There’s a serious Australian electric ignition version with a ridiculous rate of fire, which should burn out any barrel made of materials from this planet within a few seconds if it was run at SF, which has got some serious support.
Firing videos here
http://www.metalstorm.com/index.php?submenu=Videos&src=news&srctype=lister&category=Latest%20Video%20%26%20Live%20Firings
Isn’t there just! 
Yea saw a documentary on the discovery channel or something. That thing is evil :twisted: …dont want to be any where near the direction of fire.
Basic idea is throw so many bullets at something there is no way it can survive. I know in the future they want to use it as AA coz its cheaper and would basically be like running an aircraft thru a cheese grater.
It’s probably more to do with the age one grows up in.
Having spent countless hours drawing prop fighters and prop bombers in class as a kid, I never got that keen on jets, even though they were important in Korea which wasn’t all that long before I was drawing Spitfires and FW’s etc.
Kids now wouldn’t know what a prop was (unless they’re in that small and quaint group that plays a curious winter game where there are prop halfs or maybe five eighths of half a prop, or whatever it is that props up the side? :D)
Forty or fifty years from now there’ll be a forum with old blokes waxing lyrical about some weapon that has barely left the design table now. It will have not only a flushing toilet but also a shower and automatic Brazilian toucher up.
Still, I wonder how many soldiers with no experience of firearms apart from military training will be able to shoot accurately without optical sights.
Which leads me into one of my many questions about improved technology: What happens when a perfectly functional weapon with an optical sight is rendered useless only because the optical sight has been damaged?
I picked one up at a military display a few years ago and it didn’t seem to have an alternative sight. Nor was the digger attached to it aware of an alternative.
Which reminds me: Was the right side / left side shooting issue based on optical or V / Blade sights?
A quadruple water cooled Vickers would do about the same, with a lot fewer rounds but about the same effect in a killing ground (a couple of rounds in a body is usually about as good as ten), and with unlimited SF.
I don’t see how this electric super-weapon can maintain the rate of fire until they learn to apply some form of super-cooling to it after the first couple of dozen rounds in less than a second.
Also with the metal storm, it ain’t a mobile infantry weapon because of the rate of fire and round consumption. It gets into the same problem as the Bren had with about 1% of the rate of fire: it was too accurate and pumped a burst into the same area.
Metal storm ain’t a base defence weapon unless it’s based at the end of the cartridge production line at some factory, because a few minutes of its great SF would blow every round for miles around. It’s way too hungry.
IRONMAN claims to have invented electric ignition in the early 1980s (the system he described however would not work), despite it being around since the 1880s. This particular shot gun cartridge with electric ignition (allegedly, although I sincerely doubt it would work for the same reasons that Tinwalt’s one wouldn’t) looks remarkably similar to his “invention”.
Since he is probably still lurking and fuming, I leave the image in my signature box.
If you want a fantastic laugh, read through some of the archives. A summary of his “work” on “educating” us on this here for and can be found here: http://www.arrse.co.uk/wiki/IRONMAN
Thanks.
Took me a while to find the site. I didn’t realise there were two ‘r’s’ in ‘arrse’. 
Seemed a bit obsessive to me.
Not unlike the phylosophy of poorly trained draftees in Vietnam. One of the faults reported with the M16 was burned out barrels.
Are we getting back onto Anal-fixation?
How do you rate the L115A1. ? I understand that it is greatly to be desired by all units, but is rather expensive?
It’s an acronym, following on from PPRuNe (Professional Pilot’s Rumour Network) - hence ARmy Rumour SErvice.
No. I never left it.
That’s why I need a psychoanalyst:D
I too feel that the L96 is more inherently accurate than the '42, as it was, (as I’m sure you’re aware,) originally designed by Malcom Cooper, the Olympic shot.
That is where one of it’s problems lies: it is much less handy than the '42 on the stalk.
Then there’s the safety; not really a problem for troops as experienced and trained as snipers, but on the '96 it’s not accessible from a shooting position, although this has been remedied on the AW versions.
The L115 is the mutt’s, again very accurate but length and weight make it more unwieldy - you pays your money and takes your choice. Great rd though.
Much of the other associated eqpt has been updated, but that’s a subject for another thread.
I think that maybe the Spams have got it more or less right with their Remington 700-based rifles: the same accuracy potential as the L96 but with a forend much better suited to actually being carried around all day. my wife has a Remington 700 police .223Rem, out of the box (with a timny trigger) with hand loads I have shot <0.5MOA groups.
You’ll have to excuse me, here - who are the ‘Spams’?
We would have referred to .5MOA as ‘keyholing’ depending on number of rounds fired and how well their impacts overlapped - I had actually forgotten that until now. 
I once took a civillian rifle club enthusiast to Bisley, so that he was able to see military units in competition. He was amazed by the shoots involving running down the range and negotiating obstacles enroute, while the clock was ticking and targes were increasing and disappearing. As you imply, a rifle designed for competition shooting is a different kettle-of-fish to the one required for a sniper or even general military use.
Spams = Septics (septic tank = yank)
@100m, .5MOA centre-to-centre = 14mm, so they don’t quite keyhole 
The only rifle discipline in which more or less bog standard military rifles are best is IPSC “practical rifle”, and then only in “standard” category. the “open category” guys shoot extremely pimped Ar15s as the norm.
As I understand it, the demand for a a replacement for the L42 came about after the experiences of the Falklands?
I understand that the same is happening in Afghanistan, in that the vast ranges require a wwapon with a greater effective range i.e. the L115?
I did see a docu aired on TV a couple of years ago, about the Paras Pathfinder platton and their experimenting with the L115. It seemed very effective. However, as I recall, they had to buy them from regimental funds as the MOD would not allow them a budget for them. It’s a little vague, now, but I think that was how it went.
I’m going back a few years. It was shortly after the SA80 had been introduced and it was that which they used.
You’ll have to be patient with me when discussing technical issues, I haven’t paid any attention to this sort of thing for about thirty years or so.
I get the feeling from what the two of you are saying, is that the L96 is a betterr more accurate rifle than the L42 for accuracy in shooting, but for ‘soldiering’, perhaps, an L42 with a modern sight would be more effective?
I thought for a moment you said - Sherman Tank!