Is there any point of caseless guns?
If only the Soviet Union lasted for another few years
Is there any point of caseless guns?
Landon Stewart
Mason Jones
They certainly have some advantages, but thus far it seems that the disadvantages far exceed the advantages.
Aaron Ward
>Is there any point of caseless guns?
You have an easier time developing something retarded like 3 round burst at very high rof. Maybe when designing something less retarded you could change how magazines and feeding/ejecting works.
Goes without saying that you can carry more ammunition in less volume and weight.
Dominic Perez
>Is there any point of caseless guns?
no
Jeremiah Young
not really until a good solution for cooking off is figured out.
that's still a problem, right?
Asher Watson
Big ones actually, far lighter for more ammunition. A loaded G11 with like 3 45 round magazines is going to be about 9 and a half pounds. The smaller cartridges would lend themselves to more compact SBRs, theoretically and take up less space in general compared to a traditional cartridge.
I heard they actually worked out the kinks with the cook off issue and they made a compound that far exceeded the cook off threshold of even traditional cartridges.
Leo Bennett
nope
Jordan Brown
neat, color me informed
Levi Kelly
Yes, a significant reduction in weight and volume. LSAT's caseless 5.56 equivalent (pic related) was 51% lighter and 40% smaller for comparable performance.
Its also potentially cheaper - brass is the most expensive part of a round by a good margin. We've got good, established manufacturing for it, but it is still expensive in terms of materials and production costs. We have stockpiles of strategic materials to feed the industry if we need to. There are places to save money.
There are downsides though. The largest is basically that PCT exists now. It offers a lot of what caseless does - its 40% lighter and 30% smaller than brass cased. Caseless rifles are *slightly* hotter than regular weapon - close enough to be a negligible difference to brass cased (cook off is a different issue), but PCT is significantly cooler than brass. By trapping heat in the case rather than letting it conduct out into the chamber, and insulating its own propellant from a hot chamber you have good thermal performance. The G11 project got caseless to the point where it was competitive with brass cased for cook off - PCT shits all over brass cased.
Caseless isn't as fragile as people like to pretend but both traditionally Cased and PCT are still markedly more durable.
They're also chemically resistant - with the right polymer selection spilling cleaning chemicals or engine oil or whatever on to it doesn't matter and in some combinations it might for caseless. Both CL and PCT are waterproof though, to be clear.
And Brass, Steel, Polymer, those weird multipart repeatedly-reloadable cases that I can't remember the name of, they all obturate to seal the chamber. This is convenient. You can get around it (LSAT's CL was only 1/10th of lb heavier than the CT variant) but it is still a design limitation.
Cooper Barnes
The 3-rnd salvo burst increased hit probability at long range, and increased the probability of penetrating body armor at close range.