blacke4dawn wrote:

Ehh call me when they get down to handheld ones, or at least personal vehicle mountable ones.

Yeah they are cool but they've also been trying to get them "operational" for decades now. They might eventually get them miniaturized enough to be mountable on something like tanks as mobile artillery but the idea of a "hand-held rail gun" is likely still many decades off if ever.

The biggest problem is the same reason why we don't have workable laser rifles yet - lack of power. These kinds of weapons take a stupidly huge amount of power to operate and no one's figured out how to make batteries/generators small enough and also powerful enough to do the job. Until someone manages to figure out some kind of magical power source based on dilithium, anti-matter, fusion, Hawking radiation, etc. it's not likely to happen anytime soon, at least in the real world.

TheInternetJanitor wrote:

Yes and no, there have been handheld coilguns and even some varieties of plasma throwers for almost a decade or more. They just aren't seeing a lot of widespread adoption by the military industrial organizations because they aren't cost effective or profitable given the market and assets available. Not because you can't make them. A quick youtube search will find enthusiasts that slapped together something straight out of scifi in their garage.

It is more about will and interest than whether or not it is possible. The same is true of most any area of tech though. The ability to get assets in the hands of the people able to do something with it when we're talking about scientific and engineering advancements is heavily limited by profit motive and lack of long term vision.

I'm sure almost anyone could create "working examples" of hand-held devices that can launch a nail into the wall of your garage. But trying to mass produce them with the quality and effectiveness required by any real world military is still no where near being realistic. As I said the power technology is the limiting factor here and will be for the foreseeable future.

TheInternetJanitor wrote:

Edit: I'm not saying Lothic is wrong about efficiency and power sources. A better battery would certainly make any of these technologies easier to use.

I'm just stressing that sometimes there's a pretty big difference between "Experimental" and "Operational" when it comes to things like this.

blacke4dawn wrote:

Ehh call me when they get down to handheld ones

Hollywood has had them since '96!
[youtube]YYfiV8rb3fA[/youtube]

Yeah the idea of a "homing bullet" has been a trope in sci-fi forever. Even the guns the Sandmen used in the original novel version [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan%27s_Run]Logan's Run[/url] had a "homer" style bullet as the wiki explains:

"Runners are most terrified of [...] the 'Homer', which homes in on body heat, and deliberately ignites every pain nerve in the body, killing the target."

Turns out the Sandmen's guns were shaped like a revolver and carried one each of 6 different bullets: homer (see above), tangler (sticky net), nitro (explosive), vapor (smoke screen), ripper and needler. These guns were programmed to explode if anyone but the registered owner tried to use them.

That book was published in the 60's but I'm sure somebody could find an example earlier than that.

TheInternetJanitor wrote:

How about future tech that is slightly less scifi? Essentially refinements and evolution of currently used technologies. More in line with cyberpunk, robocop, shadowrun, aliens, judge dredd. Smart guns, extreme theft deterrents, variable ammunition.

[youtube]6cNd0hbIoQk[/youtube]

Foradain wrote:

For "slightly less scifi", my personal favorite would be something like the 15mm gyroc weapons from GURPS. The reason they are "slightly less scifi" is the [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrojet]Gyrojet pistol[/url], first brought to my attention by Larry Niven in his short story, "The Meddler", found in the collection [url=https://www.amazon.com/Convergent-Larry-Niven-ebook/dp/B0055DVYPW/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=]Convergent Series[/url]. The main disadvantage is the low muzzle velocity, which affects accuracy overall and, at close ranges, stopping power.[sup]1[/sup] Advantages include low recoil (nearly none) and lower weapon mass because the barrel and firing chamber don't need to be as sturdy. Also, if you put electronics in the rocket, they doesn't need to be as resistant to shocks as would be required if you put them in conventional ammo.

[sup]1[/sup]I wasn't sure if the PI in "The Meddler" should have expected one of Sinc's boys to be seriously injured by a rocket at three to six meters range. I'm also not sure how big the PI's room was, the bigger the room the longer the rocket could accelerate. Granted, he could afford the ammunition at $1.45 each in an alternate future 1980s, but he didn't shoot many people, and there's no evidence of splurging elsewhere in his budget. Then I did the math. If those things had fairly constant acceleration, it was around 3,900 m/s/s. At three meters, it would already be going over 150 m/s. Somewhat less if the acceleration goes up as reaction mass is used.

The wiki page you provided about the real life Gyrojet weapons was an interesting read but it more or less painted the entire concept in a negative light. Pretty much nothing about the performance of these weapons seemed to justify the few advantages they provided. I assume that's why they effectively gave up on the idea decades ago. It might be interesting to find out if advances in current weapons technology might make the idea more viable today - surely improvements in the last 50 years might make things more workable now.