'Realistic' weapons

[Ford Prefect]

Once upon a time a asked you all for weapons to put into a transforming super gun with nine thousand functions, for my mostly tongue-in-cheek science fiction universe. I'm back again for weapons, only this time it's different.

I'm putting together a universe which I have decided will be governed by fairly normal science, and thus it will possess weapons which could, potentially, happen. It's not super-hard science fiction, really, but it'll be trying to fake it quite well. However, when I think of 'reallistic' weapons I think of lasers, particle beams, missiles and kinetic impact weapons. There are the bosers of the Revelation Space universe, of course, though I don't really know much about how they work (which is important for my own sense of self-satisfaction).

So, what sort of interesting, if vaguely plausible, weapons are there that I could potentially play with?

[Batman]

There's always slugthrowers you know.

[Alan Bolte]

I'm going to assume for the moment you've been repeatedly pointed at Atomic Rocket, and wonder if perhaps you mean to emphasize interesting weapons, in which case, I've got nothing.

[XaLEv]

Here's one, though I'm not sure how well it will fit into what you're doing.

A missile containing a large number of ultra high power gamma ray lasers aimed at a single point, where there is a kernel of ultradense quark matter. Once it reaches a safe distance after being launched, the lasers fire and compress the kernel into a singularity. As soon as the singularity is formed it begins evaporating, spewing out radiation. By selecting the velocity of the missile and the mass of the kernel you can choose how the singularity itself will behave. For example, a 5e5 kilogram kernel will produce a singularity which will last for about ten seconds and have an initial output of over 300 gigatons per second, and in its last second of existence will release almost 500 teratons. You could up the mass to 5e6 kg and it will last for almost three hours with an initial output of 3 gigatons per second and fire it so that it will orbit a planet's center at sea level. One of these could hit any target at any point inside a planet's interior with no resistance from the planet itself.

All the numbers come from this calculator. Hopefully it's accurate.

[Vendetta]

The question to ask yourself is "how much armour do these weapons need to defeat". Make an arbitrary baseline for infantry armour, and your small arms will scale to overcome it.

If any of your forces are Special, they can have armour the other forces' small arms cannot defeat.

[Sidewinder]

For infantry weapons, .50 AE (12.7 x 32.6 mm) pistols and submachine guns firing armor piercing explosive (APEX) bullets, and 10.9 x 55 mm rifles and machine guns firing APEX bullets. (APEX bullets are necessary to penetrate the armor that military personnel are required to wear on duty.) Both weapons were inspired by 'Halo: Combat Evolved'.

[Ariphaos]

Hmm, well, I have a lot based on work for my own setting, but I'd have to ask what your estimated tech level is? Mainly, for power generation, propulsion and heat dissipation. Weapons come into favor and fall out of favor based on how advanced a society gets (and come back into favor when defenses against some weapons become effective).

[defanatic]

Railguns are hugely scalable. However, you'd have to come up with a reason why your railguns don't require huge maintenance.

[Zor]

Howabout Gyrorockets? Plausable, powerful, low recoil and quite frankly, guns that shoot out rocket propelled bullets are awesome.

Zor

[Adrian Laguna]

How about bolters? It's like a gyrorocket, but with an AP tip and HE in the bullet.

[Ariphaos]

Railguns are hugely scalable. However, you'd have to come up with a reason why your railguns don't require huge maintenance.

No, they aren't. You can get to relativistic velocities with a coilgun, mass driver or gauss rifle, but not with a railgun - eventually, your rails are just going to vaporize.

This is fine in atmospheric combat, since you don't want to get to such velocities in the first place, and their relative simplicity makes them attractive for ground forces - but they are not very scalable in comparison to other options.

[ThatGuyFromThatPlace]

Niven's known space has some cool, realistic-esque weapons, such as the Laser flashlight and Slaver Disintegrator, and the Tasp.

[Ford Prefect]

There's always slugthrowers you know.

Yeah, I know. Hence why I said 'kinetic impact'.

I'm going to assume for the moment you've been repeatedly pointed at Atomic Rocket, and wonder if perhaps you mean to emphasize interesting weapons, in which case, I've got nothing.

I have gone through Atomic Rocket very extensively over the last couple of years, especially the weapons page recently. I don't intend to aspire to diamond hard science fiction, but I have been using it as a reference.

Here's one, though I'm not sure how well it will fit into what you're doing.

*snip*

That's crazy; though rather awesome.

For infantry weapons, .50 AE (12.7 x 32.6 mm) pistols and submachine guns firing armor piercing explosive (APEX) bullets, and 10.9 x 55 mm rifles and machine guns firing APEX bullets. (APEX bullets are necessary to penetrate the armor that military personnel are required to wear on duty.) Both weapons were inspired by 'Halo: Combat Evolved'.

This is a failure of the OP, but i should point out that this universe is set about a thousand years into the future. A military sidearm (gauss 'pistol') wielded by an unarmoured baseline will result in shattered arms, the gun blasting out their back, and all their organs crushed by the pressure wave of it going off. Such a weapon would never be considered useful in a battlefield situation, where combat occurs between suits more than three metres tall many kilometres apart*.

AT THREE HUNDRED MILES PER HOUR! ON FIRE!!!

*Why? I've got 'science fiction writer syndrome'.

However, you'd have to come up with a reason why your railguns don't require huge maintenance.

In my mind, they did need lots of maintenence. The rails were coated in an ablative material, as were the penetrators themselves, and they still had to be fairly frequently replaced. Ultimately, I'm planning to discard railguns due to rail errosion being potentially explosive.

Hmm, well, I have a lot based on work for my own setting, but I'd have to ask what your estimated tech level is? Mainly, for power generation, propulsion and heat dissipation. Weapons come into favor and fall out of favor based on how advanced a society gets (and come back into favor when defenses against some weapons become effective).

It's fairly high (silly, in fact, as my above example shows), without sliding into the realms of 'this isn't science, this is madness'. If anything, I see it as having some level of technological parity with the Revelation Space universe, which is something of an influence (admittedly, so is Macross), though that is something a gross simplification.

First of, the most advanced human science is computing. I invented a genius from MIT who, in a Mad Maxian dystopia after peak oil, put together Really Strong (TM) AI, who then proceeded to come up with all sorts of useful science fiction staples, like a faster than light drive and a simple method for getting lots of antimatter really easily. Other important technologies include some form of force control technology (which is pretty much magical) so that I can create a bias towards kinetic impact weapons.

Propulsion is not uniform; the more advanced human propulsion is antimatter drives, though torchships exist in less 'important' locations/institutions. As for heat dissipation, I haven't got any numbers in my head, but if anything it will turn out to be ridiculously good; it's not something I'm very familiar with, so I'll end up writing some scene that woud require truly inane radiation. Spacecraft do tend to come with very large radiators, just as a precaution on my part.

[Rightous Fist Of Heaven]

Hmm, how about caseless slugthrowers as primary small arms? I've been working with those in my own Nationstates nation.

[Ford Prefect]

Hmm, how about caseless slugthrowers as primary small arms? I've been working with those in my own Nationstates nation.

Well, I suppose you could say that gauss guns have 'caseless' ammunition.

Honestly, slugthrowers are the most common form of weapon in the universe, whether they be a civillian owned electrochemical sporting rifles to the most massive 1000mm linacs mounted on starships. However, I'm not looking for common weapons systems; I'm looking for things outside the norm of slugthrowers (I thought that 'kinetic impact weapon' might have been enough of a catch-all phrase to stop people suggesting gyrojet bullets or chemical propulsion and so on), particles beams and missiles, as well as stuff like bombs and mines and so on.

XaLEv is so far spot-on in what I'm looking for, though such a system is probably too complex for widespread use, because when it comes down to it, you might as well just drop a whole bunch of antimatter on the problem if it comes to that; or a storm of sublight projectiles the size of a mid-sized family living room.

[Ariphaos]

Hmm, well Solar Storms (my setting) 'begins' in the mid-23rd century.

For kinetic weapons, I use coilguns and railguns, of course, but still make use of chemical launching, using advanced explosives. While there are a lot of variations on these key designs, varied ammunition is more important. Specifically, ammunition needs to be tailored to the opponent.

Non-explosive needler rounds are simply going to rip through a beta strain human that doesn't even have a heart or spinal column, leaving them rather functional. At the same time, their skin will react to blunt projectiles more like a stone wall then fleshy bags of oil and water. So you use an armor-piercing explosive round... but it needs to detonate in the microsecond that it is actually passing through the body. This, of course, is just the generalized case, for one strain of people that decided to remain looking relatively human. Biology gets modified to prevent triggering the detonation (already not a sure thing), and eventually the gun needs to be loaded with a random assortment of ammunition.

Going for the braincase helps, but it's a much smaller target and much better armored. And even when you're dealing with 'humans', not everyone puts their brain in their head.

I tend not to use coilguns or their kin in atmospheric combat outside of Jovians - you don't often want your projectiles leaving orbit when you miss.

In space, shaped charge nukes are and their descendants (antimatter detonation) occasionally get launched as missiles, which try to get within a third (~5,000 kilometers) or so of their target before detonating. Coilguns are the typical launch method for such things - they don't actually attempt kinetic kills because anything that could go fast enough without getting noticed immediately (> .95 c) is going to require too long of a gun to be feasible except for planetary bombardment vessels.

(Engagement ranges are measured in light-delay time, with 'third' being reintroduced from archaic English to represent close range - typical engagement range is just inside a minute, or within 18 million km, because light delay allows for dodging any luxon or slower).

Beam weapons come in several different varieties. Lasers that are actually of the needed frequency to trigger pair production on a target are used to cause deep irradiation into a ship and some guaranteed minimum damage, while others are the more typical high-energy pulsed mode-locked laser.

Ambeams are a direct result of matter-antimatter propulsion (50% of the mass is ejected using 50% of the mass-energy for maximum thrust). Fired and designed a lot like a laser, the important difference is that they're not - their frequencies are spread-spectrum. This, and the pair production triggering laser above, are intended to breach plasma shields.

Neutron beams are used to intentionally cause neutron embrittlement on a target, and are in general a particularly nasty way to deal with people who have come up with elaborate mundane defenses.

Typical particle beams fire alpha particles and electron particles separately, though typically in close succession (for obvious reasons). The same is not always true for antimatter variants.

The charge of a weapon is important, because deflectors and screens are typically powered by electrons and thus, tend to reduce the impact of electron beams. So alpha particles and positrons are sometimes preferred to get past these defenses.

...that's a brief overview, though it only really touches on what happens when 'magical' materials come into play in my setting.

[Ford Prefect]

As an aside Xeriar, I think your setting seems quite interesting. It's fairly obvious to me that you've put a considerable amount of thought into (as I noticed back when I made the heat radiation thread).

I tend not to use coilguns or their kin in atmospheric combat outside of Jovians - you don't often want your projectiles leaving orbit when you miss.

I tend to prefer 'aiming better' as a solution. Of course, the velocity is practically necessary; infantry comes with its own array of point defense which is quite capable of cutting down even these high velocity projectiles easily enough; excepting the sheath of plasma created in the process.

I suppose that really, the projectile should just hit the air like it's a brick wall, but hey.

Neutron beams are used to intentionally cause neutron embrittlement on a target, and are in general a particularly nasty way to deal with people who have come up with elaborate mundane defenses.

I've always wondered though, how does one accelerate a particle beam of neutral charge?

[Vehrec]

Thoughts on possible weapons and ammo:
Nano-forged bullets provide versitility by having many forms that can be varied at will. It is possible to hold down the trigger, shoot a full auto spray from a 100 round clip, and have each bullet head down range with different properties. In their neutral state, such bullets look like mercury and feel like jello, but have the aproximate weight of steel rounds. Once chambered, they are exposed to conditions and signals that alter their properties, making them variously HE, AP, Shredding, fin stabilized, gyrojet, hollowpoint, self-guiding, or any combination thereof. Some varients can even create a bio-weapon payload within miliseconds of being chambered. Of course, they are prohibitively expensive.

[Ariphaos]

As an aside Xeriar, I think your setting seems quite interesting. It's fairly obvious to me that you've put a considerable amount of thought into (as I noticed back when I made the heat radiation thread).

Thanks. Right now, it's a jumbled mess of about fifty thousand words that have come from various stages in development. I don't actively point to it here yet because it's not very coherent.

I tend to prefer 'aiming better' as a solution. Of course, the velocity is practically necessary; infantry comes with its own array of point defense which is quite capable of cutting down even these high velocity projectiles easily enough; excepting the sheath of plasma created in the process.

A particular weakness of my ground combat design is the lack of underwater combat design and point defense, so I'll concede that point. The part about varied ammunition still remains - generals in such a conflict would have a statistician tell them what the best probably mix should be assigned to troops, then AIs would do the same for firing against specific targets.

Another thing to keep in mind, something I noticed when I first started calculating recoil values - there's no excuse for your troops not to by flying unless they are specifically designed not to do so. I use a variant of hall effect lifters, which along with turbofans replace helicopters for most purposes.

I suppose that really, the projectile should just hit the air like it's a brick wall, but hey.

No, the air hits it like a brick wall. When you're dealing with a civilization that has M-AM generation, they can build projectiles that can take 300 km/sec velocities in atmospheres.

I've always wondered though, how does one accelerate a particle beam of neutral charge?

Neutrons still have a magnetic moment. This sort of magnetowankery is a direct result of the form of electromagnetic defenses in my setting, there are four kinds:

The first, and most physics-breaking line of defense in Solar Storms are called screens. These are basically walls of electrons and are effectively virtual atoms - standing EM waves act as central nuclei and form a protective shell around the station, which can deflect minor strikes outright, and morph and flex to accommodate and deflect asteroids or small relativistic projectiles (large relativistic projectiles and starstrafing are defended against by having a significant sphere of influence and actually giving random acceleration to the station or planet).

...oh yeah, starstrafing. Build a dyson swarm. Aim it at another star system's planet. Win. More appropriately, it exists in a form of a web of mirrors that act as a sort of battery, scattered about the star system. 300 yottawatts at your disposal anywhere you want or need it. In Solar Storms the primary purpose for such a web is to make sure the crews of silverships behave. Store up 300 YJ for long enough and all their magical defenses and maneuverability really don't matter anymore. Hell, an ISD can't withstand a focused blast from a star.

Positron and alpha particle based screens also exist, to force intruders to pass through antimatter or to trip up some forms of attack, respectively.

The second line of defense is shielding - basically plasma that is magnetically bound just above the hull (it's intentionally repulsed slightly by the deflectors, see next). It's purpose is to fluoresce under laser fire - reflecting most of the laser's energy. Less advanced designs actually make use of an easily plasmified paint.

The third line of defense is called deflectors, and this is little more than having a statically charged hull, do deflect particle beams with. Later on predictive systems are used to actually alter the charge to attempt to deflect antiprotons (really anti-alpha particles) and positrons, or their normal-matter counterparts, in proper succession.

The fourth line of defense is inertial dampening - mimicking the structural integrity fields in Star Trek, though of course they aren't in any sense required in my setting. They are usually more local, and sometimes combined with the above to actually allow a strike to pass through the ship, rather than risk damaging more by attempting to stop it outright and failing. Basically, it detects an incoming projectile, then applies an appropriate magnetic force on the point to be struck such that the force of impact is spread across the immediate vicinity of the ship, negating armor piercing value.

Naturally, the above is used for various weapons, haptigrams (volumetric displays that can be physically interacted with), electrogravity, and so on. Different topic, though.

I also make use of certain made-up properties of superactinide elements (elements 120, 122, 124, and 126 may be tolerably stable, I call element 126 Hawkinium after Stephen Hawking theoretical research in the late 1970's suggested that they wouldn't be beta stable, but chances are good that they will have 'sufficient' halflives). These are a bit handwaved, but if nothing else element 126 would make a great tamper and dampener a la DU today, for nuclear weapons and such. Because of superactinide contraction, you won't find a better material to detect neutrinos with, either.

I bring them up because it's very hard to predict the chemical properties of elements 122, 124, or 126. Being so compact, they won't react like their other rare earth counterparts, and may have a variety of uses for all sorts of designs.

Naturally, though, if you have M-AM reactions, you absolutely need some form of magical material. I'm still working on the exact nature of mine, even.

[Pulp Hero]

EFP RIFLES
Rifles that fire EFPs (explosively formed penetrators) would make a powerful, if close ranged (due to accuracy) weapon.

Essentially the rounds contain C4 or other high explosives with a copper plate in the center. The explosives are detonated and a high speed, super hot copper plate is launched at the enemy.

The rifle of course would need to be made of very strong material and also probably have a short barrel to keep it from melting.

[kinnison]

Traveller (or Striker, the wargame derived from it) had an interesting idea - micro-atomic slugs made of californium (which apparently is fissile). The slugs are hollow - the compression required for nuclear detonation is provided by the impact of the slug. Yield is probably a couple of tons of TNT, from a 20mm round (or thereabouts).

One problem is that there has to be a bit of handwavium involved - namely, a way of strengthening the strong nuclear force a bit within your weapon's magazine, so the ammo doesn't melt, decay away or irradiate the firer.

At the tech levels of Traveller, this was a vehicle-mounted weapon only.

[Ariphaos]

Oh yeah, californium grenades!

A five pound (~2.4 kg) hand grenade with 250 tonnes of TNT behind it >_>

Another thing my setting plays with is mirror matter, for various purposes. One method (against less advanced targets) is for your missile to phase into the mirror spectrum for awhile, then phase back to the normal one inside or near your target.

[Ford Prefect]

Thoughts on possible weapons and ammo:
Nano-forged bullets provide versitility by having many forms that can be varied at will. It is possible to hold down the trigger, shoot a full auto spray from a 100 round clip, and have each bullet head down range with different properties. In their neutral state, such bullets look like mercury and feel like jello, but have the aproximate weight of steel rounds. Once chambered, they are exposed to conditions and signals that alter their properties, making them variously HE, AP, Shredding, fin stabilized, gyrojet, hollowpoint, self-guiding, or any combination thereof. Some varients can even create a bio-weapon payload within miliseconds of being chambered. Of course, they are prohibitively expensive.

This universe has the phrase 'nanoactive', which can apply to clothing and robots and so on; assuming that you have the money, I don't see why you couldn't do the same thing with bullets (though people might think it's a waste of good nanotech).

Another thing to keep in mind, something I noticed when I first started calculating recoil values - there's no excuse for your troops not to by flying unless they are specifically designed not to do so. I use a variant of hall effect lifters, which along with turbofans replace helicopters for most purposes.

The suits as I have envisioned them are designed to be extremely mobile, though admittedly I made that decision based on how awesome it would be to write. As such they can fly, and can jet around like they unholy amlgamation of a Ferrari and an Abrams and a large person. Of course, they do it with antimatter, just lke everything else in the universe to do with the military.

No, the air hits it like a brick wall. When you're dealing with a civilization that has M-AM generation, they can build projectiles that can take 300 km/sec velocities in atmospheres.

Ah, excellent. Thank you.

...oh yeah, starstrafing. Build a dyson swarm. Aim it at another star system's planet. Win. More appropriately, it exists in a form of a web of mirrors that act as a sort of battery, scattered about the star system. 300 yottawatts at your disposal anywhere you want or need it. In Solar Storms the primary purpose for such a web is to make sure the crews of silverships behave. Store up 300 YJ for long enough and all their magical defenses and maneuverability really don't matter anymore. Hell, an ISD can't withstand a focused blast from a star.

*cackles insanely*

Ahem.

EFP RIFLES
Rifles that fire EFPs (explosively formed penetrators) would make a powerful, if close ranged (due to accuracy) weapon.

Essentially the rounds contain C4 or other high explosives with a copper plate in the center. The explosives are detonated and a high speed, super hot copper plate is launched at the enemy.

The rifle of course would need to be made of very strong material and also probably have a short barrel to keep it from melting.

Such a weapon would be perfectly possible, though C4 is so anemic to be useless on any scale that it matters.

Another thing my setting plays with is mirror matter, for various purposes. One method (against less advanced targets) is for your missile to phase into the mirror spectrum for awhile, then phase back to the normal one inside or near your target.

Could you explain this concept? I've not heard of it before.

The californium grenade/cannon thing is really quite impressive; and this universe does have the necessary handwavium present to make it work, so I'll have to consider it as an ammunition type. For kicks, you know.

[Pulp Hero]

Such a weapon would be perfectly possible, though C4 is so anemic to be useless on any scale that it matters.

Well, I didn't mean use actual C4, but an in universe equvalent (C4 has 1.37 the power of TNT by the way, so it is powerful enough for EFPs)

[Ford Prefect]

Well, I didn't mean use actual C4, but an in universe equvalent (C4 has 1.37 the power of TNT by the way, so it is powerful enough for EFPs)

Even still, such a weapon would be looked upon as though it is the rather dimwitted cousin of the family. Proper shaped charges would be preferred, given they can produce streams of metal at velocities of roughly 14km/s, but even that's not really going to cut it as a weapon on the battlefield.