Future of warfare

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Soon

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This
Also laser weapons that actually blow a hole in you, for various reasons. Guess what, no ballistic drop or windage, literally point and click.

It's going to be boring, but not what you expect

Nope. Alien: Covenant was 2104, still carrying ARs.

Personally I don't see Caseless being a major thing given all the new problems it introduces. I think we're probably heading towards polymer-cased telescoped rounds going forward for LMGs and what not. Hyper sonic missiles and naval railguns will continue their slow but impressive advancement, smaller UAVs will become a bigger tactical dependent, and we'll eventually have some sort of automated infantry. The biggest problem for the US gov's (and others) ambitions as it relates to shady shit and clandestine operations is the possibility of ending up with dead Americans and all the PR problems that causes. Well if you have a squad of 5 droids and 2 human commanders who are hiding in back that outcome becomes far less likely. If you haven't seen the beginning of the movie 'Chappie' that's where we're heading.

Putin is saying that laser weapons are the future for russia. they made some big advancements apparently.

Unless there are clouds. Or fog. Or dust. Or rain. Etc.

maybe they work through clouds? they probably don't use visible light wavelengths.
this article is from AP. ignore what they say about blinding sensors/drone... that's a given.
something else is going on. my best guess is that it operates at higher frequencies.

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>Putin has another retarded wunderwaffen for propaganda only believed by boomers and vatniks

You're mistake is assuming that there will be LMGs. Military technology follows a common patern. Innovation>specialization>consolidation
We had the first tanks. Then we specialized (light tanks are fast but weak, heavies are strong but slow, medium tanks are in the middle). Now as technology improved, MBTs are better protected than heavies but faster than lights
We see this now with warships, where the difference now between destroyers, cruisers, and frigates is largely superfluous and the names largely a traditional holdover.
And we saw this in WW1 and postwar. Service rifles specialized. A bolt action was reliability and ergonomics. Self loaders had ergos and firepower, but were unreliable, and light machine guns were reliable and had tremendous firepower but we're very heavy. A modern G3 battle rifle has consolidated these, as much firepower as mag fed WW1 LMG with the reliability and ergonomics of a service rifle.

Now let's look at modern assault rifles. The trend in tech has always been increasing firepower by increasing uptime. The current landscape has assault rifles, carbines, belt fed intermediate cartridge LMGs and high capacity magazine fed automatic rifles. With improving material science, this is ripe for consolidation. Imagine the future as something like the KA light assault machine gun, but even more user friendly, perhaps with something like polymer belts and casing. Functionally (though not in terms of execution) it could be something not unlike the G11

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The real move is a projectile/propellant round where the propellant is a itself the "case" and is located entirely behind the projectile. Obviously with a spark igniter integrated into the firearm with a piezo mechanism on the trigger. Nitrocellulose can be molded into such shapes as it is a plastic but the surface area would make it hard to ignite and even if you could ignite it- the surface area would also would be far too small to work as an adequate propellant. Really it would take a true explosive compound to make it work, but at that point you need to greatly increase the weight of the firearm so your weight savings would be minimal.

Plz dupont or dow come up with a high deflagration polymer with a similar energy content to nitrocellulose

t. buttmad spicnigger

I don't understand why you wouldn't just surround the round in a block of propellant, it shortens the ammo and thus can significantly reduce magazine and platform weight, as is done now with caseless and cased telescoped ammo.

lol he thinks we will still al be around in 50 years

I'll let you think about that for a few minutes.

understand if you could replace the casing and primer with such a compound, the "case" on the ammo would only be like 1/8" long at the end of the ammunition.

Wait you mean a compound which is both primer and propellant? As opposed to say OP's caseless pic which has a separate primer cap and propellant block?

Ideally. Electric ignition is the real future of ammunition. Piezoelectric is well understood and every time you light a bbq lighter, grill, or pilot light you are using a piezo ignitor that requires no energy storage and relies solely on the piezoelectric effect. Certain materials can generate an electric charge when subjected to pressures. The bbq lighter relies on your fingers triggering pressure to generate a small spark, but just imagine how much energy one could generate with a piezo igniter designed to operate on firearm chamber pressure.

Of course this would depend on finding a polymer that would act as a suitable propellant even with small surface areas.

Yes the present is before the future, good job.

The other issue is that primer and propellant materials are different, primer being more energetic. If your primer-propellant bricc is both then you would expect your future gun to exhibit significantly higher chamber pressures and temperatures and shorter, faster recoil impulse, and presumably a significantly louder report and larger fireball, none of which necessary invalidate your idea but a lot of people would count those as quality of life issues. You could possibly make it so that the base of your caseless round is seamlessly merged with a little button of primer, or the primer is mixed to be heaviest and so when a propellant block is setting the majority of the primer settles to the base, or something like that. You also have to ensure that your primer and round are consequently highly temperature insensitive within all sane temperature ranges for your chamber and barrel, and that your igniter reliably generates a spark much hotter than that so your ammo can only be ignited in the correct manner. Luckily at least propellant has already been advanced enough to deal with this problem, the final versions of G11 caseless had the cookoff problem solved.

The greatest engineering issue I think you'd see is that of chamber pressure which I touched on earlier, a future gun which a composite primer/propellant block might need an overall smaller quantity of it, however because it's more energetic your chamber is going to need to be tougher and that means either more material is used or a more durable alloy is used. It can be done definitely, introducing small percentages of nickle, tungsten, and silicon into an alloy of steel can make it significantly stronger but it will also be slightly heavier and more difficult to machine, and thus more expensive.

You got me!

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We should see CTSAS soon, probably in something like a long 6.5 that stays supersonic past 1km. I don't expect a lot more from simple bullets, unless DARPA pulls an EXACTO out of its hat. The real advances will be in sensors and C4I. Expect AR (or MR) technology to reach the infantry as power requirements drop and durability improves. Imagine every vehicle, even every infantryman, having the same basic capability as the F-35's DAS and sensor fusion (substitute things like shot-finding microphones for the radar/ESM). The hardware is practically there now, and should be good enough for general issue within a decade or so. The software (as with the F-35) will lag behind, but will be aided by the concurrent development of AR/MR/VR for the professional and consumer markets. Expect many more guided weapons for the infantry and artillery as a result, especially when OPFOR gets the tech, too. Concealment and cover will become even more vital, and drones of all sizes (down to things like Black Hornet) will proliferate, become networked, and perform flocking maneuvers.

I would like to think that some form of load-bearing exoskeleton will (finally?) emerge within the next few decades, but unpowered ones have been yawned at by the military so far, and powered ones face the power generation/storage issue--LiPo may have revolutionized drones, but it's still an order of magnitude or two below what a suit would need for extended infantry operations, microturbines are still too loud, and fuel cells are still too hot.

Shotgun for drone defense?

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