NationStates Jolt Archive

The TAPW (Tank Armour Piercing Weapon) is a hand held lightweight gun capable of blasting holes through 20 Cm of Steel. It is just a trial version of our aimed for ultimate tank busting weapon. It is a fast shooting gun that can effectively pass through thick metal and then explode, causing extensive damage. The current model, 01, is for sale at $1750 per weapon. Bullets at 1000 for $450 are quite expensive but pack quite a punch.

Specifications:

Length: 1100 mm
Barrel Length: 650 mm
Height: 250 mm
Width: 80 mm
Weight: 10 Kg
Muzzle Velocity: 400 m/s
Maximum velocity: 1800 m/s
Caliber: 30.56 mm
Effective range: 450 meters
Maximum range: 900 meters
Action: Automatic, Blowback
Rate of fire: 540 rounds per minute
Ammo: Stratorian Dreigherdae SXAP rounds

The bullet's explosion is enough to tear a hand apart if hit in the centre. Do I hear any buyers?

The Dominion of Vetaka will purchase 50 to undego extensive testing. Funds being wired now.

VDF Supreme Operational Commander Stone

They shall be shipped Immediatly, I hope you find them to be of good quality

OOC: just so you know, all orders used to be answered to personally by strator, but now he is kinda in your country so he cannot really know about your order unless you talk to him

OOC: Uh, I'm pretty sure you can't have an anti-tank weapon using 8.53mm ammo...

Its not for blowing up tanks in a rpg kinda way, it is for piercing the armour and blowing up the fuel or killing people inside. it also makes for a really good way to kill somebody

and that too

OOC: Uh, I'm pretty sure you can't have an anti-tank weapon using 8.53mm ammo...

incrased speed might do it but he'd also have increased recoil..depends on if he's MT+ or PMT really.

OOC:
Nope this weapon simply won't work and will never get anything like the performance claims let alone be biuldable at the price quoted.
In terms of muzzle energy if we assume that the bullet used is roughly simialr to .338(8.57mm) lapua magnum then we get a bullet weight of 16.2 grams which at 2400m/s would give us a muzzle energy of appoximately 47kj i.e. about the level of most 20mm cannon rounds.
although saying that with an effective rnage of a mere 450m we could be using a lighter round with a truely horrible sectional density.
To be honest 200mm of armour penetration is likely unreachable without using at least a proper cannon round and a 8.53mm round would be far too small to bother putting any explosives in.

This kind of anti armour approach went out of the window at the begining of ww2, when the germans realised that they couldn't get any more power out of 7.92mm rounds no matter how much propellant they used or how long the barrel was (everyone else had guessed this during ww1 hence why At rifles became much larger, so alrge infact that they became more or less full sized AT guns). Current anti material rifles (i.e. rifles cmabered for full power roudns in the 12.7-20mm region and a few medium velcoity 20-30mm roudns) tend not to exceed 20-30mm of penetration, even when using saboted ammuntion, i think the best usable rnage penetration figure is for the 25mm HEAT roudn of the XM109 at a massive 51mm!


I am in no way sayign don't design this rifle but you are goign to reset your goals and expectations to something more reasonable. Which for a 8.53mm rifle would be a decent logn rnage sniping weapon possibly with a muzzle velocity in the 1000-1500m/s region (although that would put a huge strain on the barrel and require a failry heavy weapon). If you do intend to do soem serious firearms/ammuntion designing a good start would be to read Tony Williams website: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk/index.htm particularly his primer and itnroductory articles.

Good:
Length: 1100 mm
Barrel Length: 650 mm
Height: 250 mm
Width: 80 mm
Weight: 4 Kg
Caliber: 8.53 mm
Rate of fire: 540 rounds per minute
Ammo: Stratorian Dreigherdae SXAP rounds

Missing:
Mag size

Other:
Muzzle Velocity: 2400 m/s (looks a tad high, that's 9600 fps!!!!)
Optimum range: 450 meters (replace 'optimum' with 'effective')
Maximum effective range: 900 meters (up it, omit the word 'effective')
Minimum effective range: 10 meters (No clue where this came from)
Action: Automatic (S-E-F trigger group? or auto only? What kind of automatic action?)



Wait a second... are these rocket assisted?

Thanks for the info, this is my first gun design post so I needed some schooling

If you'd like, you could join the NS Draftroom (z13.invisionfree.com/the_NS_Draftroom)!

What would be a good muzzle velocity, 1800 m/s is that of a tank gun so I thought it might be reasonable to maybe increase it like that, is 1800 m/s alright?

and yeah they were supposed to be rocket assiasted

What would be a good muzzle velocity, 1800 m/s is that of a tank gun so I thought it might be reasonable to maybe increase it like that, is 1800 m/s alright?

and yeah they were supposed to be rocket assiasted

V10, Uld, and myself just finished heckling over the stats of such a rifle.

In summary:*

Up the caliber, 12.7 to 40 mm, your choice.

You would need a lot of extra quick burning powder to use it all in 10 meters, but then it would qualify as a 'detonation', and you don't want those less than 10 meters away from you, more like 20 to 50. At shorter ranges, this would act as an HE charge.

Max velocity won't be that high, more like 1,000 m/s to 1,600 m/s. Unless you want PMT/FT where you can 'invent' a physics wanking rocket fuel...

Ballistic Coefficient of a depleted (fired and spent, but still airborne) 'bullet' is horrendous, so 'effective' range looks about right.

Then there is that odd part about how wind really messes up aim, as you must aim downwind of your target, and this gets less and less the farther you shoot beyond the fuel burnout point... It gets even more fun shooting at less than that range, since at that point, the rocket either hasn't kicked in yet or is still burning...

Muzzle velocity should be low, really low, unless you either hate your infantry or use Uber-soldiers. Because recoil will be something nasty compared to the average assault rifle. Something considerably less than 500 m/s... Think Colt M1911 and 12 ga shotgun muzzle velocities...

*Dang, jumping to conclusions, is the majority of this power coming from the rockets, or the initial charge, if the latter, settle for boat-tailed base-bleed shells... (Which cause increased range, slightly less accuracy, but hardly any increase in power [due to recoil constraints], but allows for solid, and smaller bullets)

Thanks for the help, If you would not mind, could you give some suggestions in my storefront site, HERE (http://http://strator.21.forumer.com/index.php) you get more of a discount on my items for sale for each good suggestion

I am trying to make something better than modernly available or even in experimental stages, my country is slightly PMT being that the tech would be equivelent to 2015 around, pretty much no advances in tech that means. Except in robotics and neural tech but that would completely mess up things so I am not going to go into that stuff.

Link given had typo: (redundant Http://)
Thanks for the help, If you would not mind, could you give some suggestions in my storefront site, HERE (http://strator.21.forumer.com/index.php) you get more of a discount on my items for sale for each good suggestion

Uld's rocket assisted PMT battle rifle. (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=516623)

The Dominator 963
I'm not a massive fan of the 'lancruiser'/SHBT concept.

It generally saves space (volume and mass) to use a single gun per turret (a study back in the 1930's on Double DP 5" guns vs single and multiple single purpose 5" guns, the DPs saved crew and deck space though).

But at SHBT sizes, you've most likely already reached you max standard tank gun size, and you'll still have room to spare, so some nations decide to mount multiple guns in a single turret to up the rate of fire.

Use of VLS comes to mind...

Shorten track length, long Length/width ratios tend to equal track shedding and immobolized tanks. Such a layout favors Electrical final drive. Power provided by some sort of generator (large, very large).

A navy style FCS should be able to cope extremely well, since they've had to fire from one moving target to another since the 19-20th century (before then it was Mark-1 Eyeball, telescope, and the Mark 2 Nueron Central procesing unit [Human brain]).

Secondary weapons with all round traverse and good anti-air capabiity is strongly desired, since you'll be using these things with very little support/infrastructure when you actually need to use these. Meaning the enemy will control pretty much everything unless you destroy it with this tank and what few supporting units you would have left.

Heavy tanks favor defensive fighting, as they don't lose to many advantages when they run out of fuel, whereas lighter vehicles require a constant stream of fuel for their very survival. And a 'disabled' heavy tank makes a very effective roadblock, as the Russians and Germans proved during WW2, especially if the enemy lack the means to 'kill it' or is unable to safely move it out of the way... Which gets difficult if the crew is still inside and has plenty of ammunition and food, even worse if it can still move, but simply resuses to do so (unless not doing so equals a 5 kiloton nuke on their heads).

TAPW-2 I'm assuming these must fire the same size cartridge?
Performance of anything 'quasi gyrojet' in description can be quickly and drasticly altered by firing a different cartridge with a different rocket motor.

Much like how one can tinker with the range of a mortar by clipping on extra propellant disks. Though for simplicity, chances are your cartridges will be of fixed or semi fixed brass cartridges. Though caseless is an option.

A mod - 50 meter rocket burn start, burnout after 50 or less.

B mod - *Scratches head* 50 meter, 'detonation' type rocket motor (see PDE).

C mod - Long burning rocket, short range performance suffers if it bounces.
(hmm, bouning rockets off walls...)
Alternative:
Replace rocket motor with shaped charge explosive and call it a grenade

Robotics:
Robots are just computer controled machines, somtimes they merely do one thing, and only when given a specific stimulous. Drones, and AI, though feasable, I doubt anyone would trust their lives with it even in 2015. Though I could be wrong.