Will we ever see caseless ammo developed?

en.wikipedia.org...

Personally, Id like to see ammo that if it hits a solid inanimate object it would turn into dust or if it hit flesh it would basically tear a person to shreds. But given our PC culture that would not be socially acceptable.

Interesting question. Ever hear of black powder?

What? you are makeing no sence.....

reply to post by 22-250

Are you addressing the OP or me?

My answer makes perfect sense. No case. You dump everything into the barrel in the right order, tamp it, and do your thang.

reply to post by Atomic_Feline

It has been around a long time........We tested a machine gun that fired 6000 rds a minute. The amo was triangular and disentegrating no case. There is a .22 that fires at 6000 rds min it is old to.

Have photo of that. I worked with rocket ammo to the mg version fired at 7000 rds min. It is Gyro jet. Barrel was square and whole round goes out it was .50 the roket spin gave it ballistics that whole project went black to military now.

Jim

reply to post by Atomic_Feline


There is ammo that does just what you asked except to the extreme of tearing flesh to shreds. The federal air marshals use it. The round will disintegrate if it hits a solid object so that it will not penetrate the hull of a plane.

My cousin's ex-girlfriend is from Germany and her father is a rep of some sort at Heckler and Koch. According to him, Heckler and Koch has been developing caseless ammunition for some time. I'm not sure what it looks like, only that it is a bullet with a hard packed powder around it. I'm not sure where the ignition comes from because I don't believe it uses a regular primer. There may be some sort of electronic ignition on those arms that fire those rounds.

The OICW Landwarrior uses a caseless ammunition. I believe the weapon is seeing active duty as well... not sure. At any rate it is a sweet looking weapon...

H & K G11

Caseless ammunition is still relatively new, although the concept has been around for a very long time.

H & K developed a 'concept' weapon, the G11, which it was hoped, would eventually replace the G3.

It was square in construction with the 'magazine' running along the top of the handguard, forward of the optical sight. Mag capacity was 50 rounds of 4.7 or 5.7 mm (?) caseless ammunition.

The innovation here is that the propellant was moulded around the bullet or projectile which in turn, was fired electrically (?).

As there were no cartridge cases to eject, there was obviously no need for expensive working parts [no bolt, no extractor/stay] and no ejection port.

That's as much as I can remember. I suggest posters look at the H & K main European site for further info.

Many years ago, like 20 I subscribed to a couple of mags, "International Combat Arms", and "Arms and Armorment International", they both ran articles about how a contract had been awarded to a company to supply caseless rifles to the marine corp. They were supposed to be deployed by the mid Ninties but it never happend.
It was a devastating round, a hardend stainless steel "industrial nail" molded into the propellant. The rounds were contained in sealed magazines. This feature , I believe, was the result of its downfall, magazines could not be reloaded in the field. They were 1/2 the weight of the same number of 5.56mm nato rounds. And had a wound channel similar to what is found with a standard 5.56mm round.
I think there were other issues with round integrity in a harsh enviroment.

But the point is moot with the continued development of Metal Storm, in all its infinite possibilities. Hand guns to 40mm granades to 120mm cannon rounds. Fire rates of a million rounds a minute, and no moving parts.
The hand gun hits the market next year.

What gets me is why we don’t have plasma rifles yet!

We can artificially create ball lighting in a laboratory. Heck, anyone who wants to blow up a microwave can create ball lighting in their own home or backyard. As you know, ball lightning is just a ball of plasma using a small core of carbon as its fuel source.

If we can make balls of plasma, then why can’t we make a gun that fires them?

Originally posted by Hot_Wings What gets me is why we don’t have plasma rifles yet! If we can make balls of plasma, then why can’t we make a gun that fires them?

Hardly caseless ammunition though!

punkinworks, the reason why the H & K G11 did not enter service was, in my opinion, the reunification of Germany. It was politically unacceptable for Germany to finance the G11, when what was Eastern Germany was in such a state financially.

You must also remember that NATO had only just reached an agreement on commonality of the 5.56 mm rifle round and these weapons were in the early stages of issue to troops, especially to those in Viet Nam.

Yet again, politics over the needs of the warriors! So typical.

Originally posted by punkinworks
But the point is moot with the continued development of Metal Storm, in all its infinite possibilities. Hand guns to 40mm granades to 120mm cannon rounds. Fire rates of a million rounds a minute, and no moving parts.
The hand gun hits the market next year.

The Metal Storm is, imho, one of the most gimmicky weapons systems that ever existed. It works in area saturation scenarios (and even then, arguably, disposable plastic-tube launchers would do the same job). The million rounds a minute capacity is obviously not achievable or desirable in other applications because guess what, you'll have to reload. And even then, you get a shotgun type of a weapon (if you count the number of pellets and at which rate they leave the barrel, you'll probably find that it's a BILLION rounds per minute equvalent rate of fire).

Are you talking about something like this...
www.technovelgy.com...

I dont believe caseless ammunition is a new concept. I am sure that in the versions desired by the military it has not caught on for various reasons. Probably reliability being chief among reasons.

The advantages are plain..obvious. The question in my mind are the disadvantages.

My question in the day of more and more microwave radio traffic on the battlefield and even in the citys. Can this ammunition be set off by microwave transmissions...accicently or deliberately?? Definitely something to think about in caseless ammunition.

Anyone up to speed on microwave theory and propellants?? Isnt that one reason they dont like radios and such used around ammunition/missle bunkers etc??

Thanks,
Orangetom

Originally posted by ebe51 Are you talking about something like this... www.technovelgy.com...

WOW! A handgun that suddenly announces that the safety is on - just when you've snuck up behind the Tango and are about to slot him with a FRIGGIN BEAN BAG?!

Jeses, whatever next? Who the hell thinks these things up?

HK worked with this since the 1970s. The idea is Ok at best. Brass is still the best we have right now. I think the HK model was the G11 but my mind fights going back that far for weird info. CDNN was selling some kind of hunting rifle that used the caseless ammo as well. Dont have a clue who made it, they had to almost give the guns and ammo away in the end.

Originally posted by fritz
...punkinworks, the reason why the H & K G11 did not enter service was, in my opinion, the reunification of Germany. It was politically unacceptable for Germany to finance the G11, when what was Eastern Germany was in such a state financially.

[...]

Yet again, politics over the needs of the warriors! So typical.

Well in this case it WAS according to the "needs" of the warriors to scrap less pressing programs. The reunification also meant that 220.000 ex-NVA soldiers had to either be integrated or re-"civilized", massive arms caches and bases had to be catalogued and examined (2000 Bundeswehrmen alone were needed for that!), a completely new defense structure for 1/3 of the new Germany had to be built up. And all that while the necessity for armed forces was strongly reduced due to the fall of the Soviet empire.

West Germany literally had to uphold the integrity of a separate 17-million country from one day to the next. Even the then-Chancellor Helmut Kohl said that everything went just a little too fast for his liking. But without drastic cuts in less important fields there would have been a massive east-west rush of people, leaving only deserted lands.

Originally posted by orangetom1999
...
My question in the day of more and more microwave radio traffic on the battlefield and even in the citys. Can this ammunition be set off by microwave transmissions...accicently or deliberately?? Definitely something to think about in caseless ammunition.

Anyone up to speed on microwave theory and propellants?? Isnt that one reason they dont like radios and such used around ammunition/missle bunkers etc?? ...

Caseless ammunition and electrical priming are separate technologies, if that is your gripe. The G11 ammunition (by the way developed by Dynamit Nobel, not HK) for example had an usual chemical primer. I cannot say what risks electromagnetic energy poses to an electrical primer, but I´d say the main reason against electromagnetic devices near advanced munitions is that they possibly ould interfere with the electronic control systems.

Caseless technology has been worked on for cannons (20-30mm) since Vietnam. When the F-16 prototype was in testing they wanted to use caseless ammo for the 20mm cannon, but they could not perfect it.

They tried agian in the late 80's and perfected the 25mm cannon using caseless technology. They originally planned to use it with the F-22, but the tried and true Vulcan 20mm used on the F-14 thru F-18 won out.

The Vulcan on the F-22 has been enhanced to fix some of the shortcomings, but it is not caseless. I think it was a size, weight and cost consideration to use the 20mm and the thinking that the 20mm will be rarely used, but at least it has one. Remember the F-4?

Originally posted by fritz

Originally posted by ebe51 Are you talking about something like this... www.technovelgy.com...

WOW!

A handgun that suddenly announces that the safety is on - just when you've snuck up behind the Tango and are about to slot him with a FRIGGIN BEAN BAG?!

Jeses, whatever next? Who the hell thinks these things up?

Forget the BEAN BAG... check out this video...







[edit on 28-11-2007 by ebe51]