Re: Rail guns (was: US SOCOM desires...)

["Robert J. Hansen" <rjhansen@xxxxxxxx>]

> characteristics we can therefore make the weapons more accurate. We don't
> need a new propellant technology to do this, as is evidenced by the .408
> CheyTac "Intervention Rifle" and its being expected to be able to engage a

<grumpy old man hat ON>

While the .408 CheyTac has a lot of people all excited, I don't, not
particularly.  Sometime, take a look at the arquebuses used by Gustavus
Adolphus.  Most were chambered around an .80 cal and propelled by
enormous powder charges.  The round shot was supersonic by the time it
left the muzzle.

In the last almost four hundred years since Maurice of Nassau modernized
warfare by adding arquebuses, we've done no better than to double the
velocity of the round.

Minie invented spin-stabilization (Minie ball) in the mid-19th century.

One of the finest weapons I've ever used was an antique 8mm Mauser
Kar-98 rifle, dating back from just before the turn of the century. 
It'd been restored and the owner was putting it through its paces at the
range.  It was a very sweet weapon, with fairly good accuracy.  I would
actually prefer it over a post-1964 Winchester 70.

The first assault rifle, the StG-44, influenced a great many designs,
including the AK-47 which came along just a few years later.  The AK is
almost sixty years old, and it's still a perfectly acceptable bit of
kit--I wouldn't use it for precision shooting, but there are any number
of Third World and Eastern Bloc countries that will give the AK family
glowing reviews.

Okay, so the .408 CheyTac is thought to extend engagement range another
few hundred meters by the time development is complete.  Fine, great,
another triumph of engineering.  Two things, though:

1.  Given most engagements occur well within 300m, why is it so
important to have a rifle that can reach out to 1500m?  Even for
snipers, I question the wisdom--a Marine Sniper friend told me several
years ago that while Marine Snipers practice at ranges up to 1km, they
like to get considerably closer than that for the kill--less to worry
about with wind gusting, with bullet time of flight, with your target
moving his head between the time you pull the trigger and the time the
bullet impacts, etc.  If Marine Snipers prefer to work well within 1km,
why are we so ecstatic over a rifle with 1500m range?

2.  Will the reality live up to the theory?  Often, it doesn't.

... If you want to talk about real advances in firearms technology, I'm
hard-pressed to think of any in the last fifty years.  Caseless
ammunition could've been a wonderful advance, but it seems to be dead on
arrival.