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

[ceetee]

I'd still like to see a firearm that uses a gaseous propellant. The magazine would only hold the projectiles, and as the projectile is loaded into the chamber, it makes an air-tight seal against the barrel. The gas is stored somewhere in the grip as a liquid. Being cold as it's injected into the chamber, it helps remove the heat of combustion. Electric ignition, and you're good to go. I can easily see a FiveseveN-style pistol holding sixty rounds or more.

P.S. The latest NRA magazine I got showed a BP rifle using electric ignition instead of a primer. Supposed to really improve lock time and ease of cleanup.

 

[Acheron]

A gas-powered gun would be effective. You can get a large number of rounds in a magazine and the gas would help with heat. However, a gas-powered weapon would never be accepted for military use. The problem is with weight. Liquefied gases tend to be excessively heavy, so you would wind up with a handgun that weighs 5 lbs fully loaded. It does have practical application for a space gun, but not much other than that.

 

[General Geoff]

The next big revolution in small arms will be either pneumatic weaponry (running off compressed air or other gas), or electromagnetically propelled projectile weapons (either gauss guns, or rail guns).

The compressed air idea is more feasible from a practicality point of view right now. The electromagnetic guns would be FAR more powerful, but the concept is limited in execution because available materials today cannot adequately withstand the massively high temperatures involved in such high current electrical discharge (not to mention the problem of adequate power in a small package).

We have functioning rail guns, both in college laboratories and on prototypes in the military. Problem is, you have to practically rebuild the thing after every shot. Once materials are discovered/invented to withstand multiple discharges between overhauls, they will become the proverbial weapon of choice.

 

[Macpherson]

Gas propellants run contrary to a very important advantage of cartridges, that is that the powder and projectile are in one nice little package that is entirely self contained. This makes a HUGE difference in logistics as well as battlefield efficiency of reloading. You'd essentially have twice the reloading cycles, making things more complicated for the weapon and for the soldier using it. I could easily see polymer or carbon fiber cases in the next 5-10 years; there have been some groundbreaking advances in plastics in the last decade. Plastic or composite cases would be cheaper and lighter, allowing the soldier to carry more ammunition. Reloading would probably not be an option, but if it's cheap enough you wouldn't need to.

 

[Ready2Defend]

Any electric weapon has got to be much more reliable than my current palm/ laptop/ desktop/ cell phone if it is going to be useful for self defence or battelfield application. Many threads discuss current handgun choice in CCW and reliability often comes up as "must have or leave that gun at home". There is no time to wait for the thing to reboot when the BG is charging you with a knife.

 

[GunTech]

Projectiles will be around for a long time. It's pretty hard to improve on tossing a lead projectile at a target at high speed. Bullets predate firearms by at least 2000 years, and probably much longer ( i.e. sling bullets ).

CAP (Combustion Augmented Plasma) or ET (ElectrolThermal) propellants have been demonstarted to be highly effective, and thanks to pulse contouring, a convetional firearm converted to ET can gain almost double the velocity without increasing chamber pressure. Plasma stimulated working fluids can be as simple as water. The main drawback has been battery capacity, but nanotube based supercapacitors curently in devolpement should make ET guns simple. Hand loading would then consist of writing new pulse profiles for a particular bullet.

Since ET componants have other uses, this may free fireams from dependency on primers and propellants, making it much more difficult to ban firearms, as they could be manufactured from components used for radically different purposes, while software could be distributed via the internet.

Conventional ammunition looks to be the next target for gun banners. It's pretty hard for the home hobbiest to manufacture primers, catridges and smokeless powder, and several prominant anti-gunners have harped on the fact the 2nd ammendment says nothing about ammunition.

Something to think about.

 

[General Geoff]

Plastic or composite cases would be cheaper and lighter, allowing the soldier to carry more ammunition. Reloading would probably not be an option, but if it's cheap enough you wouldn't need to.

Get molds to whip up your own plastic cases from raw material.

 

[KBintheSLC]

I think the only thing inhibiting progress at this point is the energy constraints. There is only one reason why we don't have compact 5 megawatt laser bursts coming out of our Glocks right now... we can't tote around 5 million watts of energy in our pockets (not to mention the exponential increase if we wish to fire multiple blasts). Thats also why we don't have light-sabers for that matter. Oh yea... they'll probably be banned too.

Solve the energy "crisis" and the cool new weapons will come. I can see it now... completely silent, clean firing, zero recoil, utterly invisible. I wonder what kind of permit I'll have to get to carry one of those.