Probably before railguns are widely used by infantry you will have energy weapons such as plasma toroid for killing electric systems and grenade-bullets for filling defilade positions with fire in the infantry squad.

Also this would drive geneva convention people nuts but we could see 'blinders' - small lasers that take low charge mounted on side of infantry rifle that are sufficient only to burst retinas.

There is also possibility of laser-propelled bullets, hybrid system where bullet has solid propellent inside it, it's fired from the gun and bolt flicks over to a laser lens. The laser fires at high intensity for split second. Bullet actually acts as miniature rocket from propellent as it burns down laser trail. Benefit is muzzle velocity doesn't diminish and incredibly flat trajectory. It's like having a railgun without massive recoil problems.

Ok I made up the last two and used them in my novels. But I like the sound of it. Blinder is quite feasible nowadays.

I heard rumours that a Blinder type energy weapon was almost used around the time of the Black Hawk down incident as a less lethal option on crowds. But there was fear of Permanent blindness and it was not used.

Originally posted by ShadowXIX
I heard rumours that a Blinder type energy weapon was almost used around the time of the Black Hawk down incident as a less lethal option on crowds. But there was fear of Permanent blindness and it was not used.

Yes, it's truly a terrifying concept. I didn't hear anything about it being used in Somalia, I just heard my friend who drove Abrams tell me how dangerous the rangefinder is and put 2+2 together.

Originally posted by Kozzy


You don't need such a high caliber round at that speeds, just design a round that gets the maximum expansion at that speed, which isn't hard.

I think 5.56mm SLAP ammo gets 1km/s

I already said "the round should be effective also in silent mode". In order to be silent, such bullets need to be fired at subsonic speeds (because of mini sonic boom). I highly doubt that 5.56 fired at 350m/s has enough energy to expand and cause significant damage. Just think about the problems with short barreled 5.56 mm M-4 and they get more than 850m/s.

QUOTE :" what about navy ? "

sure you can make room on a ship for the deicated generator to run it , but at the end of the day the navy will ask hard questions about cost , rate of fire , range and just how much better it is than thier std gun mounts and if any answer displeases them they will reject the new gun

" space? "


yup , a conventional ammo weapon would be prohibitivly large / unweildly , pluss how do you reload the dammed thing

linked to a nuclear reactor power woulds not be a problem

as for budget , if it worked as advertised you could almost write your own check simply because no other system would work or be usefull

" would make cannons obsolete. "

see the arguments against naval guns , and the power supply is even more problomatic on a mobile land based field howitzer

" also they could use fusion if they get it working. "

first we have to get fusion , then make it light and robust enough for field
use


theres a long way to go there


YRS - APE

If cold fusion worked you would see a lot more things than personal railguns.

i always wondered , could u make a rail gun fire an exsplosive charge?

Originally posted by devilwasp
i always wondered , could u make a rail gun fire an exsplosive charge?

Why not? Though the benefit of a railgun is pure kinetic power.

no like how would you put the charge inside the slug?
make the slug around it? hmm must think about this ....****walks into think tank*****

Originally posted by devilwasp
no like how would you put the charge inside the slug?
make the slug around it? hmm must think about this ....****walks into think tank*****

Making explosive shells is well-documented. Think about why you would want a flat-trajectory explosive shell instead of kinetic penetrator. Shells are best used to put firepower into defilade. Explosive shells don't move as fast as projectiles used to penetrate.

I think its safe to say that snipers will have this weapon first.