It's the ALL NEW FUTURISTIC WEAPONS Black Friday Roundup!

It's Thanksgiving again, the time of year when denizens of our former American colonies - alas, still in a distressingly successful and prolonged state of rebellion against their rightful sovereign - like to assemble as families and fortify themselves for a punishing day of shopping by scoffing a mountain of tuck while watching …

[TeeCee]

"...no warrior monks..."

You have much to learn grasshopper......

[sT0rNG b4R3 duRiD]

Nah...

he's just never seen knives and pointy things in America....

Hint to Lewis: They exist.

[amanfromMars 1]

Who leads who, and to what grand aim? Surely something greater than a bank advisory role

Who tasks the Directorate of Special Forces, their operations/missions, Lewis? Please don't tell us they follow orders from those clueless muppets and self-serving puppets pratting around in Parliament and Westminster. That would be just too ridiculous and a criminal waste of prime talent.

[JHS]

Luckily not

I suggest you take a look at Mark Urban's Task Force Black (about £4 on amazon) it covers the SAS's rather successful contribution to the war in Iraq between 2003-2008.

[Anonymous Coward]

Butts

"It just means working in a trench handling the targets at the end of a rifle range. The bullets from the people who are shooting pass over your head."

And occasionally back at the people in the butts if the sand meant to catch the bullets hasn't been raked in a long time....

[Anonymous Coward]

More likely...

The guy shooting the muzzel loader or .57 Martini Henry hits the wooden frame causing massive wood spliters to rain on your head.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or the 7.62MM round landing on top of my berret from a mantlet hit.

Never pick it up when they do that as they are bloody hot, got a nice burn out of it

[Desk Jockey]

Silenced sniper

"New developments in silenced sniper rifles"... *cough* Soviet era 'Val' sniper rifle - http://world.guns.ru/assault/rus/as-val-e.html Not exactly new tech just because the Americans are catching up and putting better opticals on it!

[Svein Skogen]

Not VAL.

It's almost the same gun, but what you're looking for is the Vintorez ("Bolt Cutter"). Slightly smaller clip, longer barrel, a tad more accurate (and comfy). But mostly the same parts.

//Svein

[Anonymous Coward]

Tasers are NOT "non-lethal"

Even the OEM has ever-so-slowly changed their tune and they now use the near-meaningless phrase "less than lethal". They've also added more and more direct health risks to their warnings. It's also a cold hard fact that some subjects have been in perfect health one moment and dead the next, and coroners have attributed some deaths to the taser's effects. Dr. Zipes, one of the world's leading experts in the field, has concluded that the OEM has systematically understated the risks. Canada's Braidwood Inquiry concluded that tasers can cause and contribute to death, and the OEM's appeal was tossed out of court.

Of course the taser death rate is low by any standard, but that misses the point.

The point is that false claims that tasers are inherently and always "non-lethal" is dangerously misleading and such false claims lead directly to the overuse of tasers in non-violent encounters (many examples). The result is often a net increase in the level of violence introduced into non-violent situations, and subjects being killed where it should not have happened. Not even touching on the entire torture question... Many hundreds of directly related lawsuits are costing US cities millions and millions and millions of dollars.

It's obvious that the *only* correct approach is to treat these weapons as "potentially lethal" (banish the misleading and dangerous concept of them being "non-lethal") and invoke strict policy that only allows their use immediately below lethal force (a huge narrowing of their too frequent misuse as a compliance [torture] tool). Such a better-informed approach eliminates virtually all of the misapplications while sticking closer to the advantage that tasers are obviously less lethal than gun fire.

It's impossible to fully debate this complex issue in comment boxes.

[Keep Refrigerated]

Mispurposed

"It's impossible to fully debate this complex issue in comment boxes."

Actually I think you hit the nail on the head very well there.

I think the problem is that most responsible types saw tazers as: "Hurray, now when we have to shoot, we won't necessarily kill the perp. Less messy deaths and paperwork."

Whereas most cops thought: "Hurray, now we can shoot anyone. Less hassle catching and negotiating - when can I get my hands on one?!"

[The First Dave]

Something that was probably evident in the Raoul Moat incident - cops had a new shiny shiny and decided to see what would happen, rather than just waiting until he fell asleep. Dunno what they were thinking though - what did they expect to happen to a guy with his hand on the trigger of a loaded weapon when subjected to an electric shock?

[Mark 65]

"what did they expect to happen to a guy with his hand on the trigger of a loaded weapon when subjected to an electric shock?"

Exactly what did happen perhaps?

[Imsimil Berati-Lahn]

Early experiments in operation Anubis

We have evidence of operation Anubis in action against a powerful Russian adversary.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbnySBqioB0

Clearly a prototype, but devastating results nonetheless.

[Mako]

Liked the article...

...but am commenting just to say thanks for putting the footnotes on the same page where they're referenced. Any chance of some of your colleagues taking up that practice, Lewis?

[BoldMan]

hear hear on both your points :)

[Michael 47]

Seconded

couldn't agree more, please more footnotes at the bottom of the relevant page

[desmond.wolfe]

No kidding

I actually went to the last page for the first reference and was very confused. Is there some sort of butt party draft in the US? I know they're a little odd, but...

[John Smith 19]

Or a supersonic round with no sonic boom

Sounds quite mad but *is* under development by at least 1 US company.

Note it's *real* payoff is the development of design rules for a "boom free" supersonic plane.

Supersonic research on *anything* bigger than a bullet is pretty tough otherwise.

[SiempreTuna]

VAL ..

There was also the Russian self-silencing ammo where the cartridge 'sealed' itself once the bullet had departed - but I think that was only available as pistol ammo.

Either way, given they're both from the 70s, they hardly qualify as 'ALL NEW' or 'FUTURISTIC' ..

[Nights_are_Long]

The Russian 9X39 SP-5 round is a heavy sub sonic round that happens to do the same job, it avoids the sonic boom and when used with the VSS Vintorez rifle it's prity much near totally silent from the reports I have read.

However the De Lisle carbine was supposed to have the same claim to fame, but it took a .45 ACP round married to a Enfield action and a near full barrel length silencer to achieve this claim, but I have my doubts about it being that quiet, the .22LR version could have been that quiet but not the .45 ACP version.

[Msan]

An exteremely annoying article

but only because I've already done my Chrissy shopping.

[Pigeon]

Don't despair

There might be a selection box at Guns R Us

[2metoo]

Glad I wasn't drinking tea...

employing knife, garrotte or little-known *Oriental furtling* technique.

Splendid.

[Cagey]

New Tech That's 50 Years Old

I was very happy to note that David Dardick's plastic ammo / circular chamber firearms design has finally been recognized as a superior technology by the military. I was fortunate enough to fire one of the 9mm pistols he manufactured as a teenager in the 60's. The actual patents for his system were issued in 1958 so it only took 53 years for the military to adopt his ideas!

Ken Holloway

[Anonymous Coward]

Fantasizing

These killing weapons are all written up in a sickeningly gleeful way Lewis - as though your itchy trigger fingers are too busy shuffling to a copy of Arms Trader monthly for you to notice that these inventions will all be used to bring about horrible deaths (often to people of debatable guilt).

Maybe a course of Tai Chi or Yoga or something is needed grasshopper?

[Captain Thyratron]

We all noticed.

But instead of letting ourselves be fascinated by cleverness in one form or another, morbid of not, I suppose we should be bawling about the fact that war still exists and pretend that humans would be less violent and suffer less if only they used cruder weapons. Let's knock off all this high-tech stuff and take weapons all the way back to 1914. It'll make the world a kinder and gentler place, won't it?

By the way, tai chi contains numerous combat forms, including several for weapons, and a nontrival number of human beings have, in all likelihood, been killed gruesomely with tai chi sword techniques during the centuries over which these have been developed. Just thought you might like to know that while you were ranting about how evil it is to show some appreciation for the cleverness of a fancy gun.

[Anonymous Coward]

point = missed

When you abstract away the actual killing from a personal decision to end someones life, to a decision to simply set off some bot in motion it is too easy to lose all intuitive moral objections to killing.

This is being witnessed more and more as American (in particular) troops are killing hundreds of innocent civilians in drone strikes, with no guilt or regret, because the actual deed has now been abstracted away from the person who presses the launch button.

The further technology progress with intelligent bots, the less soldiers will care, or feel responsible for murdering civilians.

[paulc]

Butt Party...

|*Not as exciting as it might sound to some: It just means working in a trench handling the targets at the end of a rifle range. The bullets from the people who are shooting pass over your head.|

and sometimes if you're really unlucky, a richochet from the backstop could spang back into your trench... the more bullets that had been fired on the range, the greater the chances of richochets... so every now and then, the backstops would be dug out and relaid

[Mike 16]

Rotating chamber?

How does it differ from the "Coffee Grinder" used by Union forces in the "Recent Unpleasantness" (aka "War Between the States" or "U.S. Civil War")?

That weapon suffered from the barrel-heating problem and so was eclipsed by Doctor Gatling's invention. Of course, Gatling is better known because both sides got to use his version, thanks to a conveniently located factory... ("Allegedly"...)

[Dave Bell]

I think the talk could be of something a bit different. There have been various rotating chamber guns over the years, from the relatively crude idea of the revolver to some modern aurcraft cannon.

The Gatling design was essentially six complete guns, each chamber having its own bolt, extractor/ejector, and firing mechanism. A Victorian alternative was the Hotchkiss Rotating Cannon, which was more of a multi-position press, with loading, firing, and case extraction done by fixed single mechanisms.

http://youtu.be/GkOP8Lwdmgg is a video showing the Hotchkiss mechanism

The type of mechanism which might be used in this gun would be the Dardick, where the cartridges are not round, but triangular.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dardick_tround for the basic info

I know, I'm being geeky

[Hombre sin nombre]

That picture on the taser shotgun page

Dope has his Redimag on the wrong side of the rifle. His spare magazine is blocking the ejection port.

[cphi]

tough <> hard

Cobalt is hard, not tough. (It's quite brittle).

[EWI]

Reminds me of the old 'Ethical' machine guns argument

""I could see a whole squad carrying it," said Specialist Brandon Smith of the US Army, having participated in the trials lately, meaning that all soldiers would have such firepower in their personal weapons, not just specialists. "You would own the battlefield.""

'Cos God knows nobody else could copy such tech. Arms manufacturers, eh?

[bep]

Wrong calibre again?

But shirley you would only 'own the battlefield' out to certain distance? Wouldn't this tech be better used to produce a 7.62 mm machine gun that weighs no more than the Minimi, not to mention a 7.62 assault rifle that weighs no more than the present 5.56mm weapons? I thought the biggest problem they were facing in Afghanistan was that the Taliban we sometimes out-ranging them using Russian 7.62mm sniper rifles.

[Anonymous Coward]

Telescoped Cartridges

"But US military boffins at the famous Picatinny Arsenal have also been working on this situation for some time. Since ammo weight and bulk is much of the problem, they have come up with a new kind of ammunition: Cased Telescoped cartridges."

"There are other advantages: the new LMG's novel rotating chamber doesn't heat up as an M249's does,"

Telescoped cartridges and rotating chambers were developed by Heckler&Koch and Dynamit Nobel for the German G11 project, which was under development from the late '60s until 1990. The technology was licensed to the States for the LMG project only in 2004. Only the plastic casing was later added to the ammunition. Please give credit where it's due.

[John Smith 19]

fat, plastic and used to high temperatures

Sounds like a humvee?

[Charlie Clark]

Lovely article, Lewis: informative, well-written and amusing. You're wasted on us and should be writing the next James Bond or something.

PS. is that video about LCITS genuine? The Medusa thing looks too barmy to have been made up in a satire.

[Stevie]

Sheerly, Starlky Unthinkable!

What good is your Browning SAR when you are staring down the burned and pitted orifices of my twin DeLammeters, you filthy Zwilnik?

[John 62]

MAULTasers

The lighter way to enjoy less lethal force

[Anonymous Coward]

LCITS weapon

Always finds the special spot