What will future (hand-held) guns be like?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I was reading a sci-fi novel last night (a guilty pleasure…), where there was a throwaway mention of a ‘plasma cannon’, or some-such…

This got me to thinking…I don’t know much about this sort of thing, but is plasma the sort of thing that could conceivably ever be used as a projectile in a hand-held weapon? Perhaps not tomorrow or next week, but might that ever be a thing (like hundreds or thousands of years down the line?)

Also, I remember Cecil (I think) wrote a little while ago about lasers being used as potential weapons - I think the conclusion was that in theory it would be great, but in practice they use too much energy to be easily portable or in any way practical.

Anything else? Nuclear powered hand-weapons? Anti-matter rifles? Or will this stuff forever remain within the remit of science fiction?

When will technology go beyond bullets and cartridges?

2

Point of order: if you’re feeling guilty about reading Iain Banks, you’re doing it wrong.

3

I would look forward to there being multi-purpose weapons as solely energy projection weapons could be disabled by an energy dampening field (another sci fi creation) whereas firearms will work until they run out of ammunition. Also firearms “work” under variety of harsh conditions and their ammunition is relatively cheap.

I would expect a lot more exotic explosive projectiles, weapons which compensate for recoil and windage to make certain that their rounds nearly always hit their targets,lighter weight weapons made from alloys which are corrosion-resistant,plastic/composite weapons which can fire subsonic rounds and hollow point ammunition which creates even more traumatic wounds.

Firearms are extraordinarily flexible and exceptionally effective,meaning that there’s not much need in the relatively near future to transition to energy-based weapons.

4

Are you talking about military weapons or civilian ones? i think the two could diverge–with military weapons being very high tech and very expensive–and civilian ones not much different from those currently in use.

5

I don’t think lasers are all that great in comparison to kinetic rounds. You have to vaporize an inch or two of flesh and clothing just to get to something vital. Vaporizing stuff takes a ton of energy, a lot more than physically making a hole. So, not only do you need to equal the energy density of chemical propellant, you need to amp it up at least an order of magnitude just to have a viable weapon, and nobody will make the switch unless the new weapon is demonstrably better.

I’d bet on computer controlled firing and self correcting rounds before energy weapons.

6

In the future people won’t need hand-held guns. Everyone will have a personal drone that does the dirty work for you.

7

Not really a debate.

Off to IMHO with ye! Darken my steps no more!

8

Quite right, not really a debate…

In response to previous posts, I suppose I was really asking about the potential scientific application of shooting-stuff at short-range. That could apply to either military or civilian weapons. As I understand it, ‘kinetic’ energy is pretty much it at the moment - as in, if you want to damage something that is striking distance, you send solid matter at said object at a velocity sufficient enough to…well…damage it - usually, if not exclusively, with the aid of an explosive charge of some kind. (I’m a sociologist, BTW - I know next to nothing about this stuff, in case you hadn’t realised…)

But is that, and will that be, the only way? Are there, at least conceptually speaking, other possible ways that hand-guns can blow stuff up - if not now, then in the next (say…) 500 years? I mention plasma-cannons and lasers because that’s what sci-fi has already come up with, but might there be other potential stuff around the corner?

As an aside, though, how would “self-correcting rounds” work? Bullets are just small hunks of metal; so, for them to be able to adjust their own trajectory, wouldn’t they need their own little guidance systems (like fins, propellers, or something - along with circuitry to make it all work?). Wouldn’t that turn them into mini-missiles? Would that ever be practical? Or could they be ‘laser-guided’ in some sense?

Thanks in advance :slight_smile:

9

I think in the nearer term improved sound suppression and increasingly sophisticated targeting technology. The biggest drawback (IMHO) of current pistols and revolvers is the tremendous bang they make when fired. Current suppressors are heavily restricted (in the US ) and time consuming/expensive to get approved. They also add length and weight to a handgun. I’m not sure the laws of physics will ever allow smaller, lighter suppressors but that would certainly be a huge step forward if some new technology emerges. Also a more enlightened attitude towards allowing citizens to buy/use them without burdensome restrictions would be nice.

10

Maybe more things like the XM-25. A grenade launcher that can be set to explode its grenades on the far side of protective cover.

A few SF novels (Drake’s Redliners and Flint’s “Prince Roger” series) have railguns as the primary infantry weapons firing very small calibre ‘beads’, from memory a small size piece of metal coated in glass, at very high rates fire and accelerated to hypervelocities.

From Redliners:

11

Outside the US?

For police and civilians, trigger locks, so your kids can’t shoot each other, and if someone grabs your gun, they can’t shoot you.

Right now, trigger lock technology is largely unavailable in the world’s largest gun market, the United States, because it goes against the US gun culture ethos, as explained here:

So they will have to go into smaller markets first.

For the military? See earlier posts in the thread.

12

With large guns, there is a huge divergence - my neighborhood howitzer dealer is having hard times. In the civilian world, true an M-16/M-4 is basically an AR-15 with an automatic (or burst) sear (and also the latter can be made ugly by the owner). And you can buy automatic in some places, but it’s harder and will cost you $$$$$ instead of $$$. But they also have to be made before 1986 (=rarity, might as well add another $). So the technologies are not radically different vs. the military for small arms, but it’s not out of the pale that they go further.

I’m calling this dead for the foreseeable future. You don’t have to be political about it to see that these technologies are not popular because they are creating a solution to a problem that mostly doesn’t exist, and are unreliable mechanically or due to human factors. One consequence of technology is that things get more complex, which often adds another part to break.

You hear noises downstairs and wake up. With a regular gun you:

  1. Take it from nightstand etc.
  2. Make sure it is loaded, safety in preferred position, as applicable
  3. Assess the situation

With the Armatrix iP1

  1. Get gun
  2. Fumble in nightstand for the watch, because it’s small and you’re not sleeping with that thing on
    3optional) If you’re blind like me, scrape hand on top of dresser until glasses found. Try to be quiet. Curse because cat has knocked them on floor.
  3. Put on watch.
  4. Use glasses to see the watch screen and type in your code.
  5. Make sure it is loaded, safety in preferred position, as applicable
  6. Assess the situation
  7. Pose very little threat because you’re holding a fricking .22
  8. Oh, and did you check the watch’s batteries?

Biometric guns:
Are your hands sweaty? Gunfight in an olive oil factory? Did you lose a hand/finger? I hope they considered those questions (I’m not sure).

Or it’s compared to the iPhone fingerprint recognition, which by the way was cracked in 2 days. Part of Firefly is basically space cowboys, but the “people carrying bullet throwers not lasers” part is parsimonious, at least. Biggest claim against is that they wouldn’t work in space, or underwater.

13

First of all, the Culture books are about a post-scarcity society capable of doing just about anything we can conceive of. A plasma weapon to them could be the height of retro-chic, an affectation like Gibson’s Johnny Mnemonic hand-making a shotgun to go crude and surprise his enemies because he’s a “very technical boy”.

With realistic tech, I think we’re still going to stick with kinetic weapons for a long time. We might finally switch to caseless ammo sometime in the next 20 years. Lighter, but faster projectiles will probably also come into use around the same time. The advantages are similar to switching from 7.62 to 5.66 for most weapons; smaller, lighter ammo means more rounds for the same loadout weight.

Smart rounds are quite a ways away. I wouldn’t bet on having any self-guided bullets for at least 50 years, if ever.

Railguns are interesting in concept, but require a game-changing breakthrough in energy storage or generation, one which hasn’t happened yet, and may not happen in the foreseeable future. Emplacement weapons, probably. Handheld, not in our lifetimes.

Lasers, see above, plus add problems with wavelength and attenuation. Oh, and a hit anywhere on a human body with a laser capable of burning a hole in something with only a fraction of a second of contact will probably just blow out a big goddamn chunk as all the water in the tissues explodes into steam. You’d get either “does nothing because the armor protected me” or “my arm and half my torso just got blown the fuck off”, with pretty much no in-between.

Plasma, well, if you could do that, then you’ve probably got the fusion problem worked out, which means that lasers and railguns are old hat already. The only realistic power source I can think of for a plasma weapon is a nuclear or anti-matter reaction, and if you can miniaturize something like that enough to carry around, you are probably way beyond blowing holes in people with personal weapons.

Unless you’re trying to make a statement, or having “fun”. And so we come full-circle.

14

Think about it for a moment. What’s the biggest problem with guns?

Yes, “there’s too few of them.” Obviously. What else?

Guns are, for the most part, about protection, right? Protecting yourself, protecting your family, protecting your certified pre-owned Lexus from that dumb piece of shit in the Costco parking lot who almost dinged your fucking door, protecting your God-given Second Amendment rights— protecting the American way from all enemies, foreign and domestic, and particularly foreign.

But a gun can’t protect you if it’s not in your hand, can it? Yes, we are fortunate to live in a Renaissance of sorts, and we are making great strides toward closing the few firearms loopholes that continue to pockmark our homeland. But I don’t need to remind you who the President is, nor that we still labor under the uncertainty of a two-party political system. There remain a few unenlightened churches, synagogues, mosques, preschools and gun shows where anti-gun bigotry still thrives. One day we’ll look back on it with shame, and our young people will find it hard to believe there were actually places where native-born white US citizens were forced to move about in public spaces, sometimes for hours at a time, as nakedly unarmed as the day they were born.

But I digress. By the grace of God, the liberty protection industry is already hard at work developing firearms that are always at hand, always loaded and ready to fire, and which cannot be taken away even by the swarthiest crooks or the grabbiest, most freedom-hating liberals. We aren’t there yet, but the day is coming. And when it does, I look forward to seeing you all, my brothers and sisters, in Paradise.

Long live the New Flesh.

15

Similar dubious objections have been made about seat belts, air bags and electronic stability control for cars.

Did you read my New York Times link on how the gun lobby is stopping sale of guns with new safety features?

The difference between guns and cars is that no one boycotted auto dealers that first sold vehicles with safety features, and no one made death threats against the auto executives when they started offering those models.

As with seat belts, there are pluses and minuses, and you can’t get good statistics on how they will play out until they are freely sold. The most logical explanation for the fierce insistence that gun dealers not sell such weapons is fear that they will prove effective.

16

If someone figures out reasonably cheap nucleosynthesis that’s possible. Californium for example could be used to make a roughly bullet sized critical mass - except it would cost billions of dollars a bullet with our present technology.

17

The most logical reason gun dealers will not sell them is because they think, rightly, that few will be willing to buy them. If I need a gun right now to protect myself, it better go bang when I pull the trigger. Nobody has confidence that “smart” guns will do that, so nobody will buy them. Gun dealers would sell anything legal if they could make money doing it, just like any other business.

“Smart” guns will never sell in any great numbers unless they are mandated by the government. What already exists is good enough.

As for guns in the future, I can’t think of anything that will be an improvement over what we have now. The sci-fi gee-whiz stuff is interesting to think about, but none of them constitute an improvement in the real world.

18

These were all improving on a previous alternative called nothing. I’m guessing also that you’re referring to the tiny percentage of people who these might be a bad thing for?

Yes, people be crazy, but that doesn’t poison the well for separate arguments that want the same thing.

The main bonus of these weapons I think is handwaving for why you can’t take the bad guys’ uber-rifles at the beginning in Metal Gear Solid and other games.

A lot of scifi games, especially 90s to early 2000s, often have a railgun as the ultimate or penultimate gun. Technically, most of the “railguns” are coilguns. But they use a similar principle; bullet-like projectiles (no lasers), but with electromagnetism in place of gunpowder. As stated above, these may or may not be workable. Also, the inventor of the coilgun is on the Norwegian 200 kroner note. Awesome.

19

An anti-personnel laser would probably employ thermalization (e.g. boiling the volatile substances until they explosively vaporize) as the primary damage effect rather than complete vaporization of the target substance. Of course, this also renders it subject to some pretty easy countermeasures akin to reactive armor in tanks, and the threshold energy and intrinsic inefficiencies in high energy lasers make it a questionable anti-personnel weapon, so on the whole I’d agree that kinetic weapons are likely to remain the dominant class of man-portable weapons for the foreseeable future.

There has already been some work in 'self-correcting" projectiles, i.e. projectiles that are capable of measuring inertial displacements and making corrections via either divert and attitude control systems (DACS) or aerodynamic adjustment, for use in anti-missile and anti-vehicle applications. These are larger than bullets in pistols and rifles but not greatly so, and it is feasible that the same technology could eventually make its way into man-portable weapons. Laser or other external guidance wouldn’t even be necessary; the GPU in the projectile is given a ballistic trajectory and distance, and it measures inertial forces such as wind during flight to make adjustments to achieve the given target point.

The ‘gun lobby’ opposes such measures because, like the California micro-stamping law, they would be technically impossible to comply with. Consider this; no law enforcement agency in existence uses such features on duty weapons despite the ever-present concern of a gun being taken from a peace officer and used against him or her or other officers. Why? Because the “fail-safe” nature of such a feature may fail at a critical time which would endanger the officer more by not being able to fire in defense. Given the amount of money put into weapon retention systems and training you would expect agencies to adopt this technology wholesale, if it worked. It doesn’t, and there is no expectation that it will work in a manner suitable for effective defense use for reasons previously stated.

I don’t know how this notion got started or why it continues to make the rounds, but it just isn’t true. Yes, you could make a bullet-sized pellet of californium that would achieve criticality. This doesn’t mean you would get any significant yield out of it comparable to what you would get from a hollowpoint bullet packed with mercury fulminate.

Stranger

20

My guess is that with the continuing miniaturization of electronics, we’ll see some sort of advanced targeting systems for handguns that are far more effective than iron sights.

It’s a tall order to develop something more effective than a firearm that would be as portable, but I think targeting improvements are more likely in the short-medium term.

Wouldn’t the main danger from a critical mass of Californium the size of a bullet be prompt irradiation, assuming that it didn’t just poke a standard bullet hole in you and make you bleed out?