Fun Fact, the Pulse Rifle canonically has issues with overpenetration against unarmored humans as the rounds are meant to penetrate body armor and then explode inside the target
Fun fact, because of the fact that it uses an real gun with blanks to fire the prop gun, many such "caseless guns" can be seen ejecting cases in shooting scenes, Aliens being one of those examples, Star Wars and Terminator 2 also have the same thing happening
@@averagejojoenjoyer3776 Yeah. Those guns were definitely made for dealing with humans with advanced armor, that like to hide behind stubborn cover, and vehicles with super alloys. It just so happened they were good enough for the alien threats too.
being at a con, with people bringing their replicas up to half the damn ALiens cast to get signed.....I want one. Still got my blu ray signed by Hicks, Vasqueze and Drake. :)
Dynamit Nobel pretty much fixed the issues with caseless ammunition in the 80's with the G11 program, according to both the Bundeswehr trials and the US ACR program, so as far as caseless ammo reliability, we got that covered.
Dude I was up at night trying to think of a new, unique sci-fi gun for the story I'm writing and I opted for an electric rifle firing caseless rounds... then I realized, "shit, that's just a pulse rifle"
Make a gun that fires plasma contained by an electromagnetic field that is deactivated upon the projectile impacting something, thus "splashing" plasma on the target. The initial impact deals damage like a bullet and the plasma does what plasma does when it touches stuff: it heats stuff up to really high temperatures. To make this work the round would be fired from a coilgun and you could also have the bullet use pressurized air to steer somewhat.
In the early 2000’s Reminton released the EtronX as an electrical-primed hunting rifle to achieve a light trigger pull with minimal delay due to the lack of a striker mechanism. It did not see much commercial success. There is also a long history of weapon programs intended to increase hit probability like the SPIW, ACR, and more recently the NGSW program. The first of which had requirements for a high-capacity rifle with a multi-shot grenade launching system but with high-velocity armor piercing flechettes rather than explosive rounds. It is very likely the Pulse Rifle was inspired from those requirements. Caseless and polymer cased ammo have been developed for all these programs with the most recent (NGSW) showing some promise. Ammunition for newly developed small arms is trending towards high ballistic-coefficient projectiles, some with steel or tungsten penetrators as opposed to flechettes or explosive payload munitions. But the added cost, accelerated wear, and marginal performance over common munitions means that such weapons and their ammunition might only be in niche roles for the time being.
In the U.S. BATFE decreed electric ignition A No-Go Too easy to make A "Machine Gun" which IIRC technically does NOT fit the language in the law of what constitutes A machine gun.
We have propellants powerful enough. What we don't have are chambers and barrels that won't have a service life measured in single digits. Unless of course we're willing to accept the rifle would grow to the size of a cannon.
Just a thought, why not use rocket ammo, but instead of penetrating, it works like British HESH rounds? That way you don’t have the drawbacks of less kinetic energy from mini rocket ammo.
There’s a pistol called the Gyrojet that tried this and it was garbage for a variety of reasons. If you want a cool sci fi version of that concept look up Warhammer 40K’s bolt guns.
While that would definitely be effective, giving pistol-sized guns the an anti-material capacity. However, the big issue is you'd be giving every soldier 20, 30, 50+ explosives that could cook off in bad circumstances or blow up when shot.
It's a good idea in theory but it has a few problems. The first is that the shockwave of HESH rounds is proportional to the about of explosive filling in them, so if you replace some of that with fuel for propulsion you'll have a less effective round than just letting the shell fly and hit at high speed. The second problem what you're going to fire it at. Tank HESH spreads itself out on armour before exploding and I'm not sure that would work on soft targets like Kevlar. The final problem is the legal side. It'd be pretty hard to justify using exploding bullets on people. Anti material rifles are banned for use on infantry for this reason. Would be interesting to see how the idea would work for a grenade launcher though. Might be good against IFVs and other light armour or cover.
@@ryankornacki9918 the gyrojet was garbage because it was entirely new, they were working on a novel idea that wasn't done before to replace a technology that has had many many centuries of development. The gyrojet could be made to be useful but the amount of r&d required makes that a pointless endeavor, we already have perfectly serviceable firearms. and honestly i doubt gyrojet could ever replace modern firearms. too many issues. interesting potential use cases though (after loads of R&D)
@@LilFeralGangrel Yeah, I think the only reason bolters work in 40K is because they invented new metals and explosives that are lighter/harder and more explosive respectively.
Could you review Half Life 2's AR2? It's an alien-designed gun that uses small striker-fired disk-batteries that attaches to a very short barrel but overall with a very bulky frame
I always loved the AR2 as the perfect design for a colonizing power to hand out to native troops: all the magic is in the ammo, and the rest of the weapon just hits the ammo to make it do ammo-things. If your enemies get hold of it they can't make ammo themselves and so you always have the advantage.
I don’t think enough people realize just how powerful a Pulse rifle is. For my HALO fans, imagine a handheld MAC cannon that fire Full Auto. That’s basically the pulse rifle. If the UNSC had been equipped with these babies the Covenant would have been a little more hesitant about zurg rushing marines. Heck the Imperium of Man is even nodding its head in approval.
Ehhh, MAC cannon is a bit on the extreme side, i think this would be closer to the Halo sniper rifle with the magazine size and fire rate of the Original halo assualt rifle
The 'pulse' in the name comes from the fact that the weapon supposedly uses an 'electronic pulse action' rather than a traditional firing pin. In other words, as each round was fired the primer embedded in the base of the caseless round was ignited from an electrical arc at the back of the firing chamber. This is why the gun has such a distinctive sound, it is a combination of a high rate of fire and an electronic whine from the gun's capacitor rapidly discharging. The power pack in universe is mounted in the carry handle and the gun racks seen in the film are designed to recharge the battery when the gun is placed into a rack. Seems to be a really cool, realistic design, something you would expect the military to be using in a hundred years or so. The reason why the ammo count is so high by the way (90+ rounds in a full magazine) is because the rounds are much shorter due to being caseless, so the magazines are double stacked but also form a 'U' shape all the way around the inside of the magazine to fit all the bullets in.
There actually a chapter about the pulse rife and it’s factual history in the anthology aliens, bug Hunt. Highly recommend it if you’re a aliens or space marine fan
One of my all time favorite science fiction weapons. I usually lean more towards machine guns for my sci-fi weapons. Belt-feeders or high capacity energy weapons like the DC-15A heavy blaster rifle as seen in Star Wars Attack of the Clones. But the M41A and the M56 Smart Gun will never leave my top 10 sci-fi infantry weapons. Both capture that cassette futurism that I love.
Speaking of reliable caseless ammo, I think the largest issue we have with regards to something like the Pulse Rifle is simply the fact that what materials we have for caseless ammo don't burn clean enough for continued operation. Brass casings may be heavy and take up space in your mag, but they serve the dual purpose of absorbing/removing a lot of the heat from firing a round, along with preventing the residue from the combustion process from fouling the chamber, which can cause huge failures. From what I've read about the H&K G11, two huge issues that the designers had were that: 1. The chamber would become seriously fouled after a short period of fire, causing serious feeding issues, 2. Excessive heat buildup would cause the caseless propellant to combust spontaneously, causing a runaway fire situation (until the fouling jammed up your mechanism, I guess). Until both of these issues are solved, something like the pulse rifle is just the far-off wet dream of gun nuts everywhere.
I always forget just how sci-fi they imagined this thing to be in order to make xenomorph chitin seem like a big deal, mostly cus the movie forgets to as well in favor of big marines shoot big bugs.
Yea the games kinda bring it back to sci fi a lot like the mech suits being required to deal with carriers and ravagers in the RTS. Carriers having an insta kill on maskless units and ravagers dealing the highest melee damage in the game basically made the mech upgrade a necessity.
For that mag to hold nearly a hundred rounds, i always imagined (in my realism-consumed mind) that the mag is actually a NEW system that uses a method where the rounds are not only stacked side by side but also front to back. After using up the front portion of the double stack mag the receiver automatically transitions to the rear double stack mag.
No mass effect use railguns. This is equivalent to using a spark plug and a gasoline engine instead of a diesel with no spark plugs and only compression ignition.
It certainly seems pretty damn effective the few times we actually get to see it used in combat against the Xenomorphs. It also seems to ressemble some Belgian guns, so I'm curious if the designer was influenced by any real-world weapons.
Heckler & Koch's G-11 would like a word with you, sir. It was production ready when the Berlin Wall fell 30 years ago. It's perfectly reasonable to expect that 30 years of development would have led to an electrical ignition system, over a percussion one.
The M56 Smartgun also deserves some love. Although in a "modern" battlefield would the fact that when going prone the operator has to lie on their back be an issue?
Ngl, I feel like this design is actually fairly realistic considering the time period it’s set it. There’s no doubt going to be advancements in material, weight, pulse weapons, etc. maybe this thing will get a functional version in the future. We probably wont be alive to see it though
Biggest issue now with caseless ammo isn't the reliability. 120mm rounds for the m1 Abrams is mostly caseless. The issue is where is all the heat going to go? When a cartridge gets ejected it takes quite a bit of heat with it. Without it. The heat goes right into the gun. This happens on a bolt action. Shoot one then open the bolt, and take the cartridge out manually. You'll find it cool to the touch as all the heat has gone I to the gun. But a bolt action has you operating everything. On a semi auto that heat can cause failures.
While I don’t know about the efficacy in the case of case less ammo I do know that we have to ability to ignite powder with an electrical charge, applying that to case less ammo might work depending on what kind of case less ammo
Interestingly enough there is a designer in the 3D printed firearm circle who goes by the name "Suckboytony" who is working on a plasma/electrical ignited rifle that uses fragmenting case blackpowder ammo
I’ve notice with a lot science fiction weapons are just worse then modern weapons or they’re so advanced that they’re way beyond the realm of possibility like the gun in 5th element. What I like a about the pulse rifle is that it’s basically just a more powerful and better equipped M4 in every conceivable way.
Maybe not the details, but the design itself is very realistic, it's basically a ultra compact m16a1 with the underbarrel launcher. Add in an ammo counter and an adjustable retractable stock
The hk g11 is kinda similar. It had case less ammunition of course no electric ignition but instead a special mechanism that drove 3 rounds at 2000rpm. The design also looks like a pulse rifle
You could make this gum today. The round being 210 grain, would need a bigger magazine even though it's careless. HK made a careless rifle that held 50+ rounds. But you would get that iconic sound which really is the number one sell of this fictional rifle
I mean, it's kinda cool that the concept is still rooted in feasible tech. It wouldn't be as powerful, but we could make a gun that works on that principle
Honestly the most unrealistic parts about the pulse rifle arent the ammo or under barrel multi shot grenade launcher, its mainly the size. 95 10mm bullets would take up A LOT of space. Aside from the demensions and limoted recoil, everything else about the pulse rifle could be achieved to today, just need the G11 and XM25 to have a baby together
Caseless ammo is the holy grail for the firearms industry, and when perfected, will revolutionize firearms. Imagine a 7.62mm round being fired from a handgun, traveling at the same velocity as if it was shot out of a rifle.
by Sci-Fi standards this is pretty realistic not hard to imagine they improved propellant/ gun powder in the future since humans have already improved the stuff from black powder in our time with the stuff.
For so much time I've heard people saying it was a kind of energy weapon. 😮💨 But it's not. It uses an electric charge to ignite the bullet because in space there's no air. So it's, as often you have heard, "usable in vacuum".
The prop of the Pulse Rifle from the movie is realistic, plus there's people that actually does make real world sci-fi weapons that can function like a actual firearm.. So it's actually possible for someone to create a Pulse Rifle that can be fired but everything else is just for looks and not possible "yet". I said yet because of the built-in grenade launcher is a complex design issue but I do think that it's possible since the Federal Government allows us to have a grenade launcher but we have to make the practice grenades. Also the Pulse Rifle magazine of 99 rounds is only possible for a real world counterpart with the 22cal ammunition or 38cal ammunition instead of 10mm ammunition. What I'm trying to say is that if someone who is a expert gunsmith can create a real world working Pulse Rifle. Since there's already real world Halo firearms that's actually not props like the UNSC assault rifle, battle rifle, shotgun, sniper rifle, and possibly a magnum which are real firearms.
I like it, it could logically work, but with just enough sci-fi energy/propellant tech to make it look super advanced. It's what I'd expect from the guns of the future
Given the time gap between now and then, I'd put it the "Could be realistic one day" category, or the "Conceivable future tech? Yeah sure" category. Not like time travel or teleportation level of sci-fi.
Just did a quick bit of math. At 7000 grains to a pound, 90 rounds at 210 grains is 18, 900 grains, or 2.7 pounds. When they list the guns weight, would that include ammunition? Because if so that puts the gun at 7.3 pounds with an empty magazine and 4 grenades. That would be close to the same weight as my hunting rifle, loaded with optics. That seems to defy physics to me, but I don't actually know how they calculate that.
Forget the propellant, it's getting something to stand up to that chamber pressure that's impossible. You also get diminishing returns on standard lead projectiles at a certain point. The bullet can distentigrate mid flight if loaded too hot. A few dum dums have managed this in reloads that somehow didn't turn their old school bolt action into a pipe bomb
We already have electrically-ignited non-reactive explosives like C4, and I don't think it would be too hard to come up with an explosive of similar characteristics but in a pre-formed hardened shape. And with modern material sciences there are numerous alloys that could withstand the incredibly high chamber pressures that this sort of explosive propellant would theoretically produce. Several relatively small ammunition companies were able to make reliable frangible ammo that is shelf-stable and drop-resistant fairly recently, so why can't the economic juggernaut that is the US Defense Budget not send a few hundred million into the R&D labs to make us reliable caseless ammo? I want to see a real life Aliens Pulse Rifle or an SMG from Halo 2. And as far as the underbarrel grenade launcher is concerned, there are several independently developed 20mm grenade launchers who's ammunition is relatively compact enough that they could feasibly fit 3 shots plus one in the chamber in an underslung layout without too much difficulty. I mean 20x42mm is pretty small but it's packing the same projectiles that NATO uses in it's larger 20mm rounds. Face it, if the powers that be wanted to, they could have a functioning prototype ready for weapons trials by next year. Look at the NGSW trials that happened recently, Sig Sauer basically modified an AR-10 and chambered it in a new hotboy wildcat cartridge that's basically 7.62 NATO on sugar pills, and somehow got the 10 year contract.
I mean we don't have cryosleep or large inter planetary let alone interstellar spacecraft either. By the time we have that sort of tech a rifle using reliable caseless ammo and an underbarrel grenade launcher should be achievable. It probably wouldn't hold that amount of ammo without a significantly bigger magazine though
Right now we don't have materials strong, cheap, and lightweight enough to do thus without the gun exploding. Maybe one day that will change though, and I could definitely see this being explored then.
@@TauLupis how does C4 work? Is there a minimum amount that has to be present to be electrically reactive towards combustion? If that's the case, I assume it's just too great a force at the minimum quantity for the reaction to take place?
@@apeture_explorer4810 If i recall correctly, it's less the size of the explosion and more the violence of it- c4 is a high explosive, meaning it detonates faster than the speed of sound, whereas gunpowder is a low explosive, which detonates slower than the speed of sound. High explosives create a shockwave, which would propagate through the rife, causing stress on the material. Doing a bit of research, it also looks like high explosives burn too fast- sure they create a brief period of very rapid expansion, but as the bullet travels down the barrel, the pressure would rapidly drop off, leaving you with a slower muzzle velocity in the end. In the end, i wouldn't say we can rule out high explosives ever being used to propel bullets, but it's going to take work to happen if it does. If you're looking for potential near-future replacements for gunpowder that are perhaps less far off then rail guns, I'd say take a look into Electrothermal-Chemical Guns (ETS Guns) or Combustion Light-Gas Guns (CLG Guns). These are both weapon systems in development that, at tank/artillery scale, compete with our even outmatch the performance of modern railguns.
Considering how the alien in Alien: Isolation seemed imperviois to bascially all the guns in the game, the overkill of pulse rifle seems about the right tool to bring on a bug hunt
They have been trying to perfect caseless ammo since like the 70s. Honestly I do believe whoever figures out how to make reliable caseless ammo is going to flip the military industrial complex on its head. But everything has a trade off.
I know I could Google this and if I need to i will.. but I'd like to hear it from you. What does grain mean for bullets? Also what advantages does "caseless" ammo provide? Is that the next step in terms for improving ammo ?
Grain is a measure of weight. It's an imperial unit IIRC, I forgot exactly how much that weight is. Also caseless ammunition provides the advantage of being much lighter than case ammunition and also more compact, so you can carry much more ammunition for the same weight. The problem for them is that it tends to be fragile and vulnerable to breaking down in hostile environments, so your ammo might spoil. Caseless ammunition would be useful if we could get it to work. So far it isn't reliable enough to be practical, and we would also need it to be cheap enough to be cost effective for general use.
H&K actually did perfect caseless ammo, but the US project that spurred the development was deader than a Kennedy by that point so the product never hit the narket
That’s not outrageously unrealistic though. Caseless ammo exists, but it‘s not there and cased ammo does the job pretty well so far so it might be a while until someone gives serious thought to that problem. Still, sounds difficult but not unsolvable. The ignition system can be done easily i think. It comes down to material science and propellant chemistry, and i can’t really make any educated guesses here, but maybe something akin to the alien rifle comes around in a hundred years time? I mean, we are further away in time from the first moon landing now than the moon landing is from the first motorized flight, and see how far technology came. AI and computational power will revolutionize chemistry
The G11 was pulled out of military trials due to being deemed unsafe because of the immense heat buildup that comes with a closed caseless system. They improved the ammunition to be able to withstand slightly higher temperatures, but we've yet to come up with a fix for the gun getting too hot. Something like the Metal Storm MAUL or their grenade system would be a better example of a caseless system. Still a relative flop, but it handles some of the issues.
Well to have a better propellent is not a problem. The problem is to find the better materials than what are used today in order to avoid deformation of the barrel. Something like a mixture of titanium and carbon for example. Bot elements have excellent quality. Titanium ensure high resistance and reliability against heat while carbon adds flexibility of the structure. It could technically work. Maybe ask the designers of Beretta. I think they are already working on something like that. Althought it's not exactly necessary for the job the rifle needs to do, R&D is always and constantly brought on. Then there could be better matwrials, right now I don't know, I can do my research if you wish... But you know, I'm a chemical technician. If you want me to do my job... You have to pay me. 😅🤣🤣🤣👍
Yet. We don't have it "yet". Science Fiction tends to become non fiction if we focus efforts on it. For instance, the phone you carry around was Science Fiction in the early 1900s.
