The Caseless Ammo Weapons Issues and Solutions

[Starglider]

Making the heat sink a cylindrical case wrapped around the propellant seems like about the most efficient way possible to achieve this result

Phase change cooling is always going to be vastly superior, in both coolant mass requirements and heat transfer rate, to conductive / convective cooling. This is essentially why electronics with high heat dissipation uses phase change cooling, systems with moderate heat output use oil or water cooling, and only relatively low power systems get by with copper heat sinks + fans. Closed cycle systems are complex and expensive but open cycle systems don't have to be; computer overclocking records are set using a simple metal pot of boiling liquid nitrogen on the CPUs and GPUs.

[TeufelIV]

Not that much further up I decided the ammo based ejectable heat sink negates any real advantage of the weapon Ie how fast it cycles and removing extra mechanical bits. Such as a extractor and ejector mechanism from the bolt. The fouling is a non-issue because the info I had was wrong. The propellant burns surprisingly cleanly.

The big issue is keeping heat build up causing problems with the rest of the weapon. Graphene was offered as a solution as was a lightweight liquid cooling sleeve. Which for a weapon made with advanced materials shouldn't be too big a deal to make it light enough over all. I am leaning toward a water or other liquid substance in a sleeve around the barrel or a barrel set up for rifles and longer weapons like the Russian Pecheng machine gun uses. As Star Glider and others have pointed out it is very likely better to go with a liquid cooling set up.

The big advantage of a caseless weapon is the mechanical cycle of the weapon firing occurs faster. This because out of cycle of operation which is Cocking,Feeding, Chambering, Locking, Firing, Unlocking, Extracting, Ejecting. (Knew I was missing one) by taking the extracting , ejecting out of the cycle the weapon actually cycles faster. If you remove the need for a pin and hammer set up and have electronic ignition you can remove cocking as well. There is a manufacturer who makes/made a caseless ammo bolt action hunting rifle that uses electronic ignition.

[Simon_Jester]

How does reducing the mechanical cycle time help you if you're cutting back the rate of fire of the weapon?

[Swindle1984]

Not that much further up I decided the ammo based ejectable heat sink negates any real advantage of the weapon Ie how fast it cycles and removing extra mechanical bits. Such as a extractor and ejector mechanism from the bolt. The fouling is a non-issue because the info I had was wrong. The propellant burns surprisingly cleanly.

The big issue is keeping heat build up causing problems with the rest of the weapon. Graphene was offered as a solution as was a lightweight liquid cooling sleeve. Which for a weapon made with advanced materials shouldn't be too big a deal to make it light enough over all. I am leaning toward a water or other liquid substance in a sleeve around the barrel or a barrel set up for rifles and longer weapons like the Russian Pecheng machine gun uses. As Star Glider and others have pointed out it is very likely better to go with a liquid cooling set up.

The big advantage of a caseless weapon is the mechanical cycle of the weapon firing occurs faster. This because out of cycle of operation which is Cocking,Feeding, Chambering, Locking, Firing, Unlocking, Extracting, Ejecting. (Knew I was missing one) by taking the extracting , ejecting out of the cycle the weapon actually cycles faster. If you remove the need for a pin and hammer set up and have electronic ignition you can remove cocking as well. There is a manufacturer who makes/made a caseless ammo bolt action hunting rifle that uses electronic ignition.

The Remington ETRONIX used electronic ignition, but did not use caseless ammunition. The only difference is the primer. The guns were a marketing failure because of the added expense and requiring batteries in your rifle. The only advantage of the electronic ignition is that the rifle moved less when you pulled the trigger, resulting in increased accuracy and precision.

[Winston Blake]

ERRATA: my calc above for the heat absorption of perfluorohexane was off by 80J - it's actually more like 209J/mL. I failed to express the temperature change as a difference between B.P. and room temp. This strengthens the conclusion, but it's still annoying to have made an error.

So it seems to be greatly inferior at absorbing heat, and is 68% heavier than water.

That coolant is used for electronics because it's non-conductive and non-reactive. Water is a great coolant but I thought there might be corrosion problems blasting superheated steam down the barrel; you also have to allow for it condensing and pooling in the action. That said with futuristic materials technology a fully waterproof barrel lining is probably not a problem. Just make sure you use distilled water to avoid limescale buildup in your gun

I see. I expect it's also nice to keep electronics at 56ºC rather than 100ºC. Regarding corrosion, externally water-cooling Maxim guns and similar seem to have fared well in the past. Regarding pooling in the action, it's true that some mechanism is needed to prohibit coolant injection when the barrel temperature is too low - a perfluorohexane system will also need such a mechanism. A simple bimetallic strip acting on a valve may be adequate. Maxim guns didn't need such a mechanism because external cooling has no pooling problem. Regarding distilled water - sometimes in emergencies soldiers would use urine in water cooled MGs - and it did indeed corrode the internals, not to mention stinking horribly.

Yeah, what are the advantages of caseless, and what are they really worth? The main one I've heard of, and I could be wrong about this, is weight savings on a per-round basis.

The biggest causes of failures and jams in firearms today are the extraction and ejection stages. Eliminating those would greatly increase reliability, and also increase theoretical max RoF. As you mention, caseless ammo would also be significantly lighter, since the cases are fairly heavy (G11 ammo was half the weight of normal ammo).

Further, since caseless ammo has no strong metal rim to grab, it's typically proposed along with a push-through feed system for telescoped ammo. This further increases reliability and reduces complexity (theoretically - for some reason the G11 internals look like clockwork - good old Germany). Such a feed system also makes it easy to produce three-round bursts at >2000 rpm, allowing ordinary bullets to hit the same area on a piece of armour in rapid succession, greatly increasing body-armour penetration. At longer ranges, it still permits hitting a man-sized target multiple times with a single 'shot', and shot placement (hitting something important) is the main influence on lethality. The Abakan rifle, (although it can fundamentally only fire 2-round bursts at 1800rpm, and is a mechanical monstrosity), can put 2 rounds into a torso-sized target at 100m with one trigger pull. It's curiously analogous to how scifi weapons often have variable power settings - shots of double/triple 'power' consume the magazine twice or three times as fast.

HK G11 promo vid.

How does reducing the mechanical cycle time help you if you're cutting back the rate of fire of the weapon?

Burst rate and cyclic rate can both be increased, even if the sustained rate of fire is lower.

A question. Once you do all that you will end up with a weapon that is bulkier, heavier and more mechanically complex than a modern rifle by maybe as much as 2-3 times. So is the gain of using caseless ammo really worth the trade off?

I don't see why it's necessarily bulkier, heavier, or that much more complex than a modern rifle. Further, consider the complexity of modern rifles, with all their accessories, compared to the iron-sighted bolt actions of WWII. There was a time when the self-loading rifle, though feasible, was considered an overcomplicated and costly extravagance. Regarding trade-offs, it's true that the entire thing is one big collection of trade-offs, like any engineered product.

Have you considered integrating the heat sink into the clip itself. You can embed a solid state heat transfer backbone into the weapon that the clip connects into. Ideally artificial diamond but copper would do fine. The waste heat is then used to melt a solid embedded in the clip so you don't have to worry about pressure build up too much while gaining the benefit of using energy to change the substances state.

This seems like a good idea, although it's more difficult to heat up and cool down than a liquid. Overall the concept is very similar to changing barrels to manage heat, with the advantage of being less bulky. In a sense, non-phase-change solid heat sinks already exist - hot barrels.

The Remington ETRONIX used electronic ignition, but did not use caseless ammunition. The only difference is the primer. The guns were a marketing failure because of the added expense and requiring batteries in your rifle. The only advantage of the electronic ignition is that the rifle moved less when you pulled the trigger, resulting in increased accuracy and precision.

This doesn't mean electric priming is a bad idea. Most (all?) aircraft guns for many decades now have all used electric priming, presumably because it is more reliable and they already have onboard electrical systems anyway. Modern rifles need batteries to run holosights, night sights, thermal sights, laser sights, torches, etc. Not to mention all the supposedly-revolutionary Land Warrior stuff. Once you already have an electrical system on a rifleman, adding electric priming isn't problematic, as long as there's some kind of good reason for it. Caseless ammo is a good reason, since the high-ignition-temperature propellant is hard to ignite with ordinary primers.

[Simon_Jester]

A question. Once you do all that you will end up with a weapon that is bulkier, heavier and more mechanically complex than a modern rifle by maybe as much as 2-3 times. So is the gain of using caseless ammo really worth the trade off?

I don't see why it's necessarily bulkier, heavier, or that much more complex than a modern rifle. Further, consider the complexity of modern rifles, with all their accessories, compared to the iron-sighted bolt actions of WWII. There was a time when the self-loading rifle, though feasible, was considered an overcomplicated and costly extravagance. Regarding trade-offs, it's true that the entire thing is one big collection of trade-offs, like any engineered product.

What changed was mostly the cheap availability of fine tolerance machined parts. As the number of parts increases and the use of very fine tolerances and exotic materials goes up, you may hit diminishing returns depending on exactly what sort of military you plan to outfit with the weapon.

During WWII, self-loading rifles really were an extravagance, and only the US (with its undisturbed and unusually large industrial base) could afford to equip an entire conscript army with them. Automatic weapons were similar at the beginning of the war too, though there were enormous advances in the ability to mass-produce cheap submachine guns during the war, mostly driven by wartime necessity.

So the question is valid- what's the benefit? The advantages for auto over semi-auto are obvious- vastly improved ability of the infantry to deliver suppressing fire and fight effectively in close quarters. The advantages of semi-auto over bolt-action, likewise- the same ones, as far as I can tell.

Are the advantages of caseless over cased sufficient to justify vast increases in mechanical complexity and materials cost? What's the limiting factor?

[Winston Blake]

As the number of parts increases and the use of very fine tolerances and exotic materials goes up, you may hit diminishing returns depending on exactly what sort of military you plan to outfit with the weapon.

[...]

Are the advantages of caseless over cased sufficient to justify vast increases in mechanical complexity and materials cost? What's the limiting factor?

Are we still talking about a fictional setting, or are you asking me if I know of any real-life trade studies on the topic? I don't - all I can do is point to the G11 and the ongoing LSAT program. Again, I don't see any fundamental vast increase in complexity over conventional actions. The Abakan rifle I mentioned is a conventional cased ammo weapon - this is largely responsible for its great complexity. The G11 action was fundamentally much simpler than the Abakan.

LSAT caseless ammunition is caseless ammunition produced as part of the U.S. Army’s Lightweight Small Arms Technologies (LSAT) program.

Although less advanced in development than the other ammunition component of the program, the caseless round has already produced its own outstanding results. Having replicated Dynamit Nobel's ACR ammunition, the HITP (High Ignition Temperature Propellant, which is hexogen/octogen-based to decrease heat sensitivity) ammunition was modified to a 5.56 mm round. Tests proved the ammunition's usability, and development of the weapon was advanced using knowledge gained from the cased ammunition version. The Alliant Techsystems ammunition production team has reduced the production time and costs by reducing from fourteen to two the number of steps used to complete processing.[1] The second spiral of caseless ammunition was rolled out in 2008, with the necessary facilities to produce the ammunition in bulk completed.[2]

It has vastly reduced the weight and volume of standard ammunition (by 51% and 40%, respectively), and it has reached the verge of achieving Technology Readiness Level 5. The development of the third spiral was also initiated, with the goal of replacing the propellant binder with a binder more environmentally and cost friendly.[2] It also aims to reduce the heat ablation on the inside of the weapon by modifying the burn rate of the propellant, and by giving the round an exterior coating to absorb or prevent transferred heat.[2]

Benefits the system has gained from using the caseless ammunition go beyond the unparalleled weight and volume reduction to, for example, the lack of ejected shells (which both improves the weapon's protection from dirt and removes any need to "police" cases after firing).

[Batman]

Actually both autoloaders and automatic weapons were absolutely technologically and economically feasible as of WW1 leave alone WW2, the problem was the militaries of the time initially didn't want them for fear of their soldiers using up on-hand ammo too fast (just as a lot of militaries did when the repeating rifle originally emerged.) Nevermind the fact that autoloading pistols had been around (and in no small numbers) since before the turn of the century, and machine guns too, but even Germany which I think wasn't exactly on the winning side in this conflict managed to mass-produce a number of automatic rifles (the FG42 and, up to a point, Stgw 44 come to mind), as well as a goodly number of submachine guns, so it's not like semiautomatic weapons were something outside everybody else's grasp.

[Simon_Jester]

Actually both autoloaders and automatic weapons were absolutely technologically and economically feasible as of WW1 leave alone WW2, the problem was the militaries of the time initially didn't want them for fear of their soldiers using up on-hand ammo too fast (just as a lot of militaries did when the repeating rifle originally emerged.) Nevermind the fact that autoloading pistols had been around (and in no small numbers) since before the turn of the century, and machine guns too, but even Germany which I think wasn't exactly on the winning side in this conflict managed to mass-produce a number of automatic rifles (the FG42 and, up to a point, Stgw 44 come to mind), as well as a goodly number of submachine guns, so it's not like semiautomatic weapons were something outside everybody else's grasp.

In WWI, portable automatic weapons didn't show up until near the end of the war (the BAR, the MP18, and so on). They didn't make much of an impact.

In WWII, everyone but the US started with bolt-action rifles, and stuck to them, as the basic infantry arm. Personal automatic weapons became far more common during the war... as a result of innovations made during the war- the experience of how large units armed mainly with submachine guns affect combat, and very dedicated efforts to redesign submachine guns and automatic rifles to require fewer tool operations to make. Even there, the really 'practical' assault rifles were mostly produced in quantities too small to outfit entire armies- the Germans never made very many FG42, nor that many StG 44's.

[TeufelIV]

Actually portable automatic weapons predate world war I all together but they had a number of reliability issues. The Madsen Machine Gun a light machine gun design was used during the Russo Chinese war. It is very much like the bren gun in appearance. It uses a long recoil method of operating and only weighed in at 20 lbs roughly. The problem being it was mechanically complex and expensive to make. That and it was magazine fed weapon. It saw some limited use in WWI as it was made for various countries in varying calibers.

The French had the Hotchkiss M1909 a strip fed magazine weapon and the Chauchat. All these weapons were pre-world war I designs which saw limited use before and during the great war. However reliable light machine gun designs did not show up until after WWI.

Now that the thread has slowed down a bit I am going to pitch some ideas based off of items you folks have brought to the discussion.

Mechanically reducing the fire rate in full auto helps both heat control and reduces issues from recoil. Having fired actual machine guns in real life they have you fire 3-5 second bursts for those very reasons. Usually the only reason you go into cyclic rates of fire (holding down the trigger til the barrel glows) is when the enemy is massed and is swarming your position. Sustained fire like when you lay down a barrage of covering fire will be longer bursts or bursts strung more closely together.

From a practical standpoint controlling the full auto rate of fire is advantageous to more accurate/controllable automatic fire.

For cooling I was thinking of this. For Rifles of various types, light/medium/heavy machine guns, and other long barreled arms a barrel design very much like the Pecheng machine gun around the barrel sounds like a good way to keep heat under control. There could be various variants using cooling sleeves that around the barrel but pumping coolant through it like the WWI machine guns. For choice of coolant I think either perfluorohexane or the coolant oils someone mentioned earlier that for some reason I can not not find. I was thinking of lightweight cooling sleeves being common assault carbines and smgs.

For am fragility. Advances in binding agents that do not interfere with combustion process or I could even make them semi-caseless like the Benelli CB M2 which had a sabot cup that the bullet rested in that fell away after the round exited the barrel.

The AUPO bullet had an elongated, hollow base that acted as the case. The propellant filled the hollow space, and was sealed into the bullet with a fulminate plug

The caseless electronic ignition hunting rifle was the Voere VEC-91. A autocannon Rheinmetall RMK30 which is also caseless and also seems to utilize the recoiless rifle principle by pushing some of the gases to the rear of the weapon to counter the recoil of it being fired. It has a fire rate of 300 rounds a minute. The various pieces of tech exist now so It shouldn't be too hard to implement them into a story. Also someone pointed out the Russian underbarrel grenade launcher was caseless. That actually sounds like how like a mortar sort of works sans adding charges to the tail before firing.

[Swindle1984]

Actually both autoloaders and automatic weapons were absolutely technologically and economically feasible as of WW1 leave alone WW2, the problem was the militaries of the time initially didn't want them for fear of their soldiers using up on-hand ammo too fast (just as a lot of militaries did when the repeating rifle originally emerged.) Nevermind the fact that autoloading pistols had been around (and in no small numbers) since before the turn of the century, and machine guns too, but even Germany which I think wasn't exactly on the winning side in this conflict managed to mass-produce a number of automatic rifles (the FG42 and, up to a point, Stgw 44 come to mind), as well as a goodly number of submachine guns, so it's not like semiautomatic weapons were something outside everybody else's grasp.

The Soviets produced the SVT-40 semi-automatic rifle throughout the war. The SKS carbine was produced in time for the prototypes to undergo combat trials in 1945, though production didn't begin until after the war. The Soviets also mass-produced the shit out of PPSch-41 and PPS-43 submachine guns, more so than any other nation. They also had prototype rifles based on the SVT that were fully-automatic. The main reason they stuck with bolt-action rifles throughout the war was because they were cheaper and easier to produce; they then switched to submachine guns for entire regiments of soldiers because there's something special about a thousand guys running at the enemy screaming while laying down a hailstorm of bullets, and SMG's are cheaper, lighter, and more compact.

Mexico was the first country to adopt a semi-automatic rifle for its military; they didn't participate in WWII, but they did equip just about everyone with a semi-automatic rifle. They're still used for ceremonies.

The Germans produced the Gewehr 43 after capturing SVT-40's and deciding to improve them. The Stg.44 had been in development since 1943 and was the world's first true assault rifle, made to give German troops the rate of fire Soviet submachine gunners had with firepower more similar to a full-sized rifle. The FG-42 wasn't a very good light machine gun/automatic rifle compared to the Bren (itself a clone of a Czech design the Germans also used) or BAR. Germany's main problem with issuing semi-automatic rifles and assault rifles was their lack of resources and their factories constantly being bombed. When it became obvious they were losing the war, they started manufacturing modified copies of the Sten SMG because they were ridiculously cheap and easy to produce.

And of course, the US had the M1 Garand and Johnson Automatic Rifle, the latter of which rarely gets any press. The M1 Carbine was a cheap little weapon, light and handy, semi-auto, and a slight step up from an SMG in terms of caliber, but not by much (.30 Carbine is roughly equivelent to .357 Magnum.). The M2 Carbine was made in limited numbers, and was just an M1 with the ability to fire full-auto; it was produced before the Stg.44 and fits the requirements for an assault rifle (intermediate caliber, full-auto) but its role and the fact that it was a modification of another weapon make most people ignore it in favor of classifying the Stg.44 as the first true assault rifle.

The Japanese didn't have the resources or factory infrastructure to do more than manufacture bolt-action rifles, but they did attempt to make their own copy of the Garand starting in 1944; only a handful of prototypes were produced and they're among the rarest and most valuable collector's firearms from WWII.

[TeufelIV]

Thanks for the input folks. I have enough to go ahead with this weapon idea. I think have figured out how to get the graphene in place. The site has several useful resources and with those sources in mind I need to do some rewriting.

[ComradeClaus]

What kind of ammo feed are you considering? I would suggest a helix magazine like the Calico series as seen in Space Balls:

http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Calico_Series ... nd_Pistols

It works really well w/ a bullpup configuration, shortening & lightening the weapon, plus allows ambidexterity. It's also efficient w/ short, stubby rounds, which corresponds w/ telescoped ammunition.

Though I also advise replacing caseless ammo w/ a light case cartridge. Maybe a frangible case? Also, rather than gas piston, I feel Roller-delayued Blowback is more reliable. It was a cornerstone for H&K weapons for decades & could handle cartriges as hot as the 7.62 NATO.

Strngely, I've heard of no new designs featuring it, why has H&K dropped it after so long?

I do feel creeped out by the TDI Vector mechanism, the damnedest ugly weapon I've ever seen. I don't even know how the mag release works. (it's a gamebreaker in FPS games though) For electrical priming, you could add an emergency capacitor/ hand cranked dynamo for backup if you lose power from your main sources.

[Purple]

For electrical priming, you could add an emergency capacitor/ hand cranked dynamo for backup if you lose power from your main sources.

Or just issue each soldier with a box of AAA batteries. The power consumption from the ignition is not exactly going to be that huge.

[RecklessPrudence]

If power usage is so low, could you put a vibration-powered generator, like the one in my watch, in the gun? no need to worry about batteries or anything, the gun being carried would charge it. Although then you have to come up with a way of charging them when they're in storage...

[Winston Blake]

Strngely, I've heard of no new designs featuring it, why has H&K dropped it after so long?

They didn't though - they're still selling the old designs AFAIK. They just happen to be having more sales success with newer designs. Apparently the G36 was designed after the more traditional G41 was rejected by the German Army for being too expensive. So it may simply be that gas-operation is cheaper or has higher profit margins.

[Batman]

In the end, it's not about your product being better, it's about your product being good enough. I suppose the roller-locker system simply didn't provide enough of an advantage to keep it when simpler arrangements would do the job.

[Beowulf]

For electrical priming, you could add an emergency capacitor/ hand cranked dynamo for backup if you lose power from your main sources.

Or just issue each soldier with a box of AAA batteries. The power consumption from the ignition is not exactly going to be that huge.

Part of the problem is that they're already carrying a box of batteries for all the other equipment they use. Night vision goggles, red dot sights, flashlights, blue force trackers, etc. It's actually getting to be a serious problem. My idea would be to utilize some of the recoil force from the gun, as the action cycles, to run a miniature generator. You don't need to do anything to fire the gun except rack the charging handle. Which you need to do anyway.

[Darth Wong]

If power usage is so low, could you put a vibration-powered generator, like the one in my watch, in the gun? no need to worry about batteries or anything, the gun being carried would charge it. Although then you have to come up with a way of charging them when they're in storage...

A small slide handle would probably be a better idea. It would seem a bit ridiculous to be shaking your weapon like one of those self-recharging flashlights.

[Coalition]

If power usage is so low, could you put a vibration-powered generator, like the one in my watch, in the gun? no need to worry about batteries or anything, the gun being carried would charge it. Although then you have to come up with a way of charging them when they're in storage...

A small slide handle would probably be a better idea. It would seem a bit ridiculous to be shaking your weapon like one of those self-recharging flashlights.

Combine the two? The cocking handle is also the charger for the electronic ignition. Each time a round is fired, try to use that to charge the igniter for the next round (best is if it will provide two charges, in case one round is a dud). Still, even with a dud, you have to cock it to get the round out, causing it to charge for the next round.

Just as long as you don't do this for the laser rifles:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikkjuip4zxE

[Darth Wong]

Making the heat sink a cylindrical case wrapped around the propellant seems like about the most efficient way possible to achieve this result

Phase change cooling is always going to be vastly superior, in both coolant mass requirements and heat transfer rate, to conductive / convective cooling. This is essentially why electronics with high heat dissipation uses phase change cooling, systems with moderate heat output use oil or water cooling, and only relatively low power systems get by with copper heat sinks + fans. Closed cycle systems are complex and expensive but open cycle systems don't have to be; computer overclocking records are set using a simple metal pot of boiling liquid nitrogen on the CPUs and GPUs.

Phase change cooling also requires bulkier and more complex equipment, with more avenues of failure. Bulk and complexity are seriously detrimental characteristics for an infantry weapon which we expect men to use in the field. You suggest open-cycle systems to solve this problem, but that means the coolant is not recycled, so you need to provide a constant supply of it. If the coolant is bundled along with the ammo, this makes the ammo bulkier.

[Swindle1984]

Strngely, I've heard of no new designs featuring it, why has H&K dropped it after so long?

They didn't though - they're still selling the old designs AFAIK. They just happen to be having more sales success with newer designs. Apparently the G36 was designed after the more traditional G41 was rejected by the German Army for being too expensive. So it may simply be that gas-operation is cheaper or has higher profit margins.

The G-36 is based on the ArmaLite AR-18, whereas the G3 (and HK21, MP5, etc.) is based on the Cetme. Neither system is necessarily better than the other, but the AR-18 design is cheaper to produce.

Of course, regardless of what over-engineered product they sell, anything with H&K's logo on it costs three times as much as what the competitor is selling because it is fused with teutonic goodness. Also, you suck and they hate you (gun-culture in-joke. H&K and Colt are well known for being elitist pricks with over-priced products.).

My CZ-52 pistol has a roller-delayed system based on the MG-42 machine gun, which also inspired the Cetme and H&K's designs. It's a very reliable, very well-made pistol. It's also more complicated internally than a lot of other pistols from the same era, which necessarily means it's more complicated to produce. The TT-33 that every other Warsaw Pact nation adopted was, in comparison, much simpler and produced in greater numbers. Of course, the CZ-52 also had complicated features such as a safety that double as a decocker (while the switch is in the safe position, press up; it will safely lower the hammer and return to the safe position.), whereas the TT-33 often lacked a safety of any kind.



But basically, the bottom line is this: it's not about which gun is better, it's about which gun is good enough while being simple to manufacture and cheap enough to crank out shitloads of them when a war breaks out. In fact, that was the AR-18's whole schtick when it was produced: not only was its piston design more reliable than the AR-15/M-16's direct gas impingement, it was made from stamped sheet metal instead of forged aluminum and could thus be manufactured in countries with less sophisticated industry. Two things killed it: The US wasn't interested because it used different magazines than the M-16 they were already heavily invested in, and other countries weren't interested because the US was practically giving M-16's away for free; all you had to do to get a crate full of the things was say you opposed communism.

[Swindle1984]

Guys? If you're going with electrical-ignition, instead of some weird wind-up charger or battery-operated thing, why not just go with piezo-electric ignition? We already use that shit in butane lighters and RPG warheads.

[ComradeClaus]

Part of the problem is that they're already carrying a box of batteries for all the other equipment they use. Night vision goggles, red dot sights, flashlights, blue force trackers, etc. It's actually getting to be a serious problem. My idea would be to utilize some of the recoil force from the gun, as the action cycles, to run a miniature generator. You don't need to do anything to fire the gun except rack the charging handle. Which you need to do anyway.

Right, I was picturing a rack/pinion gear assembly. basically, the bolt has a straight toothed rack, which engages a gears the bolt recoils, thus spinning the gear, which is attatched to a generator.

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Where my Avatar, bros?

[VarrusTheEthical]

In terms of providing electrical power to your gun. Have you considered a beta volltaic? They are designed to use beta rays emitted by the decay of tritium to generate electricity. Depending on how advanced you want to hand wave your tech, you could have your rifles use integrated beta-cells to feed the gun's electrical systems, including igniters, projection sights, and laser pointers. Since Tritum has a half life of roughly 12 years, you don't have to worry about it running out of juice during combat.