Re: [HoE] Re: Tech Level

["Eric Young" <ecyoung@mediaone.net>]

>> As I stated a few months ago, I still feel that the weapons tech
>should be
>> more advanced. Maybe not a lot of energy weapons, but certainly more
>> caseless ammo, ETC ammo, flechette weapons, etc...
>
>I'm not sure I believe that they would be too much more advanced.  Wwe
>are currently reaching (reached?) the point of diminishing returns.
>The army has spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the last 20
>years tying to design a weapon to replace the M-16.  They aren't much
>closer to selecting a new design.  Their goal was very small: in a
>combat situation, the M-16 has about a 5-10% effectiveness.  They
>wanted to raise that to 15% and are just starting to come close to
>that.  The problem is that it isn;t cost effective (I used to be a
>systems analyst for the army, and had to calculate morbid measure like
>cost/kill)

Can you deny that caseless ammo is more cost effective than conventional
cased ammo? It's cheaper to produce, keeps the weapon firing it cleaner,
makes more efficient use of magazine space, etc... Just the fact that you
won't be wasting money buying brass would make it more cost effective.
While this may not make much of a difference in peace time since you can
just collect all the brass and reload it. I doubt very much that you're
going to take the time to collect all of your brass in combat...

A .65 gram(10 grain) flechette fired at 1220 meters per second(4000 feet
per second) has the same effectiveness as the 9.8 gram(150 grain) bullet
fired from the M1 Rifle. But it's more accurate and has a greater effective
range, and is cheaper to produce.

The US Army has always been slow to take advantage of new technology, and
then there's also the political aspects to look at... The two best
contenders for the army's ACR project were made by foreign companies (H&K's
G11k2 and Steyr's ACR). The Colt ACR was basically the same as the M-16,
and AAI's ACR had some design flaws (it could be loaded with either 5.56mm
flechettes or 5.56mm ball, but the ball rounds could cause "dangerous
malfunctions" (i.e. explode)).

I feel that if one of the US companies had designed a weapon like H&K or
Steyr the army would not have cancelled the ACR project. All IMHO of
course.

ETC ammo is still experimental, so I can't give many hard facts on it
although it does look very promising.

>Look at it this way:  100 years ago a gun was probably the most
>effective wasy of killing a person.  Today it still is.  Granted a
>Glock is slightly more technologically advanced than a PeaceMaker, but
>they pretty much do the same thing.

But a Glock is certainly more efficient than a Peacemaker. Then there's
also the advances in ammo technology to consider. Would you rather be using
a soft lead .45 fired by black powder or a hollow point .45 using smokeless
powder? Although these differences are relatively minor when looking at it
from a technological point of view, in real life there is a big difference.



Eric