Are flechettes the future? or was the concept doomed from the start?
Too light
Flechettes are excellent for artillery (refer to those eerie himars strikes where there's a low cloud of dust and everybody just drops dead) and missiles (pretty much any Apache biography will reference these at least once), but they're useless in infantry weapons.
>>65400644Are those actually flechettes or just a serving of cruchy tungsten granola?
>>65400626Still trying.Small arm should settle for apds with spin stablized subcaliber projectile
>>65400626>>65400634Too slow. Make them go up to 4000 Meters per second with a decent accuracy (say 3 MOA) and you have a round every military will buy.
>>65400626Doomed from the start
>>65400733I don’t want to imagine what the barrel life would be firing 4000 m/s rounds
>>65400626>Are flechettes the future?Considering that they were tried MANY times over the past 60 years, and they fucking failed each time, obviously fucking not? Last time was the U.S Advanced Combat Rifle program.>>65400733The Steyr ACR was outright getting like 4700fps or something absolutely insane like that. Didn't save it, even if they DID make it stop jamming so much it would still suck for other reasons.Oh wait, METERS per second. No, I don't think we have ever made anything with that kind of muzzle velocity ever, not even railguns. We have got some rockets and probes in space moving way faster than that, but that's such a different fucking ballpark that it's not even worth mentioning.
>>65400826The projectile could also weigh 0.5gr and the recoil would still be fucking Looney Tunes at 4000m/s
>>65400826Erosion from peak temperature is worse than friction. Sabot don't have to have any higher peak pressure.
>>65400902The two flechette guns in the ACR trials both had terrible accuracy.
>>65401429So they did. OP thinks if we try a 26th time though, it's going to finally work.
>>65400904Even with 100 gr powder charge (about 4x a standard 5.56 55gr fmj) in a 7 lb rifle it's still only producing about 11.6 ft-lbs of recoil. That's not even .243 level. Powder charge and projectile weight have way more effect on recoil than velocity.>well obviously the projectile will be heavierOk, 20gr projectile in same configuration. 26.2 ft-lbs of recoil impulse. Right in line with a .45-70 out of a 7lb rifle (no specification for actual load, probably a standard pressure 405gr). Stout but manageable.Obviously this is with a generic average value used for powder because there's so many variations in burn rates, but realistically it's not possible to get any projectile going that fast with gunpowder anyway, the pressure would be impossible to manage. Any small arm moving something that fast is using EM and since you're not setting off an explosion (aside from the thing vaporizing as it leaves the end of the rail from air resistance) the physics are entirely different.Calculator usedhttps://shooterscalculator.com/recoil-calculator.php
>>65400626>needledicking through someone with a 12gr projectile causing zero damage 95% of the timeBut hey it penned the plate! Good for you...
>>65401752What'd you get with 55gr and 68gr?
>>65400733>4000 Meters per secondare you planning on shooting at targets on the moon?
>>65401663>OP thinks if we try a 26th time thoughThere's loads of things that don't work because they require materials or tech that doesn't exist (yet).
>>65401830bah, you need about 5x that velocity for a moonshot from ground level>>65401752most people don't want 10-12ftlb for sustained firing situations forget more than that. major reason why 7.62 was dropped for 5.45 is the ease of control.
The projectile need not be a flechette, but the future potential of smoothbore small arms is intriguing.
>>65400626The future happened 5 years ago. Nothing you like is gonna make a come back. Stop trying to speculate, stick to the meta
>>65401832Usually those things showed strong promise all along.
>>65400733How about 5km a second?
>>65401835>major reason why 7.62 was dropped for 5.45 isbecause the US moved to a smaller caliber, simple as7 times out of 10 soviet decisions were just them aping western ones
>>65400826>>65400902>>65401830>>65402307You need to have goals in your life.
>>65400733So why not just build a portable railgun at that point?
Small arms don't matter. Artillery is the master of ground warfare.
Firstly I would like to set goalposts, in flachette being primary munitions, SPIW, not sub-munitions, frag.There are curent and valid application of flachette as as mortar rounds, bazooka rounds, anti personelle rockets, in those applications though it's just optimized frag. true SPIW application, well because of their SD they rely on velocity, firing 20 of them out of a 12g just doesn't work because the velocity is too low, you might as well have used 00 buck. The only application is shooting deer in 2A vests with shotguns at 150M. implausibly small niche. This is why SPIW was a rifle munition.Firstly I would like to point out that SPIW failed to achieve greater terminal effect then 7.62ball, helmets of that period were only meant to protect against splinters, rocks, dirt, general injury they were not bulletproof at all, penetrating one was a minimum standard not a goal. So the only application I can really see is that like tracer, belt fed 5.56 could alternate SPIW to widen the cone of fire while still retaining burst fire accuracy. And that's...I suspect a recognized application....but just not of significant benefit to anyone.
Though eliminated from the early SPIW program for a range of reasons, the H&R was actually the peak design. The idea of putting a 40mm on an already flachette gun was totally ridiculous and if we ignore that tender consideration, the weigh of the system falls dramatically. And if we accept the triplex flachette, as the one which serves the tactical purpose of a flachette, rather then a single flachette which only meets the semantic requirements of procurement...All I'm saying is that a FN minimi could fire a single/single/triplex belt and in doing so simply increase it's suppressive effect and cone of fire. And this also significantly mitigates the cost o producing flachette for GP, and avoids the single shot accuracy issue.
>>65400626The purpose of flechettes is losing velocity slower than other roundsThe main reason they didn't work in old prototype guns is quality control of the time (and retards put them in shotguns because they didn't realize the speed thing)Terminal effects are less of a problem than most realize because a differential temper on the round guarantees it'll fishook every time over a threshold velocity (typically above 3000fps) which since its a flechette equates to over 1kmSo they could make sense for long range beltfed, but at carbine range and lower a normal bullet has a fine trajectory and doesn't have the terminal effects issues.Think a plastic-cartridge flechette machinegun with MG42 ROF, giving GPMG on a tripod range with the weight of a LMG instead. And at 800-1200 meters the risk of merely poking holes instead of massive terminal damage is a nonissue since they aren't going to maneuver on you successfully before they bleed out.
