…to foil metal detactors? Ceramic rounds?
nope
Bullets are (rarely) made of plastic (nylon? teflon?) but the cases are metallic (brass, steel or aluminum).
Ceramic bullets would wear out the barrel unless they were saboted. I don’t think they’d grip the rifling properly either.
There are no production handguns (who knows what experimental stuff the govt. has developed) that will go through a metal detector. The frames of some pistols are made of some composite polymer (more like plastic than ceramic) materials, but the barrels, internal parts and slides are still be made of metal.
I have seen caseless cartridges which used a powder charge bonded to the bullet without a surrounding brass case. The “powder” (which may have never actually been a powder) looked like it was sintered like bakelite, but it may have used a polymer resin or somesuch.
Caveats:
- I haven’t bothered to look for a cite, so this is from vague memory.
- The purpose of these rounds was to increase the rate of fire (since there was no brass to eject), not slip through an x-ray. I think the bullet was conventional lead.
- Opal isn’t here and won’t know if we skip #3.
- I don’t think these were production rounds, and they certainly weren’t commercially available.
caseless bullets exist, they were devolped for the G-11 assault rifle made for the German military (and since discontinued due to cost)…the caseless aspect was ment to increase reliability by not having to have an ejection port open up after firing, allowing foriegn materials into the firing chamber…
Ceramic guns are a myth…If a ceramic exists that can withstand repeated ingition of chemical projectiles, thus replacing the barrel and firing chamber, it would be expensive, and probably still not as good as the metal equivalent…and it wouldn’t necessarily make the gun undetectable, since the gun would still require springs and such made of metal to fire…not even to mention the fact that it has been illegal to sell and manufacture undetectable guns in the US since the 1980’s…
Plastic bullets, btw, always have a metal (lead, steel or tungsten) core to give them weight…I know nothing of ceramic bullets, but I can think of a whole lot of reasons why such things wouldn’t work…
And the Glock still shows up on X-rays. Quite clearly, in fact.
At one point the CIA commisioned a gun which has become infamous as the “skyjacker special”, a four-barreled, smooth-bore, single-use, black-powder pistol. Black powder was chosen as the propellant because the lexan wouldn’t stand up to smokeless powders for even one shot. The bullets were also lexan, and had roughly the penetrating power of a .25acp, which is to say: Miserable. It was unusable after it was used once (four shots), and had to be thrown away. The only metalic portion of the gun was the mainspring and the percussion caps for ignighting the powder charges. Even still, it showed up on X-ray as a gun-like shadow. The weapon had four barrels in a effort to make up in multiple shots what it lacked in actual power, but it was still a miserable failure, and was dropped.
Thanks people, good to know.
To continue a slight hijack, for our gun-owning friends:
Most likely what you saw were Daisy .22 caliber VL caseless rounds. These were made for the Daisy rifle of the same designation, and was (to my recollection) the only commercially successful caseless cartridge system ever. The solid propellant on the back of the bullet was ignited by a jet of hot air from the gun’s air chamber. I own one of the rifles and 1000 rounds of the ammunition.
Daisy’s problem was timing - the gun was introduced in the late '60’s and in 1968 (after the assasinations), Daisy decided to get out of the non-airgun business altogether. Today, the guns and ammunition are somewhat of a collector’s item.
Yeah, but aren’t the VL rounds basically big hollow-skirted .22 cal airgun pellets with a bit of propellant stuffed in the hollow?
When he said the powder looked almost sintered, I assumed he was referring to either the aforementioned G-11 4.25mm telescoped caseless round, or the much newer Voere (if I spelled that right) caseless round that they and Anschutz are developing.
The primary benefit to the H&K G-11 round was, as mentioned, an increased cycle time since the extraction stage was eliminated. In 3-shot-burst, the rifle was reportedly camable of nealry 2,000 cycles per second, meaning those three shots got off all before the recoil had a chance to spoil the soldier’s aim.
In the Anschutz version, the primary benefit is electronic priming. Making the firing mechanism electronic nearly eliminates what’s known as “lock time”. The time between the pulling of the trigger and the actual firing of the cartridge.
Yes, a conventional trigger mechanism is fast, but on the order of tens of milliseconds. When one is talking of match-rifle accuracy, a group measuring under a quarter of an inch at a hundred yards, that fraction of a second delay can open up the group measurably. With an electronic system, the ‘lock time’ can be fractions of a microsecond.
In all three cases, getting back to the OP, the projectile itself is still lead, or copper-jacketed lead.
Unless the propellant was powerful enough to impart a tremendous amount of energy- and the mention of the blackpowder gun underscores that part- then a lightweight (IE, non-metallic) projectile wouldn’t retain enough inertia to do any real damage.
Everyone says that there are guns taht can evade X-Rays, but the rounds cannot. Well, did anyone ever see In The Line of Fire. The antagonist put his bullets, and spring mechanism thing, in a rabbits foot on his keychain. I think that the possibilty of security getting so tight that even these plastic and ceramic guns cannot ever be brought onto planes is a good thought.
Yeah, I mentioned that movie before…
One thing that must be mentioned, both of the guns mentioned here (one fictional, one all but) held 2-4 low powered rounds with no easy mechanism for reloading and they didn’t look like real guns…This would make it difficult for a skyjacker to control a group of passengers, especially ones who think they may be ran into a building…
I’d also be willing to bet that the lexan gun had remarkably poor performance past a foot or two, both in penetration and accuracy…this gun was likely meant as an assassin’s weapon, which would be used to fire its entire payload into a surprized target at point blank range…
Just so, and even then, a heavy coat was good protection. It looked like a four-shot pepper-box pistol, so it might have been intimidating, a little, If you’re easily scared by cap-guns. Not the sort of thing I’d bring up against a scared, pissed-off crowd…
OK, I can see the advantages of caseless ammunition. But what are the disadvantages, aside from cost? I assume there must be some significant technical problems or everyone would be using it. Is is similar to how the idea for repeating rifles was around for years before anyone could build a reliable model? Great in theory except no one can make it work?
Cost is the overriding factor in any consumable and caseless ammunition for the Voere (sp?) was quite high.
The other problem is making breech mechanisms that seal high pressure and temperature gasses. Centerfire rifles can have peak pressures of around 50,000psi. Very difficult to make a seal that is effective while not being finicky due to tight tolerances and requiring high camming forces to lock closed. Somewhat practical in bolt action sporter rifles but very difficult in an automatic. Brass cases seal the chamber quite effectively and cheaply and allow those of us that do such things to tailor charge and bullet for high precion.
Caseless ammo is nothing new. The 1863 Sharps was a breech loader that used a consumable paper cartridge. Special breech seals were required but it was never a high rate of fire weapon.
The problem with caseless rounds are (mostly) four-fold: Reliablity, stability (shelf-life), durability, and cost.
Reliability has been (mostly) resolved with electrical inginition systems and improved propellant formulations.
Stability or shelf-life is a serious issue with current technolgy. Caseless rounds don’t have a nice water-proof case preventing them from absorbing mositure, so humidity control in stoarage is critical. Too mauch water in the propellant, and it’ll lose dimensional stability (won’t fit in the chamber), strength (will break on chambering), or performance (burn too fast, too slow, or not at all). This has been partially solved.
Durability: Is it soldier proof? Can you boot a loaded magazine about the feild and then expect the rounds for function? This has also only partially been resolved.
Cost: This is a major draw-back, and hasn’t been addressed successfully yet. Once the first three have been answered, maybe mass-production will handle the “cost” issue.