From my perspective we're basically at the end of handgun innovation and technology. What exactly can be done to keep progress going in this regard? Can anything be done? Or did John Browning basically create the perfect pistol?
What's in the future of Handguns?
There is a need for a pistol that can penetrate lvl IV armor from 50 yards away
lvl 4 plates are pretty small. Doctrine will just change to a preference for shooting at hips, lower spine or groin area.
Caseless ammunition with electric igniters, possibly 4.6mm
Some form of caseless ammunition maybe, but no on the electrical igniters.
At least on handguns, that's just asking for more unnecessary moving parts that can go wrong.
Heavy weapons ...maybe. But not on small arms.
There's nothing fundamentally wrong with primer-ignited ammo. They are reliable, cheap, do not require external power sources and you set them off with a simple mechanical jolt. Manufacturing such ammo is cheap and fast and works.
A semi-automatic pistol in it's modern form has indeed reached a plateau. Unless something gamechanging comes along, a mechanically functioning, chemical-propellant firearm is going to stay more or less in it's current form for any forseeable future. Sure, there will be minor attempt and fads to improve or reinvent that wheel, but I don't see anything majore changing.
The majority of situations where people might need a pistol will be against unarmored targets (self-defense/police action) and for that, the pistol does the job. Those who need anything more powerful (if the target is wearing greater protection than LVL 2) will be carrying long guns anyways.
It's just going to be restyled polymer tilting barrel actions in 9mm for the next 20 years. If and when the military adopts caseless ammo, you'll see innovation like
You could argue that there hasn't been any real innovation since John Browning but I think it's important to note he came about at the correct time where primed ammo had really just become the norm. I think you and other anons bring up a valid point about progress following advancements in ammo. I mean there's only so much you can do with 9x19. However, I don't see caseless ammo ever becoming a thing. It's too fragile and too prone to vulnerability from moisture. You'd have to have some serious advances in the chemistry to make it durable and stable enough. I think energy weapons are just as, if not more, likely.
>You could argue that there hasn't been any real innovation since John Browning
In broad strokes you have a point.
But there have been pistol & rifle advances that take advantage of advances in manufacturing:
- simpler designs (fewer parts) the Glock and its 33 parts is a perfect example of this
- casting - Ruger, for all the shit they make, casts a lot of their parts to damn near perfect tolerances, this makes stuff cheaper and easier to manufacture
- machining - imagine what John Browning could have done with CAD/CAM, now damn near anybody can tinker with a design
- materials - advances in polymer has resulted in lighter frames, advances in stainless alloys and aluminum alloys has given us lighter pistols, seems like everybody is fucking around with titanium when 15 years ago Ti was reserved for a select few
- red dots on pistols are only a year or two old in wide spread adoption, something will jump this field forward
Yeah, there's a lot of copy-cat, monkey see monkey do but there's some creativity out there too.
And an unlimited supply of hex cap screws for Kel-tec
Yeah, incremental improvement for sure, striker fired pistols, different material, better metallurgy and so on but I would assert that a Glock is still just a newer version of the Hi-power.
Oh, and I agree about the red dots, definitely the biggest advance in pistol technology in recent history, IMO.
cased telescoped might be a good middle ground. But it also would depend on military adoption. Private industry wouldn't take the risk
basically a sabot slug, seems legit to get +4000 fps
A high powered laser dazzler in addition to a weapon light may be useful.
A handgun you can fuck
That's any if you're brave enough
>implying you can't fuck picrel
>verification not required
Hybrid cases to squeeze intermediate rifle tier performance out of a handgun size package.
2011s on mars
If you look at a handgun in the simplest terms, it's a machine that harnesses energy to cast a projectile at a target. It's a very simple concept. Much like the internal combustion engine is a machine that harnesses energy to turn a shaft to do work. In both instances the devil is in the details.
For the gun, if you narrow the scope of the details down to "How do I harness more energy more efficiently to put more of it on target?" then it becomes a question of energy densities, overcoming friction, material strengths of your combustion chamber, pressure spikes, weight of your projectile, aerodynamics, etc etc.
If somebody could come up with a way of stabilizing the bullet without rifling/friction against the barrel; or by minimizing said friction; I think that would be a step up in performance. Of course then how do you keep a tight gas seal to harness the bang? Would it be possible to make some form of elastic, yet rigid barrel? Something just soft enough on the inside that it acts like a gas seal by moving around the bullet, but rigid enough on the outside to keep it in a straight line? Who the fuck knows. What I do know, is advances in hand guns at this point necessitate some serious innovations in materials science and chemistry. Maybe somebody will figure out how to grow bullets like crystals and swage them down to their caliber size. Maybe somebody will figure out a better primer/powder combo or ignition method that gives you a flatter pressure curve and better harnesses the input energy into output velocity. No matter what, somebody is going to have to think outside the box we're in now.
better alloys to withstand higher pressure loads
better alloys reducing material required for much slimmer guns
snubbies with 7 or 8 rounds in the cylinder
bringing back SOUL
CZ makes short slide 75's again
sig goes out of business
FDE is banned federally
vacuum fluorescent ammo count displays
red dot sights barely more bulky than iron sights
anon figures out how to 3d print thunderzaps
I get rosewood grips for my .38
telescoping ammo
polymer case ammo
caseless ammo
integral suppression, micro suppressors for CC, hearing safe handguns
>integral suppression, micro suppressors for CC, hearing safe handguns
I really don't understand why we can't put this technology on the end of a barrel. Even if it fails to direct blast away from the user you could still get kick ass fire vortexes.
>vacuum fluorescent ammo count displays
>FDE is banned federally
I like this idea but peanutbutterfags will find another disgusting color to take its place
Carry guns should be skin tone colored. Women’s underwear companies figured this out decades again. Anything concealed against your skin under a semi-opaque fabric will be more concealed it if matches the color of the skin it is pressed up against (obviously, as there’s less contrast). The micro 9s of the future will be offering in ginger pale, normal white person, Mexican swarth, light skinted, and Wesley Snipes shades. And they should offer OEM holsters and IWB belt systems (a la Phlster) in the same exact dyes/colors.
All joking aside, this is what gun companies should do.
Silly goose, you almost had me there
I am completely serious
>hiding something against my (white) skin
>I can only buy it in jet black or the brownish color of the Afghani mountains
Dumb. There should be nude/skin tone colored guns. Just like Band-Aids and women’s undergarments. I don’t want to have to worry about concealing AIWB with a 80% opaque white tee shirt. If the gun were my skintone instead of black it wouldn’t be visible.
>skin guns
Alright, tokwalker, I know that’s you.
This, feds hate it. 100% legal to carry too
Oopsie
Personally I think the future of handguns is wrap-around slides with a rigid mounting surface on top for optics, a la Desert Eagle and Lago Alien. It didn't matter for most of history because nobody used optics outside of competition, but now that red dots on handguns have become the tacit standard; there's no reason to have your sight reciprocating with the action other than lack of institutional inertia to do it differently. As a result of this, I think fixed barrels will make a comeback. Other than that, the future is just the usual boring shit that you'd expect. Shaving off an ounce here, fitting an extra round into an existing mag geometry there; not real innovation but just incremental improvement.
even a 90% slide with a fixed portion at the front for a sight would work too, right? is there any reason the RDS has to be at the back?
Holster usability
>is there any reason the RDS has to be at the back?
Imagine a pistol with a forward (of the chamber) mounted RDS above the barrel / slide and a light mounted below the frame.
Center fired 22lr
That's just .25 ACP. It simply has not had enough development done for it to benefit from the last 30-40 years of ammo evolution, and certainly not enough handguns out there for it.
22wmr loadings that take advantage of better metallurgy to make some sort of 22wmr +P+++ with comparable energy to .38spl. 8 shot snubnose revolvers, double stack subcompacts
Still waiting for manufacturers to stop making every pistol a tilting barrel blowback pos.
when people make them rotating barrel or gas operated or like deagle, it just doesn't sell.
Lighter stronger materials employed in both cartridge and firearm technology still limited by dimensional usability to the human form. More fps more energy better wound/kill capability. Targeting sighting integration more akin to HUD type via integration into inside/outside eye lense tech
3D printed metal alloy ammunition designed to fuck up people
they will keep redesigning polymer 9mms for 100 more years
That one Czech pistol with the flat top for red dots that doesn't move after firing
For one, can we finally have ammo that doesn't use lead in the primer and bullet yet are just as effective as traditional lead rounds? Would be good to be able to shoot freely without having to worry about dying from lead poisoning one day.
>What's in the future of Handguns?
Glocks.
A bleak future
>A bleak future
But a future that just werks.
>John Browning basically create the perfect pistol?
Yeah.