Sci-fi Weapons, Vehicles and Equipment

I forgot that the GAU-8 uses 30 mm rounds. I was thinking of things like the 20 mm Vulcan gun in an F/A-18.

There is a phased laser array concept that would allow you to do that.

It would work like the AEGIS radar does, where you can focus the laser and scale up or down the power, as well not needing a mobile aperture or turret to aim.

To be fair, there's like 4 different 30mm round standards and that's not counting experimental, single use, and historical 30mm rounds.

Still, electrokinetics might get you close to a universal round simply because you can just adjust the power to change the muzzle velocity. You might need to adjust the timing for a coilgun but it would be way easier than yanking the bullet out of a 7.62 NATO round, pouring out some of the powder, and then shoving the bullet back in.

Well, there's also portability. A handheld gauss rifle won't be capable of scaling up as far as a vehicle-mounted one.. But yes, the technology does bring a certain amount of scalability.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 15th 2024 at 6:15:50 AM

Now to be fair the SDF does exactly that....

The Howa-64 operates on NATO 7.62 with a 20% reduced powder load.

...

Though that was because the recoil of a 7.62 rifle was considered too much to handle for Japense physique, not because of targeting reasons...

Which kind of brings up the interesting question of if you could see gauss rifles in service have diffrent power settings not just for what your aiming at, but also who is currently using it.... An augumented human could proably handle more of a rifle then a flesh and blood one after all.

Different settings would open up some interesting things.

You could do lower end for sub-sonic rounds on covert missions, lower energy but rapid fire and higher energy single shot for long range or armored targets. All while using the same platform.

It would be a sort of a Swiss-Army Gun that can cover PDW, AR and DMR on the same gun without doing a magazine, chamber or barrel change.

It's not just power that can be adjusted. There's also the rotation rate of the projectile, if any, and adjustments to the trajectory, including curvature. Then there's rate of fire, including any type of burst you want.

We haven't even gotten to different kinds of ammunition yet. I figure you'd put a literal dial on the side and adjust the muzzle velocity on the fly. Unarmored gunmen in a hospital? Turn it all the way day. Armored infantry in city ruins? Turn it up and unfold the stock. Someone pulled up in a tank? Turn the power all the way up and assume the (prone) position.

Shush! Let me dream.

A weapon with a power dial would also be more useful on a vehicular platform. Say you can dial the power down on a coil gun, the shot becomes weaker in raw kinetic energy but can be cycled through faster giving more rate of fire. At this setting it can be used as a machine gun in the antipersonnel or antiaircraft role.

The reverse might hold true. Add extra power compared to the baseline and what was a bog standard autocannon or equivalent now is a bunker buster or anti tank gun. Or given more velocity a longer ranged Anti-Air gun with less rate of fire than earlier mentioned.

Since it’s mounted to a vehicle both the power source, ammunition and means of targeting and handling recoil are on one system. Fewer limitations.

Edited by MajorTom on Apr 16th 2024 at 5:19:58 AM

" I figure you'd put a literal dial on the side and adjust the muzzle velocity on the fly. "

That's the kind of thing you could use an AI to do, with a human deciding whether or not to pull the trigger.

It's also very context sensitive and computers are really bad at context. A very advanced AI could do it but do you really want John Q. Processor stuck inside a gun all his life?

Do I want an AI on a gun.

Maybe yes, maybe no.

...huh. Would a rail-shotgun be Awesome, but Impractical as an anti-personnel weapon?

Honestly I would would just take a railgun and tune it for maximum fire rate over trying to get the electrical conductivity to work out for all the pellets or the basket carrying them.

While railguns are often depicted in science fiction as high powered one shot machines, let me let you in on a little secret... that's all down to how much power you dump behind each bullet you can easily turn it down to reasonable levels.

And then railguns have another cool little feature that comes into play... they have no moving parts.

What this means is that a railgun will absoltley shot as fast as you can feed it ammunition.

Even if that means 10s of thousands of rounds of ammunition a minute.

Though cooling might be an issue if you dont fire that in bursts.

Though this does raise an interesting question of if a gun that fires 10 rounds at 10 thousand rounds a minute, or even 100 thousand... but only fires in bursts becomes a shotgun itself.

Edited by Imca on Apr 17th 2024 at 7:54:04 PM

They don't have any moving parts but the rails do warp and need replacement.

You might want to reduce power-per-shot not just to reduce wear on the rails but also give the capacitors time to recharge. Since the round is part of the circuit, you'll also want to redesign the feed system so it's not touching the rest of the magazine. That kind of voltage will ground out in dangerous ways.

Thats not near as much of a problem at low speeds, its mostly a probelem in the use case we are currently using them for.

AKA "I want to fire a metal slug 300km away in a couple seconds"

Those kinds of forces will bend metal even if it was gunpowder doing the task.

Hmmm, that part is true yea.

Edited by Imca on Apr 17th 2024 at 11:17:51 PM

Umm... 300 km in a few seconds won't just bend the gun; the projectile will be vaporized by atmospheric compression. And the sonic boom will do more damage to your allies than to your target.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 17th 2024 at 10:25:16 AM

Yeah, you really want to save railguns for space combat. Less chance of getting water in the gun and shorting the barrels.

Seems I was a bit off in my estimate, but it's still 250km in under a minute.

The muzzle velocity of the railguns being tested is mach 9...

That's why the rails have such a short shelf life, it's less an innate railgun thing and more a....

Well look up high velocity guns though history thing, the 100mm dual purpose guns used by the IJN I think were able to sustain 100 rounds before they needed replacement... battleship guns generaly needed to be rebored whenever you would reload the ship.

High speed guns dont live long lifes.

The equal and opposite forces of "I want to punch a hole straight through that warship" tend to do nasty things to your own gun barrels.

Edited by Imca on Apr 17th 2024 at 11:36:02 PM

We can build aircraft and rockets that move at Mach 9. It's a reasonable velocity. Mach 100 is a little trickier.

The pronlem isnt the speed so much as the near instantaneous acceleration in guns.

That's a lot of force in not very much time.

^ Correct. Instantaneous acceleration does very different stuff than continuous acceleration or even specific velocities.

The sudden change from zero or near zero speed to really freaking fast does a major number on things that continuous acceleration would not. Even if the sudden acceleration and continuous both crossed over at one point and reached the same speed.

It’s like taking off in an airplane vs being shot out of a cannon. Sure both of them can get you to the same speed possibly but being shot out of a cannon is not going to have the same effect as an airplane continuously accelerating to that same velocity.

You'd probably want to make the bullet out of solid armor material. Anything fancy like electronics or fuses would come out the muzzle as shrapnel.