Gyrojet - any way to improve it.

[Zixinus]

There are two niche applications that I imagine to be useful with gyrojets as they are:

- The first, and immediately obvious, is that of underwater work. The problem with bullets underwater is that water has more resistance to pass trough than air. The kinetic energy of the bullet is wasted just getting to the target. With a gyrojet, that problem is at least partially solved, as the mini-rocket constantly gives acceleration. Range is thus improved.

- Long-range sniping. Gyrojets have longer range and less drop due to it accelerating mid-way. The fact that it does not immediately reveal the shooter's position by flash (or by the sound of the projective exiting the barrel) is a bonus, especially considering that it does this without special modification.

That said, I'd like to see this thing being fired into ballistic gel, to see how a constantly-accelerating rocket will do inside the body.

About the price: there is no way to truly reduce that, at least not to the level of regular cartridges. This is due to the precision required to make the vents is more complicated to do than making regular cartridges. Not to mention how the rocket works, which I have no idea.

[Purple]

I don't really think the range thing holds water. Remember, those things keep steady through vents in the back of the projectile. So even a very slight misalignment of these could, over sniper ranges compound to something massive. You don't even need shoddy engineering like the original rounds. Even a very slight variance will add up. If anything, I would examine options to have the thing fin stabilized instead or fired from a rifled barrel with a primary charge bolter style.

[Beowulf]

You're better off removing flash and sound by using a suppressor. Fin stabilization won't be all that great on a gyrojet round either, since at low speeds, your aerodynamic stabilization provided by the fins is rather low, so it'll tend to wander for the first bit after leaving the barrel. Also, with fin stabilization, you've got the counter intuitive factor of wind causing the projectile to drift upwind. You're better off with the bolter idea.

[Dass.Kapital]

*Bows*

Just as a side note, but the Germans were big on rocket munitions during the war and I seem to remember that a lot of them were spin stabilized. Would such retro applications be of benefit/value?

Much cheers to you and yours.

[Beowulf]

German rocket munitions didn't have a high degree of accuracy required, since they were primarily bombardment devices.

[Marko Dash]

seems the best bet would be a small traditional powder charge for out of the barrel acceleration of a few hundred m/s. the price of the ammo might be considerably cheaper now than it was in the 60s and 70s due to the proliferation and advancement of small scale fabrication.


a bit off topic, but the mention of using gyrojet rounds underwater made me remember a thought i had, has anybody tried to use supercavitating or otherwise stabilized rounds as sort of an anti-torpedo CIWS?