Caseless ammo viable?

Why should it?

>>32782098
Not until they fully or at least mostly solve the two biggest drawbacks to it, fragile ammo and overheating weapons.

>>32782098
A caseless thread a day keeps the CTAs away.

>>32782098
Of course it will. It's the logical next step in firearm evolution, and people have been able to see that for decades now. The science just isn't there to back it up yet.

>fragile propellant blocks that have a tendency to shatter over time, be it through ordinary use or via simple storage and transportation
>lack of brass to act as a heat sink which means higher temps significantly faster, which would be an issue in an ordinary firearm, let alone one with heat sensitive ammunition
>production and supply chains are non-existent and would require tremendous overhauls to accommodate such a radically different kind of ammunition
>no brass case to expand and obturate to function as a gas seal, current firearm platforms can't be readily converted to caseless ammo
>no brass to function as an insulator and protect the propellant from heat inside the chamber
>no brass means no metallic rim for an extractor to hook on to, which means a radically new system must be developed to clear jams and misfires

There are a lot of roadblocks, but we're getting closer to the dream year by year.

>>32782132
I would argue that relative low power, unreliability, and malfunction clearing issues are much bigger issues than fragility and overheating.

>>32782263
We will have viable railguns before caseless becomes a thing.

>>32782413
On ships, maybe. Miniaturizing something like that whilst also developing a portable power source is several orders of magnitude more complicated than just developing a more heat resistant and more durable propellant.

>>32782263
>Of course it will. It's the logical next step in firearm evolution
Is it though? Seems to me that telescoping polymer cased ammo (like the LSAT is experimenting with) have all the pros of caseless with none of the cons, aside from not having the extremely high potential RoF of caseless weapons, which is IMO an irrelevance in infantry weapons anyway.

>>32782533
More rounds fired means more hits. There's a reason we've been experimenting with flechettes and duplex rounds and super high ROF caseless burst firing rifles for a while now.

>>32782328
The relative low power is by design, the euros have been jerking themselves over .17cal and .20cal rifles for decades.

Unreliability is directly tied to the fragile propellant blocks.

>>32782533
Telescoping rounds also mean that you can design a gun around a specific sized round then make the upgrade to true caseless once the propellant tech gets there.

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>>32782098
>Will caseless ammo ever take off again?

No, because telescoping ammo is here.

>>32782132
>>32782263
Those were all solved well over 20 years ago.

>>32782603
>There's a reason we've been experimenting with flechettes and duplex rounds and super high ROF caseless burst firing rifles for a while now.
You're referring to project SALVO and ACR? They were abandoned nearly 30 years ago due to being flawed concepts (IE: why piss away half a mag fired at the exact same spot in order to penetrate armor, when you can just use a single appropriately sized round in its place). Its largely the same reason the microgun never took off, its a profligate use of resources when the vast majority of your shots fired aren't going to hit anything, unless you're breaching or something similarly intimate.

>>32782098
Not in a military application, cased ammo is just better.

We might however see it become a thing for sporting arms again, because you can get some pretty supreme accuracy out of the things.
I wouldn't be too surprised if some day, Olympic Pistol Shooting will be carried out with .22 caliber caseless pistols, you could get some fucking quantum MOA with that shit.

Just picture a small cylindrical block of propellant compound, embedded in it is a lead or steel bullet in .22 caliber, with a thick copper or nylon jacket, in the rear of the block is a disintegrating priming load, the pistol itself feeds these caseless cartridges through a pretty typical magazine, and the pistol sets the cartridge off with a heat or electrical pulse powered by a battery in the grip.

Since an Olympic pistol pretty much just has to be accurate, it doesn't matter if the ammo is fragile or sensitive, the action that runs this won't be very violent, it doesn't matter if the pistol heats up faster because it's generally not gonna do a shitload of rapid fire in one go, it doesn't matter if it has to rely on a battery because it's not a weapon you'd ever fight with (and presumably you could plug it into a station when waiting your turn at the Olympics)

>>32783759
Uh, no they weren't, Dynamit Nobel managed to solve the problem of heat buildup causing cook-offs with the G11 but the gun would still get warm pretty fast, and there's still all the other flaws, such as fragility and short shelf-life, as well as gas sealing.

>>32783869
The Microgun was offered to the Airforce basically because "hey, .223 is lighter and cheaper than .308" but was rejected pretty quickly because it turns out .223 is just wholly unsuitable for any kind of aircraft or air force use (not enough effective range, really, even assuming you were hitting it would have poor effects at these distances)

>>32784517
>Dynamit Novel solved the heat buildup issue
No, they mitigated it by strapping an additional 3lbs of steel to each side of the gun and doubling its weight and bulk. Thus negating the primary goal of the weapon, to be light and compact with a high capacity.

>>32782443
I want to believe in the graphene meme.

>>32783549
that airburst is gorgeous.

>>32782098

No. It may come after CTA ammunition, but by that time it could very well be facing against functioning gyrojets.

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>>32784517
You are naive as hell if think a well funded military is not going to adopt caseless or at the very least cased telescopic ammunition before direct energy weapons becomes viable for infantry use.

>>32787196
telescoped plastic amo is LSAT, not far from now. but it is still cased.

Caseless and telescoped ammo are both shitty ideas. Direct energy small arms is the future.

>>32787196
Cased Telescoping Ammo = Cased Ammo =/= Caseless Ammo

I never mentioned CTA in my post, but given that it's literally cased, it's assumed.