What do we do about e guns, e cannons, drones and other electronic based weapons in future wars? How will these machines respond to tech like EMPs and multilayered radars?
>>987Hey the first guns made weren’t great either
Just give the tech time to develop, I’m interested in this shit because when you can control the power of how fast and far a bullet can travel directly based off energy input this offers new opportunities for combat along with the lack of sound produced
>>989>gunpowder is superior in every wayno it has a limited rate of expansion, which limits the ejection velocity of a projectile.
To add more speed, it might be useful to add an "e-gun" stage after the expanding gases stage.
the e-gun stage could be powered by converting recoil energy into an electricity pulse.
>>997Gunpowder's rate of expansion is actually well above what most firearms get and there's certain ways to get them faster.
That's an interesting idea, but I am fairly certain that the recoil of most components will happen well after the bullet leaves the barrel.
>>1071Vietnamese farmers with aks have shot down actual fighter jets
Stfu burger army equipment is overpriced trash just like every other product that’s ever been made in this shithole of a country
>>1071>>1072The point is an air force faced with an army with MANPADs will just fly higher than MANPADs or AKs can shoot them down.
>Stfu burger army equipment is overpriced trash just like every other product that’s ever been made in this shithole of a countryBurgerstan isn't the only country to make MANPADs.
>>1072>Vietnamese farmers with aks have shot down actual fighter jetsBut not at the rate needed to make fighter jets obsolete, yeah SAMs work well, but thye aren't precise enough to just destroy air forces, especially if the air force has radar jammers, decoys, and anti-radiation missiles.
>>1073MANPAD units would idealy be in communication with SAM forces and interceptor aircraft to create an integrated air defense system, perhaps allowing a fighter jet to control the direction of manpad missiles to direct them to enemy aircraft. This idea would be ideal in high altitude environments such as mountains.
electrical engineer here. are you aware what pissant amounts of energy are stored in those caps compared to the powder load in even a 9mm cartridge?
the only "e guns" of any use are rail guns, and they're huge for a reason
>>988>you can control the powercongrats anon you've reinvented artillery
>the lack of sound producedair guns give you this too and are much simpler, cheaper and more powerful
>>1149I thought that at first, but here are some back of the envelope calculations.
Here is a comparison with a 9mm parabellum, Let's say you have a carbine with a 0.5m barrel, muzzle velocity 400m/s, energy700 J.
Average velocity in the barrel is 200m/s, so it takes 1/400 second from firing to exiting the barrel. It puts 700J into the bullet in that time. Energy / time = power, so 700J / (1/400)s = 280000W. So a carbine puts out 280kW when firing.
Wikipedia says supercapacitors have specific power of 10W/g, so they're not powerful enough. Electrolytic capacitors are up to 100W/g, which means you need 2.8kg of electrolytic capacitors for the e-carbine. That sounds reasonable. 2.8kg of electrolytic capacitors can give up to 3000J according to Wikipedia. So if your e-carbine is only 23% efficient, this is doable.
If you want a full auto e-SMG, the capacitors can be recharged from a battery. If it does 600 rounds per minute, then the battery needs to put out 3000 x 10 = 30kW. This is also doable with a backpack size battery.
>>1160pulse power applications typically use film caps, not electrolytics. but maybe this is just slow enough for electrolytics to work
>backpack size batterypractical! but actually you don't need that large a battery to store the required energy I think
I see Gun Jesus just released a video on just this topic. 3 kJ Gauss/coil rifle. unsurprisingly this thing is big. also
>muzzle velocity: 75 m/s>2 oz projectilemeaning 175 J muzzle energy or just under 6% efficiency
I think the guy is way too optimistic on the progress possible in power electronics. there are fundamental physical limits to this stuff. chemical energy is just superior in every way. fun toy though
the one use-case I can see is making clandestine guns without having to involve energetic chemistry in any way
>>1183I would point out that it's almost certainly possible to make an electrically fired gun that uses, ironically, gunpowder to provide the electrical power
>but why would you use gunpowder to power a motorbecause gunpowder has certain limitations to velocity that you can get. The bullet cannot move faster than the speed of sound of the expanding gas directly propelling it and will approach that limit asymptotically. a railgun or coilgun does not have this same limitation.
>>1188>cramming a ~1 MW generator into the size of a gun>still have the problem of acquiring and handling an explosiveanon I
>>1192>Why are they so inefficient compared to electric motors?good question. motors have had 200 years or so of development. we typically measure efficiency under constant load. most motors aren't very efficient under acceleration. easiest way to see why is to stall a motor. then it uses lots of electrical power but produces no mechanical power
I think the way to actually do an electrically powered gun is as an electrically powered air gun. have an air tank enough for a few shots and top it off with a small compressor. use a solenoid valve to fire. a bunch of motors or pneumatics to handle loading
quick calculation: 100 bar, 4.5 mm diameter 0.5 g air gun pellet, 1 meter barrel. pretend pressure is constant during firing
E = F*l = mv²
F = P*A = pi/4*d²
E = pi/4 P d² l = 160 J
v = sqrt(E/m) = 563 m/s
velocity is limited by speed of sound however, so a larger bullet is called for. let's take .50 BMG. GNU Octave:
P=100; d=12.7e-3; m=42e-3; l=1; E=P*100e3*pi/4*d^2*l, v=sqrt(E/m)
E = 1266.8
v = 173.67
to really get that .50 going you'd need a longer barrel or higher pressure. or increase d without increasing m
a sabot type system would maximize barrel diameter, possibly making it shorter. a 25 mm sabot holding a .50 could have a 25 cm barrel and still put out the same amount of muzzle energy
>>1206There's a (banned) lolbertarchist /pol/+etc. user who openly bragged and fedposted about using laser weapons.
You could probably do a ton of non-permanent or permanent damage with a laser gun.
>>1206great for taking someone's eyes out
at MW power levels they're also great for taking out missiles
maybe there's a way to make something inbetween?
>>1209Blinding laser grenade is way more dangerous than a laser gun in my opinion. Even modern aircraft still uses pilot visual. However it also violates dozens of war crimes.
>>1202That looks unwieldy as all hell. Probably even harder to maintain in the field compared to the labyrinthine contraption of the G11. However a coil flechette launcher… that’s another different thing entirely.
>>1211>Probably even harder to maintain in the field compared to the labyrinthine contraption of the G11doubtful, its pretty mechanically simple, theres almost no moving parts. its the high grade electrical/electronic components that would be impossible to fix yourself, but having a few spare might be enough. Depend on their reliability.
>That looks unwieldy as all hellI mean thats an explicit part of the conversation. Its still a prototype vastly inferior in capability to a gun. but first guns were inferior to crossbow/bows on many fronts.
What I see as valuable in the concept :
- low recoil
- no sound
- adjustable muzzle velocity
- easily use various ammo
- ton of space in the ammo to add whatever you fancy
- heavy projectile, good stopping power
- you can use the on board computer to help you aim
- you could conceivably have an auto aiming flechette round
honestly I think a railgun anti tank or anti air weapon would have been useful sooner because very high speed projectile have inherent useful applications that regular guns cant do, but its demands such power its prolly not technologically viable yet (not mentioning the whole wear of everything).
>>1214Not only impossible to fix, but I suspect that during its early days the gun will not work out the important kinks like being weather proof or protection against the natural ruggedness of a modern battlefield. Hell to this day keeping something like an electronic watch completely water proof is difficult enough for simple diving.
A handheld or man-portable rail/coil gun won’t be viable in a long time. Due to the simple fact that our method of storing energy in batteries are just lacking in energy density adequate for such a weapon. However if rigged up to something like a ship nuclear reactor designed for long range artillery bombardment then it’s another story entirely. Even then you have to contend with the problem of insufficient materials used in the rails and coils that can burn out the gun itself trying to reach velocities that makes electronic guns superior to modern chemical propelled guns. Adjusting the speed to normal guns for naval weapons will see it be just a howitzer but finicky.
>>1188>The bullet cannot move faster than the speed of sound of the expanding gas directly propelling it and will approach that limit asymptotically.You can go faster if you use hydrogen. These guns get 27500 fps
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-gas_gunWhat if the piston is pushed by a coilgun? That might make the coilgun more efficient because the piston doesn't have to move fast.
>>1216>Due to the simple fact that our method of storing energy in batteries are just lacking in energy density adequate for such a weapon.5.56mm NATO is about 1.8kJ/round. If an average soldier carries 180 rounds, that's 324kJ. That's the energy in a one pound battery. The problem is e-guns are inefficient and not powerful at the moment.
Explosives don't have that much energy, they just release it very fast. This is a comparison:
Nitroglycerin: 6.38 MJ/kg
TNT: 4.61 MJ/kg
Diesel: 43.1 MJ/kg
Best off the shelf lithium ion battery: 0.875 MJ/kg
>>1193I had a bit more of a think on this and it's probably best to just have it function like a regular air gun but be self-cocking. a spring driven piston held by a sear is much simpler, safer and cheaper than a reservoir + solenoid valve
batteries hold more energy than pneumatic tanks do, and with BBs it's possible to use a hopper and dump out hundreds of shots quickly. the efficiency of the cocking mechanism could easily be in the 90% region. not sure what the pneumatic efficiency is. some energy would be lost to heating, and also due to excessive air use
>>1250sure but they're not ~electrically powered~
unless you mean modding one so that it is. that would be interesting..
>>1254Heat dispersal might also become a problem. Traditional firearms get cooling from ejecting the spent brass case. These guns would need some kind of chamber cooling system to keep the temperatures manageable. There is no risk of ammo cookoff but the high temps might damage the structure of the gun.
As for molten metal, what about making the barrel and the ammo out of non-metal materials? Common graphite has a melting point comparable to tungsten and is super cheap. The ammo can be graphite or graphite sheathed lead (if pure graphite is not heavy enough).
>>1254oh yeah, electrothermal guns are pretty cool. I went and looked for the cheapest (J/$) capacitor with at least 450V and 10µF I could find, came up with this:
https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/epcos-tdk-electronics/B43707A5109M600/11611173 $126
>>1255water cooling maybe? why non-metal for the ammo?
I can see sputtering/fouling being a problem here
>>1254>>1257 (me)
it also strikes me that it might not be necessary to heat stuff to plasma temperatures. compare to a 9mm. 2400 bar in a small "chamber" (base of cartridge). getting that pressure in such a small volume just from heating would require 720,000 K. hence plasma. but we can also use a much larger chamber. how much is necessary to accelerate using constant pressure?
say we want 350 J, roughly what a 9mm puts out. let's use a larger chamber and longer barrel. I come up with 50 bar, 1.1 m barrel -> 357 J. but that's still 15,000 K necessary in that chamber. damn
it's really the barrel volume that makes these high temperatures necessary. there's not enough air molecules in there. maybe it's possible to use water instead? flash boil -> steam -> great volume expansion
>>1258What if we go back to something like
>>1220 or an airgun, but on the back side of the piston, we have the electrically generated steam driving the piston?
>>1278yes that could work. you'd have to heat water to boiling, quickly
we should need about 1 g of water. 4.184 J/K plus 2257 J to vaporize it. 2.6 kJ total. dump this into a load with lots of surface area for the water to boil off of. maybe use steel wool
>>1548There's a higher powered model out now, the GR-1 Anvil.
https://arcflashlabs.com/product/gr-1-anvil/ There's also this one from another manufacturer.
https://www.northshoresportsclub.com/coil-acceleratorAll of these coilguns are inefficient because they have large gaps between the coils and ferromagnetic projectiles. Induction coilguns are the future and I think the easiest induction coilgun to build is the lateral disc launcher on this page.
http://www.coilgun.eclipse.co.uk/coilgun_basics_3.html >>1558>There's a higher powered model out now, the GR-1 Anvilif you look further up the thread you will see I posted the videos ian has done on that
>>1222 >>1202>http://www.coilgun.eclipse.co.uk/coilgun_basics_3.htmlthe Thompson ring launcher looks like it would work best
one benefit of induction guns is that you don't have to shut off the coils
https://www.economist.com/europe/2023/11/23/russia-is-starting-to-make-its-superiority-in-electronic-warfare-count>Ukraine discovered in March that its Excalibur GPS-guided shells suddenly started going off-target, thanks to Russian jamming. Something similar started happening to the JDAM-ER guided bombs that America had supplied to the Ukrainian air force, while Ukraine’s HIMARS-launched GMLRS long-range rockets also started missing their targets. In some areas, a majority of GMLRS rounds now go astray.>Even more worrying has been the increasing ability of Russian EW to counter the multitudes of cheap unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that Ukraine has been using for everything from battlefield reconnaissance and communications to exploding on impact against targets such as tanks or command nodes.>Ukraine has trained an army of some 10,000 drone pilots who are now constantly engaged in a cat-and-mouse game with increasingly adept Russian EW operators. The favoured drones are cheap, costing not much more than $1,000 each, and Ukraine is building enormous quantities of them. But losses to Russian EW, which either scrambles their guidance systems or jams their radio-control links with their operators, have at times been running at over 2,000 a week. The smitten drones hover aimlessly until their batteries run out and they fall to the ground.>Neither hardening them against jamming nor investing them with artificial intelligence to fly without a live link to a human operator are feasible options yet, at least for mini-drones. Quantity still wins out over quality, but Russia may have an advantage there too. The skies over the battlefield are now thick with Russian drones. Around Bakhmut, Ukrainian soldiers estimate that Russia is deploying twice the number of assault drones they are able to. >>4053https://topwar.ru/231286-rabotu-rossijskih-sistem-rjeb-v-sevastopole-vidno-iz-kosmosa.html Apparently Russian Electronic Warfare and jamming is so strong that it's visible from satellites. It's part of the reason AWACs and Global Hawk drones are used by NATO to support Ukrainian operations for missile strikes in Russian territory.
The EW environment of the war means a lot of FPV drones on both sides use analog systems that are grainy as shit, since they're more resistant to jamming. Analog is also cheaper and it helps that drones are designed like a more advanced RC system that is resistant a lot because of the need to operate in areas like cities where Wi-Fi and other interference is everywhere. On top of that non-standard frequencies are used as back ups. Antennas, range extenders/repeaters and other relay systems are also used to actually make any sort of operations possible.
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