I'm writing a story /k/, and I figured this would be a good

>>34718521
I mean, the ballistics of bullets has reached the pinnacle of non-interference in terms of standard firearms for the human race.

Other than the current developments in bullet path shifting with .50 caliber guided munitions, we can honestly say that we're good to go until lasers/phasers/plasma weaponry is ready for mass deployment.

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>>34718521
the ammo will get lighter weight, and more environmentally friendly(lol). it;s already happening. the big changes will be in the weapon systems themselves.. the hardware will evolve in the direction of assisted targeting, recoil mitigation, and smart/secure guns.

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>>34718521
Not a thread about space corps.

>Disappointed

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>>34718521
noguns go and stay go

>>34718521
>People often say firearm and ammunition design has basically peaked.
Dismiss these people.
>What I'm wondering is, considering current trends, do you think firearms and ammunition are likely to change drastically over the next two to three centuries?
Beyond predicting the near future the possibility space is too broad to say anything meaningful. And the more you think you can predict the less you actually know.

I'd say you can safely assume caseless and/or telescoped ammunition will eventually be predominate. Check out the LSAT and its comparative advantages to its predecessor.

>>34718563
>the hardware will evolve in the direction of assisted targeting, recoil mitigation, and smart/secure guns.

None of those are really an improvement on the designs of modern firearms themselves. Those are all auxillary peripherals. Firearms technology itself has pretty much hit it's pinnacle with only the smallest of adjustments or improvements here or there. We are now heading into an era where firearms as they exist will change merely for changes sake and not for any real beneficial improvement..
>>34718521

>>34718596
>Dismiss these people.
Prove them wrong.

>>34718521
Polymer cased-telescoped slashes weight about 40% and volume 10%.

Diluted HMX instead of smokeless powder cuts a similar amount.

Once nanotech kicks off in 20 or 30 years, beam-rider bullets, guided rounds, and even better propellants will be available.

>>34718637
>Prove that weapon technology is developing
It should be fairly fucking obvious, shouldn't it? Of course anything that's in development right now, so any example I choose you will shoot down for not being ready yet even though that's the entire point of development. The only literal way to prove that technology is advancing is to wait until it's already advanced.

Also I already suggested to check out the LSAT project which is as close as you're going to get to a literal objective overall improvement. Smart gun tech is also in active development.

>>34718626
>We are now heading into an era where firearms as they exist will change merely for changes sake and not for any real beneficial improvement..

i agree with your first point, but these enhancements built into new systems(not rehashes of existing systems), in the hands of soldiers and law enforcement will improve effectiveness, and solve real practical problems. there are a handful of top tier gun manufacturers right now making lots of money, that are committed to innovation because frankly innovation moves units. people like new shit no matter how small the improvement may be.

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OP here, had one more question I forgot to add.

How long do you think revolvers have until they start becoming extremely anachronistic?

>>34718521
>flow formed barrels
>composite barrels
>axial flow suppressors

There are three big improvements that barely existed before 2010.

>>34718794
As long as people buy guns for more than just practical purposes then they'll be around for as long as people want.

>>34718794
Revolvers have multiple ways to find new uses. As an example, you could have smart mini rockets which won't reliably cycle an auto and/or would be too long to fit in a handgrip, but would work in a long cylinder revolver format. Or low pressure less than lethal/specialty rounds.

>>34718794
The romanticization of the American west in the 19th century will mean that revolvers will never truly be an anachronism, at least for a great many decades to come.

Mechanically, they are entirely obsolete and have been for over 100 years.

>>34718596
Caseless ain't gonna happen in small arms until they work out the heat issue.

>>34718972
Hence and/or with an emphasis on or. Still, it is a subject of active development and worth consideration.

>>34719007
Not really. Polymer CT provides the benefits of a jacket for (effectively) the same weight as caseless and is also cooler than brass.

Heat was a reverse strawman - a solvable problem that got solved. Gas jet cutting wrecking the gun and the lack of jackets resulting in ammo bending or crumbling are what killed the meme.

>>34718521
Two or three centuries? That's a long ass time, dude. I'd be really disappointed with humanity if we were still using 9mm and 5.56 by that point. That'd be like if we still used arquebuses and shit today. I'd hope by then technology would've advanced enough to make hand held rail guns, or particle beam weapons, or at very least some kind of high tech caseless ammo. If I went 300 years into the future and people were still using fucking 9mm I'd be kinda pissed.

>>34718521
>3 centuries

If nanotech takes off, expect synthetic diamond P90s with hundred-round caseless mags, reactive guided bullets, and self-targeting terahertz radar by 2100.

If switchable room-temp superconductors, then superconducting loops for multi-megajoule/kg power storage; so Chemrails without the -chem.

The same thing would probably allow personal-scale HPM guns good enough to cook humans and set anythng vaguely electronic on fire, with lots of wacky multi-block collateral damage from the radio scatter.

Tbh by then, humans won't be doing the fighting. It will be turtles all the way down (and up), and by turtles I mean AI taking and giving the orders.

>>34719053
>reverse strawman
Should I even bother trying to figure out what that is supposed to meme?

Anyway never denied that telescoped has the upper hand. Doesn't mean caseless can never exist. The problems you indicated could easily be remedied by improved construction of the powder jacket and the gun. Functionally no waste on caseless ammunition is handy and could make for a satisfying plinker, and your high speed cyberninja doesn't need to waste bulk on a brass(plastic) catcher.

I feel like there's been a bit of a misunderstanding here. When people say that firearms have peaked, they're referring to firearms specifically, not ammunition or optics. Its a given that we will get smarter lighter munitions, and that we will get better optics with additional functionalities, but firearms themselves have utterly plateaued. The smart-scoped exploding-telescoped-ammo combat rifle that soldiers of 2117 will use will still be some variation of gas operated rotating bolt system we use today, there's simply no reason to assume otherwise. Its probably even going to be an AR15/18 too.

>>34719260
Yeah I thnk that's a good way to put it. Basically "Kinetic Weaponry" is the best umbrella to describe our current weapon technology. We'll get better optics, better ammo and powders and whatnot, but until we get some kind of man-portable energy weapon system (and that won't ever happen without massive jumps in battery/energy containment tech) we're going to be riding this train for quite some time.

>>34718521
Op predicting tech that far ahead will be difficult. That said, it's probably safe to say for at least the next 100-150 years, we'll still be using variants of kinetic weapons. They'll get lighter/stronger/more powerful (think man portable rail guns) but anything beyond that won't really occurr until we really nail battery and energy technology more thoroughly. That probably won't happen until we start thinking about regularly traveling off world for resources or encounter some alien tech that we appropriate and reverse engineer like many sci-stories end up doing.

>>34719260
Disagree. For one, changing the ammunition changes how you construct the weapon around it. No current firearm is perfectly efficiently designed to get the maximum performance out of new ammunition so new designs would be necessitated. Secondly, further advancement is still possible. For example, if we go full smart gun, and electronics in general continue to miniaturize and improve (no reason they shouldn't), then you will probably see electronic operation seep further and further into gun manufacture. Electric ignition, electric cycling (well, that already exists, but maybe in a smaller form).

>>34718555
what about man-portable railguns for infantry use?

>>34718521

I am months away from production of my new projectiles and prototype delivery systems.

keep waiting.

for anyone that follows these threads, the supersonic testing was a raging success. no keyholes, 100% weight retention of expanders in non armoured backdrops and 100% penetration of ar500 1/2" at 20 meters @ 1,600fps

>>34719872
Don't see a huge application for this. With the thermal limitations of railguns and their power requirements, you're basically looking at a single or single digit-shot weapon before you either have to pack it up or abandon it because it went melty. The advantage is that it can accelerate projectiles to speeds impossible with typical chemical propulsion but man portable weapons don't come close to exploiting the limits of chemical propulsion anyway.

Might be cool as a weird sort temporary emplacement gun.

>>34718626
I disagree. I think piston heavy calibre weapons will still go a fair way. I mean the FAL is known for extreme durabilitary, but good luck getting it below 3 MOA. We're probably gonna see a lot of a shift towards lighter, more accurate, but still as reliable weapons.

>>34719907
Someone fill me in?

>>34718521
Firearms haven't peaked, they've plateaued.

But predicting personal weapons 2 centuries away is basically infeasible, especially without knowing whats happened between then and now. 200 years ago, we were still using smooth bore flintlocks and the gatling gun wouldn't even be invented for another 45 years. Could they have predicted modern small arms? Hell no.

Its up in the air whether humans would still be fighting that far in the future, or if we'd have been replaced by drones. Or where we'd be fighting. Or who. OR what technologies would have been invented in the meantime

Okay, so the gist of what I'm seeing is:

>Current firearms tech (kinetic weapons) will likely last until the end of the century, but no way to guess after that.
>It's possible that some current tech (revolvers, maybe bolt-action rifles) could be adapted for use with future weapon technologies.

Star Trek phase pistols.