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Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#19451: May 28th 2025 at 7:17:15 AM

Missiles and rockets are extremely fragile things. It doesn't take much to wreck them. Tanks are designed specifically to absorb and dissipate energy, so lasers are going to have a very hard time doing anything to them.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Belisaurius Since: Feb, 2010
#19452: May 28th 2025 at 2:42:19 PM

The airborne laser project was also...airborne. There would be very little atmosphere to distort the beam.

MajorTom Since: Dec, 2009
#19453: May 29th 2025 at 8:33:16 AM

^ At least as far as its targets were concerned. There’s a lot less air in the way of the laser when aiming for ICBM’s in their late ascent to early terminal phases than there would be training that laser onto the ground to try and burn a pinhole through a tank’s armor.

AFP Since: Mar, 2010
#19454: May 30th 2025 at 10:46:58 AM

Depending on how deep that pinhole goes, I feel like being inside of a tank that is now being illuminated by a 1MW laser shining through the new skylight might be unpleasant at best. The crew might end up doing a pretty good impersonation of a TV dinner.

But also using an ABL to plink tanks kind of reminds me of the time they decided to see if they could use a Patriot missile to shoot down a $200 quadcopter drone. The answer was "Yes, but kind of overkill."

MajorTom Since: Dec, 2009
#19455: May 30th 2025 at 11:02:37 AM

But also using an ABL to plink tanks kind of reminds me of the time they decided to see if they could use a Patriot missile to shoot down a $200 quadcopter drone. The answer was "Yes, but kind of overkill."

And as we see in Ukraine, there’s a lot of value in using cheap stuff.

Opponents using armored vehicles and artillery? Observe and destroy them with drones.

Enemy using drones a lot? Do you either engage with high cost high tech jammers and missiles? Or do you shoot em down with a gun? (Both sides are doing both.)

Enemy uses extensive electronic jamming of signals and communications for drones or otherwise? Plug a fiber optic cable in. (Russian fiber optic drones have proven unstoppable to anything but literally shooting them down.)

Which means sci fi lasers might fall firmly into the realm of Awesome, but Impractical. Theoretically a laser than burns through tanks is possible, but is it efficient enough to merit use over using conventional tandem charge explosives or kinetic energy penetrators?

Unless there a sci fi technology that emerges as a game changer such as Deflector Shields, I’m not sure the future of war offers much need or want from lasers. We certainly won’t be seeing laser rifles any time soon.

AFP Since: Mar, 2010
#19456: May 30th 2025 at 11:18:30 AM

Even in settings with forcefields, it's fun to see some of the ways that writers come up with to work around that, like torpedoes that use their own shield generators to create a field synchronized to let them pass through the shields (Wing Commander uses this to justify torpedo bombers having to make WWII-style attack runs, trying to pin down the target ship's shield frequency before they launch their torpedoes), or having projectiles that slow themselves down to pass through a shield without triggering it (Dune, which mostly uses this mechanic for knife fighting, but in the new movies also had anti-ship weapons doing a very spectacular version of this).

Star Wars is always a bit inconsistent with how anything technological works (in true fantasy fashion), but over time they seem to have decided that the forcefields in the setting mostly just protect against energy weapons fired from a distance, while any ship small enough and fast enough to get close can fly through the shields and then make daring-do close-range attacks (in the old EU, they called this "Trench Run Disease," and it was a favored tactic of Republic starfighter crews fighting Imperial capital ships).

RLH4 Cool Loser from Midgard Since: Sep, 2019 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
Cool Loser
#19457: May 30th 2025 at 3:39:36 PM

[up][up] Well that does circle around a bit to the fact that while the systems are expensive, lasers have a virtually negligible cost per shot, and since cheap drones don't have much armor lasers could become the go-to cost effective method for dealing with them, though as you mentioned in an earlier comment, we don't yet have laser systems powerful enough to do that and efficient enough for a human or a tank to carry, so for now we must pray to the Holy Wall of Flak, as was foretold by Battlestar Galactica.

Actually, a question: Could we make man-portable flak-guns (technically FLAG, since instead of a Fleugzueg-Abwehr-Kannonit would be a Fleugzeug-Abwehr-Gewehr), and how would they compare to traditional shotguns? Or is that just an air-burst grenade launcher?

Edited by RLH4 on May 30th 2025 at 6:40:56 AM

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AFP Since: Mar, 2010
#19458: May 30th 2025 at 3:58:40 PM

Given that Flak is just air-burst artillery, the only difference between that and air-burst grenades is how big the burst is.

TuefelHundenIV Night Clerk of the Apocalypse from Doomsday Facility Corner Store. Since: Aug, 2009 Relationship Status: I'd need a PowerPoint presentation
Night Clerk of the Apocalypse
#19459: May 30th 2025 at 4:26:42 PM

Bel: The Airborne laser is dealing with nothing but atmosphere.

The USAF considered a concept laser gunship, even built a laser for it. Part of that proposal was a description of a hypothetical strike on a convoy of vehicles that included soft-skinned vehicles, IF Vs, and tanks. The idea wasn't to destroy the heavy armor, but to render it ineffective. The soft-skinned vehicles would have their tires destroyed. The APC/IFV they would burn tires, cut tracks, perforate gun barrels, burn down antennae, and lase external optics and weapon systems. Similar for the tanks. Cut bogey wheels, laser anything sensitive, and mission kill the whole convoy.

Getting creative with any non-missile-based target. On something with armor like a tank, burning through the armor or body is not practical, but burning holes in the barrel, optics, comms, gear, external generators, etc, is a lot easier to do. Damaging tanks in that manner is still capable of ending a tank's battlefield effectiveness and forcing them to return for repairs, or at least preventing them from being effectively in combat.

Like Fighteer noted, missiles are somewhat fragile. Igniting things like propellant, depending on the missile, burning off steering systems, burning out targeting systems, and burning the warhead. Even a few small holes in the skin of a supersonic or hypersonic projectile can cause it to tear itself apart under stress.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Jun 2nd 2025 at 8:54:44 AM

Who watches the watchmen?
RLH4 Cool Loser from Midgard Since: Sep, 2019 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
Cool Loser
#19460: Jun 8th 2025 at 10:17:38 AM

New Topic: Electrically fired guns, like the pulse guns in Aliens, where pulling the trigger sends an electrical signal that ignites a bullet's propellant to fire it. Are they theoretically viable, is there a major reason we don't have them now other than them not really serving any new purpose, and could they make good bullpup weapons, since a major issue with bullpups is with the more complicated trigger action?

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MorningStar1337 The Encounter that ended the Dogma from 🤔 Since: Nov, 2012
The Encounter that ended the Dogma
#19461: Jun 8th 2025 at 11:29:03 AM

I would presume that the issue is that they feel redundant, like if you gonna to use make an electric gun, it might make more sense for the electricity to be the projectile itself. Like an electrolaser or maybe a Wave-Motion Gun.

Gunpowder ATM is the more easily to use and cheaper propellant for bullets.

That said I can see those being used by Mavericks and similar strains of non-conformists and reckless folk.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Jun 8th 2025 at 11:29:13 AM

underCoverSailsman Peeks from Under Rocks from State of Flux Since: Jan, 2021 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
Peeks from Under Rocks
#19462: Jun 8th 2025 at 11:35:25 AM

It's a thing. It was available on the civilian market for a time. (Remmington Etroni X 2000-2003)

It did, in fact, virtually eliminate lock time. (Time from pulling the trigger to propellant detonation) It died because:

  • Expensive proprietary ammo. (Vendor lock-in on your munitions does not go over well with the target market here.)
  • The difference in lock time is pretty much irrelevant for real-world shooting situations
  • Maintenance headache. Your reliability is now tied to having a charged battery, whereas mechanical springloaded locks are very robust and can cycle many thousands of times with just basic cleaning.
  • One of the things that was touted at the time was "Improved safety through biometrics." The idea was that a weapon would be keyed to one or a few authorized fingerprint scans, and thieves or untrained persons would be unable to fire. This fell down because the biometric scanners were glitchy and not that hard to bypass, and you needed skin contact. A gun that you need to pull your gloves off to fire isn't field-ready. A gun that might hang fire multiple times before you get your fingerprint in the right place is really annoying in a hunting situation, where the shot has to be made quickly, and is worse than no weapon in a self defense situation, where you're already highly stressed and jumpy.


ETA, since I got [nja] by morningstar:

There are military uses for electronically ignited ammo. Many of them are in cases where there's already a power supply requirement to operate the weapon, such as the M61 Vulcan Gatling cannon, typically mounted to fixed-wing aircraft.


[up]The issue with electronic propulsion, at least at the current tech level, is compact energy storage:

  • A civilian type of coilgun requires a fairly massive capacitor bank, and is easily outperformed by pneumatic "pellet" rifles in terms of range and accuracy.
  • Current military research into railguns is being conducted by the US Navy. Railguns can theoretically accelerate projectiles to a much higher velocity than conventional artillery, but waste a lot of heat. What does a navy have that other service branches don't? Big fat warships with big fat powerplants that need to be online anyway, sitting in a big fat heat sink that can be leveraged for coolant. It's not clear if even the navy can make this practical at this time.

Edited by underCoverSailsman on Jun 8th 2025 at 2:17:31 PM

AngelusNox Warder of the damned from The guard of the gates of oblivion Since: Dec, 2014 Relationship Status: Married to the job
Warder of the damned
#19463: Jun 8th 2025 at 12:08:18 PM

New Topic: Electrically fired guns, like the pulse guns in Aliens, where pulling the trigger sends an electrical signal that ignites a bullet's propellant to fire it. Are they theoretically viable, is there a major reason we don't have them now other than them not really serving any new purpose, and could they make good bullpup weapons, since a major issue with bullpups is with the more complicated trigger action?

There is already the technology for larger weapons as the Electrothermal guns. Which means you use an electric charge to burn the propellant, allowing for more consistent propellant burn, possibly using alternative propellants and achieving higher muzzle velocities without having to increase propellant charges.

For electric triggers, they'd be more useful to weapons that are susceptible to jamming like auto-cannons in aircraft or crewed systems were dealing with failed cartridges isn't easy.

It might help deal with the heavy triggers on bullpups but you still have the issues of the bolt and chamber assembly being far back on the gun and the whole ergonomics issues.

The major reason why we don't have those now might be related to costs, having more electronics and batteries adds weight and is a failure point to firearms that I'm sure no one in the field would want to have. Most guns can fire as long as they gas system is working or at least once if it isn't. A gun with a dead battery is just an expensive club.

Edited by AngelusNox on Jun 8th 2025 at 4:09:46 PM

Inter arma enim silent leges
MajorTom Since: Dec, 2009
#19464: Jun 8th 2025 at 7:26:36 PM

First question, why electric at all? It’s more mechanically reliable to use old fashioned traditional primer ignition. And it means fewer parts to keep track of or maintain/replace.

Last thing any police or military unit (or really anyone) wants is a bunch of deadlined rifles and pistols owing to dead batteries or electrical shorts.

It’s one thing to have a dead battery in an optic or attached light, it’s quite another when that’s a crucial component to your weapon’s action working at all.

Also like things like biometric locks, it proves completely unnecessary for little to no appreciable benefit.

So I ask again, why electric?

RLH4 Cool Loser from Midgard Since: Sep, 2019 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
Cool Loser
#19465: Jun 8th 2025 at 9:05:29 PM

[up] Well, if I knew the answers, I wouldn't have asked the question in the first place. As stated, the inspiration is that it's in Aliens, and Aliens is pretty cool, and there was a lull in the thread. And it seems like the answers have been that they do have shorter lock time, though not enough to make much of a difference in normal shooting or overcome all of the problems with bullpup designs, and they're are more resistant to jamming under certain conditions like the high g-forces experienced by fighter planes, with the predictable drawback of needing electricity, though that is often pretty easy to find and generate in sci-fi settings.

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Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#19466: Jun 9th 2025 at 6:07:55 AM

Forgive me for asking what may seem like a dumb question, but when was it established that the pulse rifles in Aliens use electronic triggers rather than mechanical ones? I suppose that would explain the "pulse" in the name, although I literally never thought about it until it was brought up here.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
EchoingSilence Since: Jun, 2013
#19467: Jun 9th 2025 at 6:13:27 AM

I coulda sworn it was described in Aliens itself, according to the wikis the detail comes from an official technical manual released in 2014. But I swear I saw it described in the movie that it uses an electric pulse to fire the 10mm explosive tipped caseless ammunition.

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#19468: Jun 9th 2025 at 6:26:26 AM

I've watched the film dozens of times and don't remember that detail. Anyway, it does seem clear to me that in the sci-fi future represented therein, they've figured out the reliability issues, since no pulse rifle in any of the movies jams or misfires.

Edited by Fighteer on Jun 9th 2025 at 9:26:40 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
AngelusNox Warder of the damned from The guard of the gates of oblivion Since: Dec, 2014 Relationship Status: Married to the job
Warder of the damned
#19469: Jun 9th 2025 at 6:35:58 AM

I think Alien Romulus explains more on Pulse Rifles. The Aliens movie doesn't really go in detail on the workings except the 10mm APHE ammo part.

But the workings are all in the Colonial Marines manual.

Inter arma enim silent leges
MajorTom Since: Dec, 2009
#19470: Jun 9th 2025 at 8:40:53 AM

And it seems like the answers have been that they do have shorter lock time, though not enough to make much of a difference in normal shooting or overcome all of the problems with bullpup designs, and they're are more resistant to jamming under certain conditions like the high g-forces experienced by fighter planes, with the predictable drawback of needing electricity, though that is often pretty easy to find and generate in sci-fi settings.

Lock time is a largely irrelevant characteristic when dealing with man portable type firearms. At least to anything the end user would need or notice. An armorer/gunsmith would need to know that because in some firearm actions if it locks up too short or too long you can end up with cycling issues or a dangerous kaboom. Or just a dirty and inefficient way of doing it.

Electric ignition to alter lock time is really only useful in circumstances where you need sheer rate of fire bordering on the absurd. (Metal Storm was using this logic with their electrically ignited, caseless ammunition.)

Shitty bullpup triggers could theoretically be fixed with an electric solenoid type trigger but that can introduce needless complexity into a firearm. And triggers are usually a nonissue or nonfactor when dealing with police or military firearms. Case in point Glock handguns are known for mushy shitty triggers but police and military outfits all over the world still buy them. (On the flipside the M1911 was known to have a fantastic trigger, the gold standard in pistols for decades and it is largely but not wholly retired.)

Realistically electric augmentation of a firearm platform is more for vehicles and ships and planes.

DeMarquis (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#19471: Jun 9th 2025 at 9:38:15 AM

Would the ability to adjust the ignition detonation in different ways allow some degree of control over the way the cartridge fires?

I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.
RLH4 Cool Loser from Midgard Since: Sep, 2019 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
Cool Loser
#19472: Jun 9th 2025 at 11:32:18 AM

[up] I think that gets back into the Electrothermal chemical technology that Angelus Nox mentioned, though that wikipedia page doesn't have any sources post 2004, which is not promising, and I can't tell if the XM360 tank gun that was supposed to use it still does, or whether it was just in one of the prototypes.

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TuefelHundenIV Night Clerk of the Apocalypse from Doomsday Facility Corner Store. Since: Aug, 2009 Relationship Status: I'd need a PowerPoint presentation
Night Clerk of the Apocalypse
#19473: Jun 11th 2025 at 6:52:49 PM

The electrical pulse is described in the franchise beyond the films. There have been several official supplements and additions to the Alien franchise.

Another use for this type of electrical ignition is with careless ammunition. It can help improve the reliability of ignition in certain propellants.

Who watches the watchmen?
WillKeaton from Alberta, Canada Since: Jun, 2010
#19474: Jun 11th 2025 at 7:00:43 PM

The ammo the pulse rifle fires in Aliens is caseless.

RIPLEY: Lieutenant, what do those pulse-rifles fire?
GORMAN:10 mm explosive-tip caseless, the standard light-armor piercing round.

Edited by WillKeaton on Jun 11th 2025 at 8:00:49 AM

EchoingSilence Since: Jun, 2013
#19475: Jun 11th 2025 at 7:02:27 PM

I'm still trying to puzzle out how something is both armor piercing and explosive. Think there's a timed delay after the bullet penetrates?


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