Are any companies trying to create superposed load weapons that can actually be used in combat?

I didn’t even know the term “superposed load” until a few minutes ago. I’m not a gun guy but I ended up on the Wikipedia page for Metal Storm which went bankrupt in 2012.

Metal Storm

Metal Storm Limited was a research and development company based in Brisbane, Australia, that specialized in electronically initiated superposed load weapons technology and owned the proprietary rights to the electronic ballistics technology invented by J. Mike O’Dwyer. The Metal Storm name applied to both the company and technology. The company had been placed into voluntary administration by 2012.

[…]

Metal Storm used the concept of superposed load; multiple projectiles loaded nose to tail in a single gun barrel with propellant packed between them. The Roman candle, a traditional firework design, employs the same basic concept…

I didn’t understand so I watched this video…

The Weapon That Can Shred Any Tank to Pieces

The Metal Storm gun, a design with 36 barrels, has an impressive rate of fire of over 1.62 million rounds per minute, equaling 180 rounds in a .01-second burst. It employs caseless 9-millimeter ammunition that can fire a wall of 24,000 rounds that move at speeds of Mach 5. And it can literally tear apart any tank that stands in its way!

Skip the historical intro and go straight to the stuff about Metal Storm.

What the video mentions…

  1. “The gun was stacked and couldn’t be moved.”

  2. In theory a Metal Storm gun could shred a tank but in reality it’s nonsense. See #1.

  3. “The time to prepare it was tediously slow.” I don’t understand why the vid didn’t use the term “reload”.

  4. “It was never produced to [fire for more than five seconds.]”

  5. The gun/ammo was very expensive.

I’m not surprised the company went bankrupt.

  • Des [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    12·
    1 month ago

    i think eventually, and I mean eventually we will see replacement of reliable, easy to manufacture current propellent and jacketed ammunition with some kind of electrically activated caseless type

    not superposed obviously but just like the old H&K style. if only for the weight reduction and increased ammunition capacity (as well as smoother action and less recoil). if a formula can be developed that creates very little fouling, or maybe the gas or some kind of electrical action (magnetic maybe?) can clear the barrel of residue before it settles in.

    I think there will be a race between this tech and useful man portable coilguns since they both have similar advantages. one relies on developing a clean propellant (coupled with a simple li-ion equivilant battery) and the other a compact, energy dense solid state battery and possibly superconducting loop capacitor.

    a hybrid of both might be more likely. enough electrical energy to use less propellant or possibly instantly transform it into a plasma-hot gas and eject it magnetically with the projectile. so basically a caseless coilgun combo.

    whichever one wins will finally unseat the perfectly useful jacketed cartridge weapon, which will still be used forever afterward in some capacity

      • Des [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        16·
        1 month ago

        sorry the H&K G11 first real caseless prototype assault rifle

        coilguns are magnetic weapons but unlike rail guns they can continuously fire without damaging the barrel. they suspend the projectiles in magnetic coils, so they don’t technically make contact with anything.

        unlike rail guns they require much more potent magnets and higher energy densities. home built coilgun rifles can basically hit velocities of an air rifle. so it’s a trade-off. rail guns will never be scaled down below artillery because they must be rebuilt after x number of shots (I could see a man portable single shot rail gun for deep armor penetration one day perhaps)

        • InevitableSwing [none/use name]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
          10·
          1 month ago

          I’ll leave this here…

          What ever happened to caseless ammunition? Did they just give up on it? - r/guns

          Is this (roughly) accurate?..

          It’s very expensive, hard to make(yes even these days), and would require a complete rework of firearms design which no army would ever do. And the militaries of the world are mostly what drive firearm design, like it or not. Basically what I’m saying is it wasn’t worth the money and time it’d take to make them a thing on any kind of large scale. And our firearms technology hasn’t advanced nearly as much as people like to believe, almost all firearms tech we have today is decades old and all the modern firearms industry did was apply new manufacturing techniques to make it more reliable.

          So has firearms tech basically hit its peak until we reach either lasers or rail guns and everything else is just making what we have lighter, stronger and easier to make?

          Yes. Caseless ammo only be in incremental improvement, sure it would save some weight but it’s fragile and fragile is a problem for military applications. Caseless ammo is next to useless for civilians considering the extreme cost and since the weight savings don’t matter much. Firearms have peaked, at most you’re squeaking out a tiny difference here or there.

          • Des [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
            11·
            1 month ago

            yeah that’s the conventional wisdom. jacketed rounds with modern propellent are basically a solved tech.

            that’s why i said eventually in strong italics because all this stuff requires some crazy breakthroughs.

            here’s a scenario that could subvert the conventional wisdom you read:

            if someone developed a perfectly clean propellant that burned extremely hot, instantly, and left not residue at all it might be worth the retooling effort to give it another shot. at that point you truly have a superior firearm

            still, military industry hates change because it costs $ so you need a material reason

            so first it starts as a specialty weapon, maybe a highly specialized “smart” anti-drone weapon. longer range then a laser, perhaps auto-tracking and designed to be carried by one soldier in the field and set up quickly. this encourages manufacturing to ramp up since 1 caseless round will be cheaper then 1 drone.

            eventually you start seeing more widespread adoption

            as far as hybrid weapons: this is literally my own brainstorming too it’s pure sci-fi. in the end some kind of “boosted” coilgun may never be needed if we get those solid state high density batteries.

            • InevitableSwing [none/use name]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
              3·
              1 month ago

              in the end some kind of “boosted” coilgun may never be needed if we get those solid state high density batteries.

              I don’t understand. I changed the order. “If we get those solid state high density batteries - boosted coilguns may never be needed because…” I don’t know how to end the sentence.

              • Des [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
                6·
                1 month ago

                it just adds needless complexity basically. better to have pure electrical systems (they’re clean!) vs putting a dirty chemical reaction inside your clean electrical system

      • Des [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        8·
        1 month ago

        last time i spam you with replies i promise:

        coilgun: multiple magnetic stages like a rocket taking off. each has to fire off perfectly. complex magnets, floating projectile

        rail gun: works like a mag-lev train. single rail, some contact is made, no staging. just acceleration. but wears itself out quickly from contact.

        • InevitableSwing [none/use name]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
          4·
          1 month ago

          A comment

          The year is 2052 and a now late 60’s Ian is regaling how after the apocalypse there was a period when powder weapons reigned supreme until ammunition ran out, then the weapon you could power from the sun and would fire almost any chunk of steel came into its own and became the weapon of choice!

          • Des [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
            4·
            1 month ago

            i just rewatched the video myself. his rifle has a velocity of a standard crossbow bolt.

            I have seen some homebuilt coilguns that can double that or more (which is closer to an airgun).

            i’m definitely impressed by some of these builds though if I had time/money I would be so into this

              • Des [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
                3·
                1 month ago

                I mean you just came up with a spectacular premise for a Tesla-punk zombie apocalypse story

                makes sense that what tech remains would rapidly move to electric, especially since rare earths don’t “expire” like gasoline

                and with the massive population loss suddenly fields of solar panels become useful to start small scale, city-state industrial bases.

                scavenging materials to make new batteries is significantly easier then guarding various mines to manufacture propellant and explosives

                cool mad-max electric vehicles, made as light as possible (so no zombie-proof tanks). drones for scouting. coilguns with bayonets, shooting drill bits and whatever junk, just potent enough to crack a soft zombie skull. battles between human factions for old substations for copper. lots of possibilities!