>>20447 I think it's a weird cross between the experiences from Afghanistan and the sudden (and unfounded) fear of body armour that can't be penetrated by 7.62 NATO. So they might see it as the next step up from 7.62 that has a smaller footprint than 12.7mm, so you can haul more of it into battle. But if they have the infantry in mind, then maybe finally replacing the M2 with a significantly lighter and more compact machine gun would be better. It's not like they'd want to clear rooms with a .338 machine gun, and the Russians already proved with the Kord that you can make a heavy machine gun light enough to fire it from a bipod, and at that point a single machine gunner can carry it happily. You'd need an ammo bearer regardless of calibre. And it makes even less sense for vehicles, because if you are so hell-bent on it then you can replace the coaxial mg with a 12.7mm one. The AMX-30 had a coax M2 that they later replaced with a 20mm autocannon, and many British tanks had a .50 ranging in addition of a 7.62 mg.

>>20128 A potentially interesting upgrade might be to neck out either of those cartridges, load them with saboted flechettes, and fire them from an unrifled barrel, kind of like what the soviets were going for with pic related, just bigger. With .50 BMG you might be able to increase armour penetration even if you use steel flechettes.

https://yewtu.be/watch?v=aDXfVEtJtfQ So this is actually a PKM knock-off that can be fed from autistic magazine, and you can also launch rifle grenades with it. Both of those are quite useless features on such a machine gun, but it's the kind of tacticool that I really love.

>>20642 Moreover, if you have a smooth barrel and straight-walled cartridges, you could also fill them with ball bearings or multiple flechettes, and turn it into an automatic shotgun. .50 BMG just happens to be about the size of a 12 gauge shell anyway, except that it can hold a lot more powder and shell, not to mention that it can withstand much higher pressures. I can see it working in urban combat where you can shred infantry at relatively close range. Maybe you could even put a duckbill choke on it, assuming that it does not impact the use of the miniature APFSDS.

M61 Vulcan ~ best 20mm auto-cannon ever https://youtu.be/Q8s391KTi7I?t=349

>>22728 The "ork" part of "Nork" is more applicable with every bit of "technology" from them I see.

>>40971 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N60WtGC4ejo GAU-8 30mm

I wish I could collect machine funs.

>>41276 There was even a prototype SPAAG that had one. I wonder if the wonders of modern technology would allow us to make what is effectively a Goalkeeper on tracks. I mean, the gun is there, but you'd need to add a modern radar and presumably beef up all the motors involved in training it, and that doesn't sound too complicated.

So what would be the best gun for a SPAAG that is meant to be a CIWS on wheels/tracks and shoot down everything from drones to AT missiles? Someone suggested that the Italians had the right idea with a 76.2mm naval gun, but a criticism I've heard that it cannot even carry enough ammo to fire for a minute. Would a 57mm gun have a better balance of firepower and ammo supply?

>>52114 >wouldn't have enough ammo to fire for a minute Is that why so much research is going into microwave and laser weapons? Long term combat effectiveness at the cost of extremely high purchase and upkeep?

>>52114 Lasers. Nothing comes even close, your ammo is infinite. The atmospheric conditions required to make it trully useless are basically impossible. The travel time of the intercepting beam is for all purposes instant, if the sensors detect missile they can hit it 0,000001 seconds later. Other than that I think just sticking surplus flak guns on humvees with glued thermals would be enough to deal with drones.

>>52114 57mm is the least space-efficient option. The shells are too small for proximity HE but massive overkill for contact HE, and you still can't carry much more than a minute's worth of ammo. Also, past 40mm you start to run into major problems with turrets traversing too slowly to react to new threats. There is a limit to how big of a traverse motor you can safely fit into a tank hull, and we're pretty much at that point already. >>52149 AFV-mounted lasers aren't powerful enough to deal with anything faster than a quadcopter. Travel time is completely meaningless.

>>52152 >past 40mm you start to run into major problems with turrets traversing too slowly to react to new threats. So maybe a necked out 35mm really is the answer. https://web.archive.org/web/20211201042331/https://quarryhs.co.uk/MilRel.htm https://yewtu.be/watch?v=U0prcaXEwKU >There is a limit to how big of a traverse motor you can safely fit into a tank hull, and we're pretty much at that point already. Is it due to energy consumption or magnetic fields and whatnot? Or both?

>>52155 >So maybe a necked out 35mm really is the answer. For a conventional SPAAG, probably. For CIWS and drone defense, you'd probably be best off with something like a GAU-19 or even M134. Drones and AGMs don't require much firepower to kill, so the only thing that matters is maximizing the odds of any kind of hit. >Is it due to energy consumption or magnetic fields and whatnot? Or both? It's more that you literally don't have any room to fit a bigger motor. Most SPAAG turrets are stupidly cramped.

>>52193 Are you telling me that a 12 gauge shotgun as described in >>28329 could in theory work, especially if you replaced the shot with flechettes, similar to number 5 in pic related?

>>52199 Sure, but the problem is localizing these fuckers in the first place. Pretty much every hit is enough to destroy control surfaces or otherwise incapacite the drone smaller than predator. Drones are too small to be spotted on radar but they can still have visible heat signature, so just putting .50mm with niggershot and thermals nigger rigged to some trucks might be enough to protect your logistics for a while. Of course you want to have high top armor on these vehicles to prevent drone strikes, which kind of defeats the point of just putting it on any normal humvee, since you have a huge unarmored hole cut right into it. Clearly the answer lies in sponsons. And it would be most likely too slow to deal with suicide drones, unless gunners reflexes are stellar. Still, these need to be coordinated via another scouting drone for max effect so removing it might still be worthwhile. And of course this is just poverty option, you could make it work entirelly automatically on platforms specially designed for these tasks with jamming capabilities and integrated drone detection system. Personally I would rather seek to use all these obsolate FLAK guns. I heard Romania still has large stockpile. There will never again be a better use of these.

>>52322 Wouldn't LIDARs work perfectly fine for spotting small drones?

I have no idea why you all talk about all these retarded solutions when the issue of defeating drones, missiles and pretty much any ballistic threat was already solved years ago. 35mm is the sweet spot of for this role. It's big enough to make an effective canister-like shell (AHEAD ammunition) and fast enough to fill the air with thousands of small tungsten balls with just a single burst. You do not defeat missiles or drones by hitting them directly. You just shoot near them and let the fragments do the rest. The GAU-19 and the M134 are dogshit choices for defeating these threats, because they don't have airbust rounds. >>52152 >57mm >too small >turret traverse speed What in the absolute fuck am I reading. Is this really /k/?

>>53000 Of course, but the problem is, you will be trying to catch 300$ lawnmover with wings with 300 bilion$ machine, and you need to cover the entire frontline on several layers to make sure they will not go through. You can do it with jamming up untill they get drones which operate on AI. You cannot have just one detector feeding data to multiple interception platforms since it will be jammed. Or you can have cheap as shit m2 shooting niggershot serving as point defense on some humvees. So the question is: how ghetto we can go?

>>52155 Looking at that straight-walled 50mm cartridge, I cannot help but wonder if it would be possible to make a split-breech rotary machine gun that fires it. The main problem is that cases tend to split, but if you made such a straight case out of a modern steel alloy, then maybe that problem would disappear. You could even make the walls a tad thicker than normal and play with the powder charge a bit to make it perform just the same.

>>53000 >>53090 How about locating them with sounds? Drones have pretty district sounds, and a simple computer with a pair of microphones shouldn't break the bank.

>>53959 It would need some good directional mic's but it can be done. The U.S. tested some microphone systems that could detect the location of a sniper based on the sound of the shot, and they were quite good IIRC.

Wouldnt spamming antimaterial rifles be very effective in Africa? even .50 can fuck up anything they have in there. >>53959 Interesting idea but making a silent glider or maybe even baloon drone should be very easy.

>>53967 Looks like there are multiple systems out there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunfire_locator#Acoustic >>54003 > a silent glider or maybe even baloon drone should be very easy. But then those wouldn't be as manoeuvrable as a drone that has its own motors, not to mention that even a relatively mild wind could ground them. Besides, potentially cockblocking at least 99% of currently available drones sounds like a good starting point to me.

M61A1 20mm Vulcan gun like the ones on the F-16

I wonder how well would aluminium barrel shrouds would work as a cooling solution. The only example I know (other than the Lewis gun with its forced air cooling) is the Chauchat, where it did not work, because as the aluminium expanded against the receiver it froze the barrel in place, and that is not a brilliant thing in a recoil operated weapon. But in theory you could make a straight and featureless barrel and then put an extruded aluminium shroud with lots of cooling fins on it, and in theory it should not affect the ballistics of the barrel (other than adding extra weight), unlike cooling fins that are machined directly into the barrel.

>>58486 And what would the use case be? NATO would bitch about it making swapping barrels harder, russians already have pretty lightweight lmg, planes dont really need to worry about weight of machineguns anymore. Burger enthusiasts will bitch about 1000$ receiver made out of coke cans.

>>58557 >And what would the use case be? Tacticool salt rifles nowadays either have pencil barrels or rather thick ones. A thin barrel with extra aluminium on it could be the third way.

>>58557 >And what would the use case be? Yeah exactly. Imagine an aluminum barrel for super lightness and cooling performance and a space age chrome-tungsten alloy liner inside for strength. Or just two or three much cheaper and easy to make barrels you can swap out when it wears out faster due to higher temperature.

>>58679 simply put the fatigue limit of aluminum is far too low to be worth the price in a military service weapon. no matter what liner you give it to provide strength to the rifling the barrel will eventually inevitably fail. especially in the roll of an automatic weapon.

>>58679 >>58694 To be fair, the original post is about taking a steel barrel that would work on its own, and putting an aluminium sleeve on it, just like the Chauchat, which uses a Lebel barrel with an aluminium sleeve. Although the different expansion rates of steel and aluminium might cause problems, but I envision it as a whole lot of aluminium fins with a connecting ring around halfway across their length. As the heat is transferred from the barrel the fins would expand both away and towards the barrel, hopefully in a somehow controlled manner that might even add some extra rigidity to the whole thing.

>>58679 I think you dont understand the issue here correctly: Its not an aluminium barrel but a thin steel barrel in aluminium shroud for heat dissipation. Such a shroud together with barrel should weight less then alternative barrel while still retaining properties required to operate correctly. I doubt you will be able to manage that, at least without incorporating the shroud with other elements like handguard and so on. Which is probably not the best of ideas. Not even mentioning that machining aluminium is a bitch and there is already preexisting infrastructure for creating competing kinds of barrels. I just dont see it man. Not enough upsides. Unless you go full KelTec of course and make something like *snorts coke* full aluminium foldable bullpup carbine chambered in 6.5 creedmore with electric operated ignitation system and carbon fiber barrel.

>>58715 >Not even mentioning that machining aluminium is a bitch and there is already preexisting infrastructure for creating competing kinds of barrels. Why not cast ZAMAC then?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluton_(complex) A sad example of swords to ploughshares.

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>>58715 >Not even mentioning that machining aluminium is a bitch You can just extrude it, push it on to the barrel from the front until a wider area machined into the barrel stops it, and then keep it place with the muzzle device. >I just dont see it man. Not enough upsides. I am just shooting ideas that grind my gears, so...

How2make automatic potato gun?

>>58790 >I am just shooting ideas that grind my gears, so... Yeah. Thats just how creative process works, we can refine this concept via critique and further brainstorming >>58836 Just use that machine for throwing tenis balls.

>>58836 Think rotary canon anon. Use a small propane tank for combustion. >>58890 >Just use that machine for throwing tenis balls. I don't think that would work. Potatoes are too inconsistent in shape and occasionally in firmness for that to be feasible. Small gourds, pumpkins or apples might work in one though.

>>58715 >but a thin steel barrel in aluminium shroud for heat dissipation. Isn't that the same thing as an aluminium barrel with a steel liner?? >full aluminium foldable bullpup carbine Reality aside, what's the absolute minimum weight you'd want an automatic salt rifle to have? Say it's chambered .308 NATO, nothing crazy. At some point too little weight is going to feel weird to handle, also you'll want some mass to dampen the vibration.

>>58715 >a thin steel barrel in aluminium shroud The problem with that is differential heat expansion of the two metals. Aluminum has thermal expansion coefficient of roughly 21-24 1x10^-6 meters per centigrade, while steel is 10-12 1x10^-6 meters per Centigrade. It's why the experimental AR-10 barrel blew up during U.S. trials but to be fair, that also used layers of steel in the aluminum sleeve aside from the steel barrel liner which exacerbated the issue. https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/linear-expansion-coefficients-d_95.html

>>58902 >I don't think that would work. Potatoes are too inconsistent in shape and occasionally in firmness for that to be feasible. Small gourds, pumpkins or apples might work in one though. Its just pressure operated launcher, as long as the size of the barrel is wide enough to fit the projectile and projectiles weight is not too big. Accuracy would be ass but hey its you that wanted to launch potatoes, you can always cut them into more aerodynamic shapes. >>58938 >Isn't that the same thing as an aluminium barrel with a steel liner?? No. One is additional, the other is integrated. >Reality aside, what's the absolute minimum weight you'd want an automatic salt rifle to have? That is a really good question. >>58948 Exactly.

>>58948 >>58957 Instead of fiddling with aluminum what about one of the types of brass instead? >>58486 Personally What I would suggest ti to go back to the raygun aesthetic and put fins and flutes in barrels to act as passive heat sinks. That's expensive and complicates milling though.

>>59013 >what about one of the types of brass instead? I'm fairly certain brass is heavy enough that there is no point in using it over steel, and different thermal expression is still an issue. With better heat treatments the main issue with pencil barrels being inaccurate when hot is mostly resolved. Other than that, switching to a more efficient propellant would work better by burning cooler as heat is the major killer of barrels. There is an experimental 5.56 round that uses 1/2 the powder and is straight walled. And while looking for that I found a neat paper on folded cartridges https://ndiastorage.blob.core.usgovcloudapi.net/ndia/2005/smallarms/wednesday/sadowski.pdf https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA039156.pdf

>>59027 I think may be you could have two thin strips of T5 ally fins that go up a third of either side of the barrel... and you could hold them there with some graphene-mixed contact cement. The question for me is not whether they'd expand thermally or fall off or anything but whether they would do anything at all to the performance of a gun to be noticeable enough during field testing.

>>59027 >There is an experimental 5.56 round that uses 1/2 the powder and is straight walled. So, .22 carbine?

>>59092 >So, .22 carbine? It retained the same power as 5.56x45 and you could fit 55 of those rounds in a standard 30 round mag IIRC. You could also design a P90 like magazine system for it, shame it wasn't expanded further on. I think the powder it used was too expensive to make, but that issue would likely go away when mass producing and gaining expertise.

>>59097 I know, but it genuinely looks like some scaled down .30 carbine to 5.56mm, even if the development process was quite different. Also, now I want to see a tiny revolver chambered for that experimental cartridge.