Regular readers of TM magazine and Technics and Armaments (as well as Foreign Military Review) can confirm that in the past forecasts regarding the prospects for the development of small arms appeared with enviable regularity and that none of them, however, did not come true !!! No one! Interesting, isn't it? And the reason, apparently, is only one - a huge number of variables that are simply impossible to take into account. Today, however, the development of civilization presents us with a unique situation: with the simultaneous acceleration of development, there has been a decrease in the number of trends, which allows us to make first general and then particular forecasts with a greater degree of their implementation.
Beautiful girls from the military training center of the Penza State University. In the future, they (or others like them) are unlikely to have to run around the battlefield with a rifle. Sitting on duty in his own apartment, where borscht for children and spouse is already being cooked on the stove, this is … a "fighter-operator", acting through a satellite and a repeater drone, will be able to fight with the help of disposable drones delivered "where necessary" for thousands of kilometers from the territory of the Russian Federation.
Let's start with global forecasts, one way or another affecting the development of weapons, including small arms. Today, the main threat to the development of civilization is not the fall of a giant meteorite, not the explosion of a supervolcano, not the Ebola-2 or "super speed" pandemic, and not even a global nuclear war, but the uncontrolled growth of the planet's population. Moreover, the number of its least civilized part is growing, while its most civilized part is constantly decreasing. The result may be the “centuries of hunger and murder” predicted by Ivan Efremov in his novel The Hour of the Bull. Take India and China for example. The first has already caught up with its neighbor in terms of population. But this is not the main thing. In China, the average age is 62 (!), That is, the population is rapidly aging, and the new is not recovering. In India, the average age is 26, although the number of children per woman seems to be small - 1, 46. But … 26 versus 62 is a huge advantage. Now imagine that every Indian slum family wants a Khrushchev and a car? Smelting one ton of steel requires four tons of fresh water. Then you can't drink it anymore! Can you imagine the pressure on nature that will arise from just one desire of the Indians "to live like everyone else." And then there is Africa and the Indians of South America.
This is one of the trends, and the most important, of modern civilization. The second is massive computerization and the introduction of modern information technologies into all spheres of life. The third trend is ecology and health care, as those who “live well” want to live longer. The paradox is that instead of lowering the cost of human life, these trends only increased its cost and value. Today, people who are talking "no one knows where" right on the street and no one knows with whom are no longer surprising. But soon we will also be talking to our homes, refrigerators and grocery store in the same way, from where the drone-messengers will deliver goods to us directly by air.
Accordingly, the “poor”, as before, by force of arms will try to take away the goods from the “rich”, and the latter will defend against them in such a way as to have not only technological, but also moral superiority over them. The latter can be ensured in the following ways, and all of them are already involved today, although they are essentially in a rather latent, that is, latent state.
The first is the ideological substantiation of any armed uprising as terrorism, the purpose of which is to destroy the common good, peace and stability.
The second is the declaration of any armed action a crime against the environment and humanity in general.
The third is the use of "humane" means of warfare against illegal terrorist groups.
Fourth - the use by advanced countries of the most modern technologies of warfare so that it would be easy, downright visual, to distinguish "peace soldiers" from terrorists.
It is quite easy to achieve all the goals indicated by these directions. For this, economically developed countries need to switch to fundamentally new types of small arms (and other weapons). These should be samples of drones, allowing to destroy the enemy at a distance, without entering into direct fire contact with him, and the actual small arms should be disposable and made of plastic in 3D printing technology. Naturally, countries that have lagged behind in their technological development will not be able to repeat such rearmament and will instantly find themselves among rogue states and potential terrorists, since they will inevitably have to use old types of weapons made of metal.
That is, the advanced states will destroy their opponents at a distance. From the air, bombs and cruise missiles, and their hulls will not even be made of metal, but carbon fiber, paper and even household waste in such a way that after an explosion they would pollute the environment in a minimal way! Drones will have to operate in three zones from the front edge: 1-3 km, 3-5 km and 5-10 km, and at a greater distance, missiles, artillery and aviation will have to be used.
The shooter of the near future, operating in the first zone, will have a backpack with launchers for disposable drones, which look like small helicopters with folding blades, armed with the simplest firing device: a recoilless barrel of 5, 45 and 9 mm caliber, loaded with an arrow bullet and a load metal, iron, shot of the same weight. The drones are launched directly from the back, and the shooter controls their flight on a portable monitor. Having found the target, the shooter first makes an aimed shot at it, and then uses the drone as a "kamikaze" (for which it is equipped with sickle-shaped sharpened blades), attacking enemy soldiers dressed in durable bulletproof vests and helmets. The aim of the drone is the arms and legs of the combatants, which are unlikely to be fully protected. Wounds from the attack of such a drone are unlikely to lead to a fatal outcome, but they will surely be able to incapacitate a person. Having, say, six such drones, one shooter will be able to counter six enemy fighters, and 10 - already sixty! Since at such a distance it will be possible to provide communication with the drone using the thinnest wires made on the basis of nanotechnology, the problem of electronic warfare does not exist for them. By the way, the drones themselves can be printed literally right there, at special mobile factories installed on armored tank chassis. The ammunition supply of the soldiers in the positions - with the help of transport drones operating at extremely low altitudes "on call".
In the 3-5 km zone, the drone should have a flight time of 40 minutes - 1 hour. It can also be equipped with the same firing device, but with a large supply of fuel, it will be able to stay in the air for a much longer time and "work on the enemy" while in standby mode. And in a similar way, drones operate in the next zone, where their targets are soldiers of auxiliary units, drivers of vehicles, doctors (who went out to smoke from the MES hospital), commanders, tankers resting on tanks in anticipation of an order to start moving, but you never know who will fall into flight. Accordingly, these drones can be controlled via a satellite using highly directional antennas or a repeater drone hovering at an altitude of 10-20 km.
It turns out that getting close to such an enemy, and even supported by aviation, artillery and tanks, will be quite difficult, but even if this happens, at the 1.5-2 km line, shooters from 12.7-mm heavy rifles, machine guns and grenade launchers, while disposable small-sized drones will continue to "work" against the enemy who has lain down. And not only during the day, but also at night, since they are equipped with IR cameras.
Thus, all fighters armed with such long-range remote weapons will not need modern rifles or pistols. For self-defense and self-confidence, they will need 3D-printed disposable firing devices. Again, their opponents, even having such a weapon in their hands, will not be able to use it, since it is not only disposable, but also activated by an implanted soldier under the thumb of the right (left) hand with a microchip.
In these conditions, the most relevant weapon of the soldier of tomorrow will no longer be an automatic rifle, but … a submachine gun for self-defense in critical situations at a distance of no more than 50 - 100 m. But what the samples of such weapons will be, we will now consider in somewhat more detail.
First of all, let's think about what is the main task of a weapon for self-defense? It is simple - to throw as much deadly metal as possible towards the enemy. Hence the conclusion that the higher its rate of fire is, the better. However, the experience of all wars shows that with a rate of fire of 1000 rounds per minute, the weapon becomes difficult to control, and the ammunition consumption is unreasonably high.
What if you use ammunition with square U-shaped casings, loaded with two bullets at once? One shot - two bullets! At a rate of fire of 500 rounds per minute, this gives 1000 bullets - a whole shower, right? He also has one shutter, but there are two barrels located parallel to each other. The dimensions increase only slightly, but the effectiveness of such weapons increases dramatically. At the same time, the technology of its production is also simplified. Since both the barrel and the bullet have a square cross-section ("Lancaster drill"), it will be quite simple to make them on modern equipment. In this case, the "square" along the trunk does not go straight, but reproduces a certain number of turns by analogy with grooves. In such a barrel, the bullet acquires a moment of rotation, which significantly increases the accuracy and accuracy of fire, that is, at a distance of effective fire from a submachine gun, it will be a very accurate weapon. True, this is also the most traditional submachine gun, entirely made of metal within the framework of modern technologies. However, not quite. Bullets for it can be stamped out of iron, that is, a corrosive metal, which in nature will sooner or later turn into nothing and will not pollute it like lead!
A bullet with a gyroscope flywheel.
Another option for a submachine gun of the near future may be a weapon with a flat bore of two calibers at once, say, 4, 5 and 30 mm. The device of the bullet to it is shown in the figure, and it can be both sleeveless and caseless ammunition. In the past, for such ammunition, a powder charge was tried to be placed in the bullet itself so that it did not touch the chamber heated from firing, which led to its elongation and, therefore, poor stabilization in flight. That is why the Heckler und Koch company refused such bullets in their rifle, and came up with a cartridge with a bullet drowned in a powder charge. But since the charge in it still touches the chamber, and that may be overheated from firing, such a solution does not seem particularly successful at all. What happens if a powder check ignites in the chamber before the rifle bolt closes?
How to increase the stabilization of a bullet in flight and at the same time make it so that the powder check would still fit inside it? In the picture you see such a flat, like a parallelepiped, a bullet with a sharpened leading edge, well, just razor sharp. In fact, this is a flying blade capable of cutting through any Kevlar bulletproof vests at a distance of 50-100 meters.
At the same time, the bullet itself is steel and consists of only three parts: a flywheel-turbine with blades and two panels - upper and lower, which will be connected by spot welding. Inside there are channels of a special shape, a powder charge and two burning capsules. Pay attention to the two side holes, which play a very important role in this design.
When, after firing, the bullet slides along the barrel bore (having heard due to the pressure of the gases, it adheres tightly to its walls, no matter how they expand from heating!), Gases do not escape through these holes. But as soon as the bullet moves out of the barrel so that they open, an intensive outflow of gases begins through them, both to the left and to the right. However, the channels are not symmetrical internally. Therefore, although the volume of gases in both directions is the same, they act in different ways. Those that flow out on the right are simply carried away into the atmosphere and that's it. But the gases flowing from the left hole wash the blades of the flywheel turbine. It unwinds and thereby holds the bullet in a horizontal position, given by the plane of the barrel.
To extract the bullet, if necessary, a groove along the perimeter of the body is provided in its rear part. With a bullet thickness of 4.5 mm, its width can reach 20, 30 and even 40 mm. In this case, the wall thickness can be equal to 1 mm, and the thickness of the flywheel 2.2 mm. Such a bullet, since it has a metal shell, will not be able to ignite in the chamber overheated from frequent firing, and will be much more resistant to mechanical damage, unlike caseless ammunition in the German G11 rifle. At the same time, since its “caliber” is 4.5 mm in thickness, then not 30 rounds will go into the magazine, but all 60. In addition, the absence of rims makes it easier to equip the magazine and eliminates the possibility of delays in feeding cartridges. The production of weapons is simplified, since milling a rectangular barrel from two halves is much easier than drilling and slicing it. A barrel of two halves, firmly fastened with the help of some simple lock, is easier to care for, moreover, such barrels can be produced by stamping. Well, when it hits the target, such a bullet inflicts a wide cut wound, causing profuse bleeding. True, it is inconvenient to make a pistol for it, since the width of the bullet is limited by the ergonomics of its grip, but the submachine gun may well be successfully made for it. The absence of a brass sleeve is of great economic importance, more than compensating for some of the complexity of assembling a bullet from three parts. But you can also make a regular cartridge with a sleeve. The main thing here is the convenient capabilities of the bullet!
Structurally, it can be modeled on the Italian Beretta M12 submachine gun with two pistol grips for easy holding and a direct magazine between them. The second handle is required, because due to the size of the ammunition, it will not be very convenient to hold the weapon by the magazine.
