15
votes
Accepted
What properties should my fictional HEAT rounds have to punch through heavy armor and ERA?
Anti-Shielding Rounds
The enemy tanks have energy shielding. What kind of ammo is good against that? Why anti-shielding rounds of course! There are two flavours:
Diamagnetic Rounds The jet is made of ...
- 65.6k
14
votes
Accepted
How could pears be used as ammunition?
Frozen Pears.
I remember an anecdote of engineers testing the durability of a bullet train against birds. They used a chicken in the tests and the train did fine. The French on the other hand should ...
- 10.5k
12
votes
How could pears be used as ammunition?
Less Lethal Pears:
Shorter ranges and lower speeds can be achieved with the kind of pressure-based weapons you are suggesting.
Riot pears: pears, even ones coming apart, can be fired at your onerous ...
- 63.2k
11
votes
Using spherical stones for cannon practice
Depends on the era. Stones were used for cannon until the wages for skilled stonecutters made iron balls more economical. That changeover happened between medieval times and the classic age of sail/...
- 112k
10
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Overcoming the issues of caseless ammunition
You're treating the distant future as if it's today...
Demanding that the future comply with today's technology does not a good story make. Let's flip the perspective so you can see the problem: can ...
- 116k
8
votes
How could pears be used as ammunition?
Frame challenge: Do you need an explanation?
When fruits are consistently the only objects being weaponized in your fictional universe, and the overall tone of the work is wacky enough that the ...
- 48.3k
7
votes
Alternate Bullet Propellants
Let's have a look at the mechanics of a gun/bullet.
In a normal gun, the gunpowder ignites and creates a lot of compressed gas. This gas then pushes on the bullet, and flings it down the barrel.
That ...
- 7,237
6
votes
Using spherical stones for cannon practice
I don't know the relative cost of normal vs. magic, so I'm just going to comment on the practical aspects.
There are numerous problems with using stone balls as practice in the place of cast iron ...
- 14.3k
6
votes
What properties should my fictional HEAT rounds have to punch through heavy armor and ERA?
Terror drone.
https://www.deviantart.com/lizzuzci/art/Terror-Drone-272009744
This is lifted from the Red Alert franchise. These are little spider bots. They scramble onto vehicles and get inside.
...
- 304k
6
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How could pears be used as ammunition?
Clearly your evil villain needs to use Atago pears which are the heaviest. The current Guinness world record for a pear is a 2.9 Kg (over 6 lbs) Atago grown in Japan. For extra destructive power ...
- 61
6
votes
Accepted
Defending against dinosaurs with an automatic shotgun that fires miniaturized anti-tank munitions
Enough to P*ss it off:
A 12 gauge shotgun shell, even one filled with high explosive, is a relatively small projectile for anti-vehicle weapons. If I'm reading the specs right, it's actually a tiny ...
- 63.2k
4
votes
How could pears be used as ammunition?
The Bradford Pear and the Callery Pear have small hard fruit that is almost woody. A tree with larger fruit could be used for ammunition very easily. Munitions that used to spread ball bearings could ...
- 5,052
4
votes
How could pears be used as ammunition?
Pears on their own can be pretty hard depending on the variety. They would make great munition.
Projectiles do not need to be hard to be able to do damage, even just water can do loads of damage if ...
- 49
4
votes
With contemporary technology, is it possible to produce a propellant for bullets that is stored as a liquid but that solidifies upon exposure to air?
A heating element can used in the magazine to keep it just above melting point. Then it would cool solid in the barrel. This can and probably will be a slow-ish process. Problems may arise if the ...
- 1,619
4
votes
Accepted
With contemporary technology, is it possible to produce a propellant for bullets that is stored as a liquid but that solidifies upon exposure to air?
The simplest solution is... a solution of your explosive in a solvent that evaporates quickly.
For example, nitrocellulose (guncotton) is soluble in acetone (a 25% solution was historically used as a ...
- 11.5k
4
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Defending against dinosaurs with an automatic shotgun that fires miniaturized anti-tank munitions
Do you know the term Elephant Gun? Calibers like .600 Nitro Express or .460 Weatherby Magnum. Those are what a hunter needs to face an elephant or similar animal, and to bring it down with one well-...
- 112k
3
votes
What properties should my fictional HEAT rounds have to punch through heavy armor and ERA?
Stacked rounds
Two rounds fired at once. The second is in flight a couple of meters behind the first. The first round is a small HE round or perhaps DIME (Dense Inert Metal Explosive) designed to ...
- 2,250
3
votes
Alternate Bullet Propellants
At one point, pneumatic guns were considered a serious alternatives to gun powder powered guns - weapons like the Giradoni Air Gun and Pirchard's air gun. Modern air guns get around many of the issues ...
- 7,884
3
votes
Defending against dinosaurs with an automatic shotgun that fires miniaturized anti-tank munitions
You don't need a shaped-charge bullet to kill a dinosaur. Regular armor-piercing ammunition will work.
Sure, maybe a dinosaur has too much bone and meat for a normal, jacketed lead bullet to do the ...
- 13.8k
3
votes
Defending against dinosaurs with an automatic shotgun that fires miniaturized anti-tank munitions
Maybe with Modifications
This is the only image I can find about what these rounds do when fired. For scale the round in the top image is small enough to fit inside a normal shotgun casing.
The ...
- 65.6k
3
votes
Overcoming the issues of caseless ammunition
Don't Use Chemical Propellants
The advantages there are to using a case are numerous. The small amount of extra weight you get from the case does more than just give you a place to put your ...
- 87.8k
3
votes
What kind of effect would a tank shell that create plasma on impact have on armour?
Not as much of an effect as you think.
Doing some back of the envelope physics calculations:
A M1 Abrams tank shells weigh around 18 kg.
Modern capacitors have a max energy density of 9.5 Wh/kg.
...
- 21.3k
3
votes
Overcoming the issues of caseless ammunition
I've studied this in detail about a decade back, for a high-realism, near-future scenario. The best answer I've arrived at was:
Electrothermal ignition.
In essence, use a low-power version of https://...
2
votes
Overcoming the issues of caseless ammunition
What problems still exist for caseless ammunition
cook off
This is the big one, otherwise know as the chamber getting so hot when a fresh cartridge is loaded it discharges, and it is solved by better ...
- 79.9k
2
votes
Overcoming the issues of caseless ammunition
The primary advantages of caseless ammunition are lower weight per round, lower cost to manufacture (due to no extensive forming operations to make metallic cases), and no ejected cases to potentially ...
- 45.6k
2
votes
Defending against dinosaurs with an automatic shotgun that fires miniaturized anti-tank munitions
These would be very effective.
Doing my own research and definitely not stealing from Daron I got these pictures:
https://i.stack.imgur.com/jRgmd.png
https://i.stack.imgur.com/dk9SI.png
The FRAG12 ...
- 44.6k
2
votes
Alternate Bullet Propellants
There are literally hundreds of ballistic propellants. They can be based on any hypergolic chemical or any pair of chemicals that combine to create an exothermic reaction.
This list has only a few.
...
2
votes
What properties should my fictional HEAT rounds have to punch through heavy armor and ERA?
Fuzzy slippers
The shield is composed of particles. What keeps those particles in position as the tank moves? What determines their position in the first place?
The particles move along the outer ...
- 13.7k
1
vote
Alternate Bullet Propellants
How about Biogas?
Gas from rotting shit and veggies decomposing biomass like animal excreta, dead plants and stuff like that can actually be a powerful propellant for your bullets. Biogas's ...
- 3,304
1
vote
Using dead bodies for material 4: ammunition
I can't think of a good solution to the bullet problem. None of the materials present in significant quantities in an ordinary body have the right combination of density and ductility to match a ...
- 486
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