Alternative Ammunition!

Why has nobody came up with a weapon that fires something other than bullets?

A rifle that fires something such as a laser can not be that hard to develope, can it???

If i was head of the military in a large country such as th US, i would be putting alot of time and money into developing a rifle that never ran out of ammunition.

If you used lasers you would probably find yourself running out of batteries, which would defeat the object of creating a weapon that didn't run out of ammunition, unless you could harness power from another source like the sun.

EDIT: Grammar


[edit on 7/4/05 by Hyperen]

If you used lasers you would probably find yourself running out of batteries unless you could harness power from another source like the sun

But a battery may last hours and fire hundreds of rounds.

If the batteries were the same size as a magazine then u could have hours and hours of nonstop firepower instead of maybe 100 bullets!!!

Laser rifles do exist but their power is not enough to destroy the target (it's simply quite hard to build a portable laser of such power). Instead, these rifles are used to litrally blind the enemy (permanently, by burning the retina).

High Explosive Round is being actively developed and used, and is an example of such non-traditional munition.

There are some grisly examples of highly non-traditional projectiles in the Middle Ages, but I won't go into this. Let's just say these were not lasers.

Originally posted by MickeyDee

If the batteries were the same size as a magazine then u could have hours and hours of nonstop firepower instead of maybe 100 bullets!!!

Well I guess it would depend on how much energy it takes to power a laser potent enough to kill someone over a reasonable distance.

The Americans who are usually pretty good with their military technology seem to be sticking with conventional bullets and seem to want to make more use of automatic grenade launchers.

Although I did hear that they are developing a directed energy pain beam.

High Explosive Round is being actively developed and used, and is an example of such non-traditional munition.

I meant something that wont run out, like lasers or bolts of electricity or for vehicles electromagnetic pulses.

The electric one could be like a taser but alot more powerful and actually shoots the bolts out rather than them being attached to the actual weapon.

Converting the electric energy into a directed beam is quite difficult. So the tech is not there yet. Lasers have all sort of problems (I'm sure the efficiency is low, for one).

Also

Assuming 100% efficiency (which I don't expect), according to my back of the envelope calculation (literally), you should be able to fire 1000 lethal shots using one car battery. Now consider the weight of the car battery and ask yourself if you want to run in a battlefield lugging one. If you put in 5% efficency, you'll get 50 "rounds".

No Sir, I'll take my AK-47 any time.

Originally posted by MickeyDee
I meant something that wont run out, like lasers or bolts of electricity or for vehicles electromagnetic pulses.

The electric one could be like a taser but alot more powerful and actually shoots the bolts out rather than them being attached to the actual weapon.

Man portable EMP 'rifles' to take out vehicles or EMP weapons using vehicles as the 'delivery platform' like a machine gun stuck on the back of a Land Rover of something?

Bolts of electricity that shoot from a weapon and moves to the target through the air without being attached to the weapon like a bullet is?

Just seems like stuff from a silly film like Eraser (bullets at speed of light guns...:lol but that's just my opinion and not much technical knowledge speaking...

[edit on 7/4/05 by Hyperen]

That gun was a Railgun, fires near the speed of light.

Projectile weapons will be around for as long as it takes to make a portable powerplant that can keep a weapon powered, it will probably be plasma weapons VS infantry, but it's possible that we will stick with projectile weapons since there are so much problems with energy weapons.

The tech is simply not there yet, trying to make a laser gun that's a reasonable size and trying to figure out a way to power it will take some time to iron out. Plus I don't want a laser that will be affected by the rain or snow or dust, until these problems are solved and the price of mass producing these weapons is lowered, we will still be armed with projectile weapons.

Chinese have already done it... they developed a smaller version of the dazzler weapon found on Type-98 tanks and reduced it to a portable rifle-like device for incapacitating criminals

It's currently in use with special forces and SWAT teams

Uhh... Lucretus almost all western countries have some type of green lasers flashlights use by police or the military that can temporarily blind people. That is not what we are talking about. We are talking about, laser guns that can burn through people or things and that fire short laser beams, not systems that just spread the laser light so it temporarily blinds people.

you can't really shoot a bolt of electricity....electricity naturally takes the path of least resistance to ground which means it would probably end up electricuting the person trying to fire the weapon like a bolt of lightning.... military R&D think of all the things you are talking about and if they were currently plausable they would be put into development...but like some other people have replied it is extremly unlikely with current battery technology to generate enough power to create a laser beam strong enough to do any real damage....I have heard of alternative munitions such as rifles that you can pack snow into and compresses it into ice pelts to fire and also the same idea with melting sand into glass pelts for basically unlimited ammo in the desert or snow....but I don't know that either has gone into production. interesting stuff though =)

I imagine if they perfected solar panels and in then get the LHC to work, and then shrink it... we could be looking at solar powered particle blasters that work by gathering the particles around the air and accelerating them in mass.

a laser rifle that shoots a laser of sufficent strenght to kill a person would consume too much energy, the power supply would be far to large to be used as a personal weapon. remember the laser being devloped to be used to shoot down missiles? It was mounted in a 747! You can't fit a suffiently powerful laser in a small craft... At least not with the technology that we are publicly aware of.