/k/ - Weapons

Right now the only remotely practical use is ship cannons but even that is pushing it. The problem isn't the electronics but the shitty energy density of current batteries.

I can't see this changing any time soon as batteries are chemical energy storage just like powder so I doubt they will offer any real advantage.

>>606517

It will probably be useful for larger guns like cannons or what the US is working on. The could be put on battleships or other platforms as they would have the battery power big enough to launch the projectile

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2QqOvFMG_A

>A railgun is completely useless, it is not cheap to have to carry around dozens of replacement barrels because each is only good for a few shots. Or to carry hundreds of tons of capacitors and reactors and thousands of tons of coolant just to use this inefficient system of launching a dumb rock at an enemy that can evade with a freaking solar sail. I don't know where you got a hardon for railguns but my suggestion is to do equations in your head.

>>606525

Who are you quoting?

>>606533

Himself in another thread

Browse /k/ more pooland

The best application that I can see for rail-guns and gauss accelerator tech is as an attachment to the end of a bolt action. You fire the gun, and as the bullet passes the electrical contact/sensor the mechanism engages and imparts magnetic energy upon the bullet. The simplest method I can see is to have a carbon fibre barrel with two counter-sunk spikes at a couple thousandths of an inch lower than the grooves of the rifing, with the voltage set to approximately half of the distance between spikes, which are also adjustable for tolerances. Perhaps the most gratifying thing about this is that excluding two wires leading to a power source, the entire unit can be surrounded by a shell and filled with electrolytic compound. In effect, for a weight and size cost similar to a suppressor on the end of your gun, you now have the ability to turn your .308 into a mach 8 monster, or a 22-250 into a mach 12 APC killer.

What exactly is the difference between a railgun and a coilgun/gauss-rifle?

>>606542

>roll

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/roll

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/role

>>606513

>Is there any desire for weapons like gauss (coil) guns or railguns. Weapons that use electromagnetism instead of gunpowder.

Sure. I'd like one that has the power of a conventional current day firearm without much of the drawback, and if or when the tech gets high enough anyone can automagically build one out of readily available components, who wouldn't.

>Electronic miniaturization is getting better.

Others already mentioned it, but having a man portable high enough energy storage appears to be the bigger hurdle.

>And you may not have to clean your weapons.

You always have to clean any weapon to some degree. Anything with moving parts the higher the probability you must clean the thing at some point.

> Just charge them and find ammo.

If there comes a time when all you need is somewhere to plug your glawkgauss 2000 to recharge the hyperduper battery, and have a bunch of size correct drill rod for the projectile, it would be real NATO. But it's probably not going to happen for a very long while sadly.

>Is there any desire for weapons like gauss (coil) guns or railguns.

Very little.

The biggest problem railguns are facing right now is that people are dropping R&D funding due to technical hurdles such as battery size, no proper mount for the gun, and the rails themselves fucking melt after a couple of shots. Tests are taking too long too, and that's just for the naval gun design. There's also the bureaucracy problem.

https://taskandpurpose.com/navy-electromagnetic-railgun-budget/

We're waiting to see how the Frenchies and Germans fare with their new Pegasus railgun.

Is there any kind of artillery application with magnetic weaponry? Is there any way it could be made with a higher ROF and more potent on a whole than conventional artillery?

>>608439

If what I've heard of HE-based propellants is true, then conventional artillery is far from reaching its true potential. If you wander a bit away from it, then you will find CLGG technology, which makes magnetic weapons look like a joke. Stray even further away, and you will find explosively formed penetrators and Voitenko compressors. Although at that point we are edging close to sci-fi territory, and so we can discuss plasma weapons.

>>608439

Railmemes have artillery possibilities, but in terms of range or energy there's nothing that they do that can't be done more efficiently with CLGG or conventional powder. You also can't use "smart" warheads with them as the magnets will fuck up any electronic components you may have. The reason the navy is considering the railguns at all isn't performance but safety: a few capacitors getting hit will produce much less of a bang than a whole powder magazine.

>>608468

Here is the great truth. Powder magazines were a fucking HUGE hazard on naval ships, they are more than glad to be rid of them if possible. Other than that, it seems to be more theoretical than anything else.

Gunpowder is stupid simple to make for industrialized nations, its a well understood process that hasn't even changed all that much for a long time. It can be stockpiled sometimes for decades depending on the conditions, although blackpowder is obsolete it actually can improve with age, batteries that are charged only lose energy over time and have to be constantly re-energized. Which leads to the biggest difference, battery technology honestly isn't there yet, too big, too bulky, too inefficient. Despite improvements, they are still far from ideal or even truly, honestly competitive with many forms of firearms, artillery.

I can load up a guy with a heavy load of 400 rounds of 7.62x51 and send him somewhere, have him march through tough terrain and into the middle of nowhere, he can fire 400 aimed rounds, each round of the same close potential, accurate enough to hit a man at 600 yards, and if he needs more a man could easily bring him more by hand in pouches or a backpack or anything, even his hands. To accomplish this, how the rail gun compete? What kind of battery power, what kind of accuracy, what kind of weight and bulk, what about his ability to be resupplied in the field? Does the man level rail gun even come close in ANY regard, or are we just takling about potentials in one strenght or another while ignoring the capabilities of the whole?

Brass and steel are cheap and easy to draw to form cases. Copper, lead, mild still are cheap and easy to make bullets from. The combat rifle is simple enough to manufacture, and in times of crisis even major first world nations have nigger rigged submachine guns out of almost nothing but pipes to supply their troops with a working weapon in the field. Can any of this be said of the railgun and its ammunition, components? Even expensive artillery and big guns are relatively cheap, even easy to manufacture in comparison.

What about specialized gun improvements in the last while? Can the rail gun out perform new ideas in the 6 inch naval gun with specialized ammunition that can extend its range? We've had fast firing 6 inch naval guns for an extremely long time, what's the reload and fire rate of modern rail guns? IN reality, not theory.

>>606584

Recoil only appears once the projectile leaves the barrel. This means that recoil is just as abrupt as with firearms.

>>608471

Completely false. Recoil emerges while the projectile is being accelerated, as per Newton's third law.

>>608471

>Recoil only appears when the projectile leaves the barrel

>What is blowback action

>What is Newton's third law

Get yourself a proper education Strelok. We need more people to actually understand the weapons we discuss

I suppose there's a place for a gauss gun mortar. This is mostly because current mortars waste a lot of cheese, so it's justifiable mass-wise to have a gauss capacitor + generator. But it would be even better to do something like the soviet centripetal mine thrower.

>>608471

First there's a minute negative recoil when a hammer moves to strike a primer.

Then the minute negative recoil from the primer exploding, which is immediately countered and cancelled out by the huge recoil from the deflagration in the casing forcing the bullet out.

Well, the cool thing about coil guns is this: They don't habe a fixed caliber. if you were to manufacture the projectile in the gun, by shaving it off a metal block, you can swap between 5.56 and 7.62 on a whim. the guidance is either magnetic or on cermaic rails, which can be spring loaded.