun for" type questions.

As for "building a better gun" type questions, you've got great suggestions here. I'd ask things like:

How can I make a gun more precise?
Have better logistics?
Have better intelligence?

Something like the XM-29 foregoes some precision for an area-effect weapon. Or others trade for suppressive and ROF. A lot of scifi is just wish-fulfillment, so instead of worrying about reality or likelihood, just create guns people would want and want to read about.

(smart bullets, for example, is something people might want... but not want to read about since smart bullet gunfights suck. )

 

[Nightcrawler]

Exactly what ARE some of the realistic implications of nanotechnology? Other than man-made superviruses with the potential to kill us all (I'm SO GLAD we cook this stuff up sometimes... ), how would it possibly affect small arms?

In the Game Deus Ex 2, they had all of the guns firing from one ammo source, a nanite-slurry of sorts that could form the necessary ammunition.

This is absurd, I think, and was just a cop-out to get around the multiple types of ammo seen in the original game, as it DE2 was designed around an X-Box, and X-Boxes don't have enough buttons on the controller for complicated in-game inventory managment. (Another potentially great PC game dumbed down for the consoles...it's also a graphics hog and is buggy).

But how WOULD nantotech affect light weapons and small arms?

As for all of that survelliance and such...yes, it'd be possible, but a lot of it's possible now, too. All because history seems to be going a certain way doesn't mean that that's how things will turn out.

Besides...the sci-fi standard of the rag-tag rebel band fighting against the totalitarian empire or government has been done to DEATH, and I'm not especially fond of politicized fiction in any case.

Anyway, I think the FAMAS F1 is the inspiration for the HALO battle rifle.

 

[Nightcrawler]

As for the MP7 or P90 fitting into the Halo universe...check it out.

 

[AJ Dual]

"Getting the future right" is indeed tough.

Imagine trying to sell a short sci-fi story in the early to mid-60's, set in the mysterious and far-off 2004, but it's actually just based on today's reality with minor embelishments as to the actions of the characters, not the actual events, tech, "future history" or behaviors.

- The protagonist is a "Web Designer", he makes "web pages" for his clients to be viewed over a nearly universal computer network called the "Internet" that "nobody owns". The computer he works on only cost about $150 in 1960 dollars, and most of it's unfathomably high-tech internal parts were made in China or Malayasia...

The reader who can wrap his mind around the flying taxis and group-sex of "Stranger in a Strange Land", and 10,000 year interstellar empires of "Foundation" is thinking: "Web pages" and the "Internet" and why you'd want to "chat" on it, post pictures, sell stuff, copy programs, send "mail",? It would be so alien as to be nearly impossible, even for the hard-core sci-fi reader of the day, to be able to connect with it. China and Malyaisia make all of our computers?

- The protagonist has a handgun in a caliber called .40 from an unlikely company from Austria called "Glock". And by the way, the handgun is half-plastic, and is also the most popular sidearm of American law enforcment since the 1990's. The magazine, also plastic is limited to ten rounds by law, while the police who carry the same model are allowed another three. He had to go to a special federally licensed handgun dealer, and have the FBI called long-distance to be sure he wasn't a criminal before it would be sold to him.

The 1960's reader's reaction will be: Plastic? Austria? Three extra rounds for the cops? Why? Call the FBI before you can buy a pistol? Please.

- Other background points, The Cold War is over, the U.S.S.R. is gone, replaced by an almost friendly "Russia" and it's former satellite neighbors, now independant nations with chairs at the U.N and everything. China is an bigger economic threat than it is militarily, and two of the tallest 100+ story buildings in New York were demolished by airplanes hijacked by Arabs with Pen Knives...

We sent men to orbit and land on the moon a few times in the late sixties and seventies, but haven't been back since. We share a "space station" with the Russians, which is an unimpressive collection of cans and solar panels. We're cooperating with the Russians not in some grand gesture of international cooperation, but really because they're cheap, due to all the poverty left in the wake of the former Soviet Union. America had four "spaceships" but we're going to mothball them because they have a nasty habit of blowing up on launch, and burning up on re-entry killing all aboard.

Corporations can muster billions to pay NASA, China, Russia, and the ESA to launch satellites to beam something called "Music Television" , that dosen't really play much music BTW, across the globe, but NASA can't get funding to go to Mars...

At this point, the reader has given up and will never read you again should you ever be so lucky to have another editor decide to print you...

 

[Nightcrawler]

Sometimes I can't help but wonder if the most realistic depiction of the future isn't "Futurama". I like how some episodes feature dot matrix printers, for example...