The Future of Firearms, Howitzers, and Tank guns is the Combustion Light Gas Gun.
Instead of using a form of smokeless gun powder as propellant, the Combustion Light Gas Gun uses an Explosive Gas as propellant. An explosive gas propellant could potentially fling projectiles at higher speeds with greater kinetic energy and longer range than traditional powder propellant could. Currently the United States is testing the Combustion Light Gas gun with a 45mm and 155mm cannon(s). America might put a Combustion Light Gas Gun on the Zumwalt Class Destroyer.
Gunpowder works just fine at 1700 m/s, that's twice as fast as the average L39 howitzer
>the Ford model A works just fine at 45mph, that's twice as fast as the model T! Who would want to go faster anyway?
>misses the point
>YOU SEE lets make huge tanka with a huge hydrogen vessel because I wanna say "GUNDAM TECH LIGHTA GASSA GUNNAR!"
Listen moron, conventional guns are just fine, you'll get size limitation far faster than speed limitations. If you reduce the size of your projectile to cope against the kinetic energy required, then you would be just better using a shaped charge and its 10km/s penetrator.
Except that doesn't solve any of the problems a light has gun would, and the additional size is pretty minimal assuming you aren't storing your propellant as a gas
>light has gun would,
What problems?
Using inertia to get more range is the worst possible way in the atmosphere. That's why ICBMs are so popular.
Reach 3 km/s it's trivial with conventional guns, tweaking the combustion gases composition has been common since the BP era and that allows a conventional gun be efficient above 2km/s. If you need 2.5-3 km/s just add hydrides/hydrazine and do nothing else.
Above 1.5-2 km/s the main problem is the "barrel" (any metal-metal 'guide' with or without lube). You aren't fixing that with a LGG. And above that you end with quickly diminishing returns because:
1. recoil
2. propellant mass, even with LGG you need at least speed^2 amounts of propellant
3. barrel length to deal with chamber pressure and G forces in the shell
4. to deal with 1. 2. 3. the usual method is reducing projectile mass which makes it useless against most targets and the BC reduces its range to below 10 km even for long rods
5. for any projectile moving at +2-3 km/s the only property that matters is density because tensile strength, toughness are useless after hitting the target, they simply deforms and even melts on impact.
Given 4. and 5. the usual election are simply ignore the barrel, the LE propellant and use HE plus a shaped charge with a high density (actually multi lining) cone.
And in space you would simply use a Voitenko compressor instead a gun barrel
Why waste time with a huge gun if you could simply do a LOSAT and use normal trucks...
>That's why ICBMs are so popular.
They can leave the atmosphere when they're still 'slow'
>why waste time
Cost, naturally. I thought that was obvious. It's about doing it as cheaply as possible where these things are concerned, and that's what they're good at. They don't solve any problems that cant be solved din other ways, they just don't for next to nothing and have a higher potential than conventional gun powder
The theoretical niche for a LGG is already taken by something far more useful.
Missiles are cheaper and more useful a guided missile with a 1000km range than a gun with specialized ammo (see the LRLAP).
To be mobile the LGG severely limits the projectile weight due to recoil and muzzle energy, if you really want a 10kg projectile with 1000 km range then just adapt a sounding rocket with a guided shell as warhead.
(NASA was paying 100k for sounding rockets with a payload similar to that hypothetical LGG)
Unless you're talking about Gerald Bull's turboautismos that's a waste of time.
oh it's this ESL/LLM copypasta gibberish again
>Reach 3 km/s it's trivial with conventional guns
>9800 ft/s is totally trivial with conventional guns guys
M1 Abrams with apfsds aimed for speed at the max has muzzle velocity half that no it's not fricking trivial you noguns homosexual
>oh it's this ESL/LLM copypasta gibberish again
>process to post his gibberish
ok
>M1 Abrams with apfsds aimed for speed at the max has muzzle velocity half that no it's not fricking trivial you noguns homosexual
The JA-2 is a conventional double-base powder that's nearly 30% at 1600-1700 m/s. At high speed only the light gases of the mixture pushes the projectile. With hydrazine (ie bulk loaded liquid propellants) +2.2 km/s wasn't a problem with a conventional gun design and the main problem is barrel wear.
>not fricking trivial
It's fricking trivial and useless because going way faster is a moronic meme. Imbecile. You aren't forced to use gases if you need H2+H2O as working gas. Even normal rockets are light gases+solids and they use solid propellant. Chemistry 101 dumbass.
And if you're a moron that really wants a muzzle speed of 3km/s with JA-2 simply use a High-low system a la gyrojet but done right. kys
proceeds*
One of the biggest problems with these is consistency, which is abysmal in its current forms and makes them pretty impractical. I don't doubt this is what the lion's share of research is going into improving and I'm sure they'll figure it out eventually
It wont matter as much with guided projectiles. If you want to be able to take advantage of the increased range that the increased muzzle velocity offers you need guided projectiles anyway,
>tater gon outperforms modern powders
fat chance
https://ndiastorage.blob.core.usgovcloudapi.net/ndia/2010/armament/WednesdayLandmarkADavidKruczynski_StephenFloroff.pdf
I recommend suicide for every Language Model posters and I hope it hurts a lot.
Huh, I was just wondering if there's ever been any guns using compressed explosive gas instead of gunpowder yesterday.
I was wondering about the moronic idea of a regular size rifle cartridge with high pressure hydrogen though, not artillery.
Propane+recoil operated air piston would be nice for plinkering without buying ammo or reloading.
This is dumb, the tank with need a big as frick and heavy pressurized cylinder.
the zumwalt was cancelled
I might be moronic, but isn't a solid explosive always going to be more energy dense than a gas? Or is this about detonation speed?
My job is to operate light gas guns for research. (6km/s). Ask me anything.
Sounds unstable
guns will only have incremental improvements from here forwards just like knives, hammers, saws, etc