Realistically will firearms ever be replaced in the future by new weapons created by technological advancement?
Is a laser really effective weapon if it requires batteries and can be made useless by emp?
Realistically will firearms ever be replaced in the future by new weapons created by technological advancement?
Is a laser really effective weapon if it requires batteries and can be made useless by emp?
>Is a laser really effective weapon if it requires batteries
Yes.
>can be made useless by emp?
You are stupid.
Yes but also no and possibly maybe perhaps yeah
Realistically, we can double the performance of all firearms today with no new technology by using actions and cartridges designed for double the pressures.
So while lasers will become increasingly popular as vehicle-mounted weapons I don't envision them replacing personal weapons before the 2100s.
What about weapons that propel metal slugs at tremendous speeds with magnets or some other means?
Gauss
The most mid sci-fi guns ever
ME guns are fricking ass, aesthetically speaking.
You know, a problem I have with Mass Effects gun lore, and it's not what you think.
The idea is you get a metal block and it shaves off a piece the size of a grain of sand, and uses an FTL engine in the gun to accelerate said piece to a fraction of the speed of light at your enemy to kill them.
Except wouldn't that be much easier to survive than a conventional bullet? You're much more likely to survive a 9mm bullet hitting you than an 18th century musketball. And that's because the musketball is both bigger, slower, and made of lead. A musketball the size of a golfball will blow off a limb, it being made of lead means it is soft and will easily deform when it hits your body and thus turn into shaprnel tearing apart your body, and it moving slowly means it has more time to twist and turn and deform as it works through your body.
The benefit of a 9mm is that you can pump a lot more bullets at the bad guy than you can musketballs. But wouldn't a bullet the size of a grain of sand going at a fraction of the speed of light be too small and go too fast to do any serious damage to you unless you pumped a ton of them into the bad guy?
At those speeds the grain bullet would basically just explode, I think.
>Except wouldn't that be much easier to survive than a conventional bullet?
I don't think that's the problem. You're overstating the effects of a musket ball--they were nowhere near the size of a golf ball, and while they certainly were lethal they did not "blow off limbs", though plenty of people lost a limb due to the poor medicine of the day. Before antibiotics amputation was about the only treatment they had for a serious wound to a limb. Anyway, when smokeless powder came on the scene bullets became deadlier. It's why every military switched, it's also why hunters stopped using colossal black powder guns in Africa and India. A .450 Nitro killed just as effectively as the old 8-bore. And as more and more modern rounds came on the scene they performed better still. For example, go read P.O. Ackley's books. His experience with small-caliber high-velocity were extremely effective for hunting and putting down injured animals. And so on.
But I do think that particular weapon has a serious problem: small projectiles have terrible ballistic coefficients because their surface area is high relative to their mass. Such a projectile would be extremely inefficient. It would lose velocity like mad, so while it might be powerful coming out the muzzle the chance that it still has any sort of meaningful power at distance is nigh impossible. You can try and drive it faster and faster, but that's a serious case of diminishing returns, you might double how much power you put in but you only get 5% more at some distance.
Wasn't their something about "sheathing the projectile in plasma" or something?
Yeah, that's the big scifi fantasy wildcard though. Plasma isn't necessarily some magical superweapon. I use a plasma cutter in my workshop to cut steel, it's not all that scary or impressive, it could certainly burn someone, but so can a good 'ol gas torch. In fact I can cut much thicker steel with a good 'ol fashioned torch than I can with a plasma cutter. I fear a .22LR much more than I fear the danger of an industrial plasma cutter. Now maybe in the lore there's some fictional hyper-energy containment bullshit that aerodynamically shields the projectile and then explodes in the target or some crap like that, but I'm not sure how that would work IRL.
There's plasma railguns where the armature is essentially an electric arc that's accelerated to extreme velocities.
Those exist and are used in experimental physics, but afaik they need to operate in a vacuum.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_railgun
>Except wouldn't that be much easier to survive than a conventional bullet?
if you can accelerate them fast enough even tiny glass beads would blow up people into chunks
The problem with any weapon that uses electrical power (lasers, railguns) is that you need both a lot of energy and the ability to discharge it extremely quickly, which is almost mutually exclusive with current tech. So unless we find a way to significantly increase energy density and discharge rates, that stuff will be vehicle mounted at best
Bullshit. Your average 9mm +P HP will make a much bigger hole where it matters. Round balls are actually pretty shit for terminal ballistics, and speed matters much more for energy than mass. That's why 7.62x51 will frick your shit up exponentially more than .45 ACP, despite having a significantly lower bullet weight. Because speed literally impacts energy exponentially
>Doubling combustion products doubles projectile performance
L
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Gauss
Coilguns suck. You’ll never get a serious acceleration in a reasonably small package. Railguns are really the only way to go.
Railguns are too likely to short in a wet and muddy environment. For a personal weapon, coilguns are better.
Furless apes using their banana peeling appendages to point bang tubes at each other is going to be replaced, but I'd say chemically propelled projectiles will be a good choice for small robots for a long time.
The most moronic take I've seen this week.
The most moronic take you've seen this week is someone saying we'll move past chemical propellants? When multiple countries have active railgun prototypes?
It was saying personal weapons will be obsolete eventually but chemical propellant will still be used for drones too small to carry power for energy weapons.
>Furless apes using their banana peeling appendages to point bang tubes at each other
Once personal force fields exist, people will go back to melee warfare.
Why not just use crossbows then?
The culture, moral sensibilities, and cautiousness of our ancestors are the only thing standing between the human race and full exploitation of nuclear power. Once some future civilization is reckless enough to go for it, nukes will be the weapons, power source, and spacecraft propulsion of their indefinite future - either to conquer the galaxy or annihilate themselves.
As the transition is possible and irreversible, it WILL happen eventually, provided humans are around long enough.
Beretta is working on the next generation of weapons.
I want one so bad bros...
>those screws
F3 guns look both hi tech and homemade at the same time.
I call that the Kel-Tec aesthetic
We probably aren't going to see widespread handheld lasers for a long time. Vehicle mounted though? Within a decade or two.
Already are in some ways, won't ever in others. In order for a weapon to be something different but useful for combat in particular, it will need to incorporate both the rifle and the spear - so your laser/MARAUDER/gauss needs to be integrated with not necessarily replace, the previous two. See bayonet's as spear upgrades and this makes sense.
Yes. Coil guns, Gauss guns, rail guns, etc. Higher velocity if they're efficient, no report (quiet, no smoke from artillery), way, way smaller/lighter ammo because no propellant. Think 150 round mags of 3mm as standard coming out at 8,000 fps.
No. Nothing will be cheaper than cartridges.
In the hypothetical where man portable laser weapons that have the lethality exist why would it requiring a battery make it less effective.
Is your rifle or handgun not effective because it requires bullets
Bullets have a longer shelf life than batteries.
Could you have a nice day by shooting a mirror with your laser gun
>Could you have a nice day by shooting a mirror with your laser gun
you can end up blinding people miles away, but mirror is not a perfect protection against even normal lasers, the dirt on surface of mirror and imperfections can still heat up quickly and cause cracking or shattering of the mirror
Depends on the wavelength and the mirror. Shoot an IR laser at a glass-coated mirror and you'll just melt the glass. Shoot a laser at polished silver and it's going to reflect 90%+ of the energy.
>Realistically will firearms ever be replaced in the future by new weapons created by technological advancement?
firearms probably have quite a bit lifetime left in them, I'd imagine biggest near-future changes being in types of ammunition
>Is a laser really effective weapon
yes and no, there are things its good for and things its not really good for, but there are also many types of lasers.. gamma and x-ray lasers pass through armor unhindered.
>if it requires batteries
anti matter fueled man portable terawatt laser
>Realistically will firearms ever be replaced in the future by new weapons created by technological advancement?
Do you see us use muskets in our armies? As long as the advancement is significant enough to warrant the change then yes
A musket is still a firearm and not a completely different technology like a laser gun would be. A laser gun would have as much in common with an AR-15 as it would with a spear.
I already own a laser pistol and a laser rifle. They aren't difficult to build.
martians OUT