Warlord's "40 Years On"

[zenrat]

Somebody on Twitter("X" ) reckons these are the work of an artist called Ian Kennedy. Can't confirm it for certain, but if they are, then credit where credit is due.

I remember the artist from the days of reading Warlord and Commando comics and (wherever they appeared), the stories about The Black Sapper, and the UK getting invaded by the Purple Sun country and a lone Scorpion running around causing havoc... and the odd Dan Dare...
Whoever it is, is/was very good, but I always thought they were better at drawing Sci-Fi than WW2 or modern.
Horses for courses and just my opinion.

Ian Kennedy also drew for 2000AD which is where I remember his work from.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Kennedy_(comics)

[NARSES2]

When I bought "Commando" and it's like they were priced in £SD, getting old 

[Weaver]

I forgot to add smiley emojis, didn't I.     

No I got that you weren't being entirely serious, but it seemed like a good opening to address the common trope of Gatling guns on sci-fi ground vehicles.

[Wardukw]

I forgot to add smiley emojis, didn't I.     

No I got that you weren't being entirely serious, but it seemed like a good opening to address the common trope of Gatling guns on sci-fi ground vehicles.

If your looking at a Gatling set up for a sci-fi build and you want to stuff up the picky buggers about ammo consumption..just turn the tables on em a bit ..caseless ammo ...I'll use the M134 minigun for this ...take a 7.62x51 NATO rd ..it's 71.1mm in lenght..the shell case is 51.2mm long ..the projectile is 32mm long..19.9mm of that is visible...now you have a careless rd which is 35 to 40mm long and 12mm square or with scifi magic and the super advanced powder technology you could end up with a rd which is 10mm square and 40mm long and with a quite measurable weight difference to boot .
It would be a linkless feed system too ..more weight savings..it's all very very plausible as it possible to do that today 😀
I could get way more techy with this but I haven't had enough coffee yet y'all have to wait 

[Weaver]

I forgot to add smiley emojis, didn't I.     

No I got that you weren't being entirely serious, but it seemed like a good opening to address the common trope of Gatling guns on sci-fi ground vehicles.

If your looking at a Gatling set up for a sci-fi build and you want to stuff up the picky buggers about ammo consumption..just turn the tables on em a bit ..caseless ammo ...I'll use the M134 minigun for this ...take a 7.62x51 NATO rd ..it's 71.1mm in lenght..the shell case is 51.2mm long ..the projectile is 32mm long..19.9mm of that is visible...now you have a careless rd which is 35 to 40mm long and 12mm square or with scifi magic and the super advanced powder technology you could end up with a rd which is 10mm square and 40mm long and with a quite measurable weight difference to boot .
It would be a linkless feed system too ..more weight savings..it's all very very plausible as it possible to do that today 😀
I could get way more techy with this but I haven't had enough coffee yet y'all have to wait 

Unless, as you say, you've got "magic" high-energy propellent, then a cased-telescopic round (which is what I think you're referring to: projectile totally inside the propellant) needs to be fatter than a conventional one to get the same volume of propellant, so what you gain on the length, you lose on the width, and typically, ammo capacity of magazines is governed by round width rather than length.

Now if you really want to save volume with sci-fi, you need to go with a liquid propellant gun. Liquid propellants have WAY more energy density than powder, so what you do is design a gun that works a bit like an open-ended piston engine. The projectile is the "piston" and one it's in the chamber, you squirt propellant and oxidiser in behind it and set it off. The length of the ammo is thus only the length of the projectile, while the propellant is one or two big tanks, safely tucked low down behind the hull armour. Of course it's an explosion risk, but then you're not going to survive a powder ammo explosion anyway, are you? Another advantage of liquid propellant guns is that you can vary the muzzle velocity on demand by varying the amount of propellant injected. For short-range rapid-fire, or a high-angle lob shot, you can dial it down to keep recoil force down or make it function more like a mortar. For a hard target or a long-range precision single shot on the other hand, you can dial it right up.

I used to play a sci-fi RPG called Traveller 2300, in which the binary liquid propellant small arms were nicknamed "bipers". I always imagined them with a big liquidy muzzle flash, while the EM gauss rifles, which were the other sci-fi projectile tech, made a threatening rising hum followed by a supersonic crack.

Imagine a hover tank with three filler ports in the back labelled FUEL, PROP & OX, while crewmen pour handfuls of inert tungsten darts into a feed hopper on the side...

[Diamondback]

I'd score 'em as a hard miss, but you can see where Kenner got the ideas for some of their Mega Force diecast toy tanks from...

[Rick Lowe]

Fred, that's the fella I was thinking of. 
And I remember that story, too - in the original B&W.

If you're going all sci-fi on propellants, what about Gauss or something similar, as Weaver mentioned? (the RW MetalStorm springs to mind... just McGuffin that up a tad...)
You'll need something to generate and store the electricity/whatever for the ammo, but you could Hand-Wavium that into being readily available from the fusion/annihilation reactor that powers the vehicle in the first place...

[Weaver]

Fred, that's the fella I was thinking of. 
And I remember that story, too - in the original B&W.

If you're going all sci-fi on propellants, what about Gauss or something similar, as Weaver mentioned? (the RW MetalStorm springs to mind... just McGuffin that up a tad...)
You'll need something to generate and store the electricity/whatever for the ammo, but you could Hand-Wavium that into being readily available from the fusion/annihilation reactor that powers the vehicle in the first place...

Metalstorm wasn't Gauss, it used solid propellant. The innovation there was having multiple shells in each barrel, separated by propellant charges, and fired electrically in sequence. It's been rejected by militaries all around the world so far (soultion looking for a problem, basically) but it strikes me that it could be resurrected in the context of hard-kill active protection systems, where the magazine capacity of the defensive launchers essentially defines how much armour you've got, and reloading (not under cover) is an issue.

In general, electro-magnetic propulsion for kinetic energy rounds becomes viable (maybe even preferable) once you have enough power generation on the vehicle. You might see a return to ambush tactics, where a vehicles uses most of it's power to move quickly from hide-to-hide, then once stationary, diverts all it's power to it's gauss gun for the maximum power "killer shots". Just as with binary propellant, you'd also be able to dial it down when it's not needed, so you can, for instance, engage three or four lightly-armoured vehicles in quick succession at lower (autocannon-equivalent) velocities on one charge or whilst moving.

[Gondor]

Metalstorm wasn't Gauss, it used solid propellant. The innovation there was having multiple shells in each barrel, separated by propellant charges, and fired electrically in sequence. It's been rejected by militaries all around the world so far (soultion looking for a problem, basically) but it strikes me that it could be resurrected in the context of hard-kill active protection systems, where the magazine capacity of the defensive launchers essentially defines how much armour you've got, and reloading (not under cover) is an issue.

I can see two major problems with such a system. 1) firing each round in turn and the means of firing the furthest up the barrel not getting in the way of the round next in-line 2) when firing the round furthest up the barrel, not setting off the round behind it, or the one after that etc.

[zenrat]

When I put the gatlings (I used minigun barrels) on my Hydra Pz iv i thought briefly about how much space in the hull and turret the ammo would take up...

...and then I decided that since it was from a universe of human-arachnid hybrids, Norse gods, and heli-carriers it didn't really matter.

[PR19_Kit]

When I put the gatlings (I used minigun barrels) on my Hydra Pz iv i thought briefly about how much space in the hull and turret the ammo would take up...

...and then I decided that since it was from a universe of human-arachnid hybrids, Norse gods, and heli-carriers it didn't really matter.

Never mind all that, you've changed your avatar again. How do we know it's the teal Fred posting?

[Weaver]

Metalstorm wasn't Gauss, it used solid propellant. The innovation there was having multiple shells in each barrel, separated by propellant charges, and fired electrically in sequence. It's been rejected by militaries all around the world so far (soultion looking for a problem, basically) but it strikes me that it could be resurrected in the context of hard-kill active protection systems, where the magazine capacity of the defensive launchers essentially defines how much armour you've got, and reloading (not under cover) is an issue.

I can see two major problems with such a system. 1) firing each round in turn and the means of firing the furthest up the barrel not getting in the way of the round next in-line 2) when firing the round furthest up the barrel, not setting off the round behind it, or the one after that etc.

All valid points, but Metalstorm did seem to have solved them. The main problem was that nobody needed quite the range of capabilities it offered.

[jcf]

I forgot to add smiley emojis, didn't I.     

No I got that you weren't being entirely serious, but it seemed like a good opening to address the common trope of Gatling guns on sci-fi ground vehicles.

If your looking at a Gatling set up for a sci-fi build and you want to stuff up the picky buggers about ammo consumption..just turn the tables on em a bit ..caseless ammo ...I'll use the M134 minigun for this ...take a 7.62x51 NATO rd ..it's 71.1mm in lenght..the shell case is 51.2mm long ..the projectile is 32mm long..19.9mm of that is visible...now you have a careless rd which is 35 to 40mm long and 12mm square or with scifi magic and the super advanced powder technology you could end up with a rd which is 10mm square and 40mm long and with a quite measurable weight difference to boot .
It would be a linkless feed system too ..more weight savings..it's all very very plausible as it possible to do that today 😀
I could get way more techy with this but I haven't had enough coffee yet y'all have to wait 

Unless, as you say, you've got "magic" high-energy propellent, then a cased-telescopic round (which is what I think you're referring to: projectile totally inside the propellant) needs to be fatter than a conventional one to get the same volume of propellant, so what you gain on the length, you lose on the width, and typically, ammo capacity of magazines is governed by round width rather than length.

Now if you really want to save volume with sci-fi, you need to go with a liquid propellant gun. Liquid propellants have WAY more energy density than powder, so what you do is design a gun that works a bit like an open-ended piston engine. The projectile is the "piston" and one it's in the chamber, you squirt propellant and oxidiser in behind it and set it off. The length of the ammo is thus only the length of the projectile, while the propellant is one or two big tanks, safely tucked low down behind the hull armour. Of course it's an explosion risk, but then you're not going to survive a powder ammo explosion anyway, are you? Another advantage of liquid propellant guns is that you can vary the muzzle velocity on demand by varying the amount of propellant injected. For short-range rapid-fire, or a high-angle lob shot, you can dial it down to keep recoil force down or make it function more like a mortar. For a hard target or a long-range precision single shot on the other hand, you can dial it right up.

I used to play a sci-fi RPG called Traveller 2300, in which the binary liquid propellant small arms were nicknamed "bipers". I always imagined them with a big liquidy muzzle flash, while the EM gauss rifles, which were the other sci-fi projectile tech, made a threatening rising hum followed by a supersonic crack.

Imagine a hover tank with three filler ports in the back labelled FUEL, PROP & OX, while crewmen pour handfuls of inert tungsten darts into a feed hopper on the side...

Basically an auto-loading potato gun.
🤣

[Weaver]

Basically an auto-loading potato gun.
🤣

Precisely.

Back in the day there was a very good series on British TV called The Secret Life Of Machines. In one episode they demonstrated the difference between powder and liquid propellant. They built a baked bean can mortar with interchangeable breeches, one for a quantity of gunpowder, the other for the same volume of petrol (warmed up from the outside to vaporize it). Their test range was on the Cornish coast. When they fired the powder one, the can landed in the next field, a few hundred yards away. When they fired the petrol one, the gun just went "bloop" and the can vanished. Then they repeated the footage in slow-mo, and highlighted the splash of the can landing in the sea about half a mile down-range... 

[Rick Lowe]

Metalstorm wasn't Gauss, it used solid propellant. The innovation there was having multiple shells in each barrel, separated by propellant charges, and fired electrically in sequence. It's been rejected by militaries all around the world so far (soultion looking for a problem, basically) but it strikes me that it could be resurrected in the context of hard-kill active protection systems, where the magazine capacity of the defensive launchers essentially defines how much armour you've got, and reloading (not under cover) is an issue.

I can see two major problems with such a system. 1) firing each round in turn and the means of firing the furthest up the barrel not getting in the way of the round next in-line 2) when firing the round furthest up the barrel, not setting off the round behind it, or the one after that etc.

All valid points, but Metalstorm did seem to have solved them. The main problem was that nobody needed quite the range of capabilities it offered.

I can see it being useful for anti-drone applications... short range, though.