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 Post subject: Energy weapons as civilian weapons?

Posted: 2012-03-29 06:00pm 

Okay, just today I checked out the march 2012 copy of Guns & Ammo and saw an article on rifles as a good home defence weapon, specifically the AR15 platform and the .223/5.56mm certidge (okay, I have next to zero experience with firearms and most of what I know was from me playing Fallout: New Vegas and then using Wikipedia to look up how bullets work. So I know very little about guns).

One of their arguments was about overpenetrating drywall sheets and hollow core doors, basically that if you fire a gun indoors and miss there's the chance the bullet will go right through your walls and hit something or someone outside. Article says that pistol and shotgun rounds can have this problem while light fast-moving .223 rounds can fragment into smaller (margianly) less dangerous pieces when hitting stuff as soft as drywall.

I don't know about that, but it got me thinking about energy weapons since the point of firearms is to dump as much energy into your target while hopefully not overpenetrating. A laser or similar energy transfer weapon seems like it wouldn't have overpenetration as a problem unless the target was transparet to the beam.

So, what if energy weapons find themselves being used in civilian sectors or the like where the beam is designed to have stopping power agianst human targets (either killing or knoching them out) but also avoids overpenetrating through the building or damaging delicate equipment. Like in those various scenes where people are figthing in an engine room and don't want to use bullets that could rupture tanks or whatever. Perhaps the tanks could be coated in fibreglass or some insulator that makes them hightly resistant to laser weapons but would still be vulnerable to physical projectiles?

Anyway, just a thought. I'm sure if these types of energy weapons were weak against something then a decent military would whip up armor to counteract them. But in a civilian setting they could be useful to avoid bullets not going where you don't want them. Firing an energy weapon in the air shouldn't result in a bullet coming down and killing someone later.

 Post subject: Re: Energy weapons as civilian weapons?

Posted: 2012-03-29 06:12pm 

You can get rounds that are designed to be used indoors safely, chiefly low velocity or frangible, shotgun balls are typically safe, though not slugs.

Energy weapons? Guess it depends how they work.

Disclaimer: i just play with guns as a hobby.

 Post subject: Re: Energy weapons as civilian weapons?

Posted: 2012-03-29 07:03pm 

I suspect that real world rules directed energy weapons would share some of the overpenetration problems modern day firearms have. A laser beam would still likely merely drill a hole through the target and go on its merry way. For a technobabble weapon, it's unsurprisingly impossible to say.

 Post subject: Re: Energy weapons as civilian weapons?

Posted: 2012-03-29 07:09pm 

Well it'll probably be a good long time before we can buy a lasgun on the open market, I doubt that my even grandkids would have them.

 Post subject: Re: Energy weapons as civilian weapons?

Posted: 2012-03-29 07:25pm 

If we do manage to come up with a viable infantry laser weapon anytime soon I very much suspect the breakthrough in energy generation/storage technology will have a much larger impact than the weapon itself.

 Post subject: Re: Energy weapons as civilian weapons?

Posted: 2012-03-29 07:37pm 

Energy weapons wouldn't suffer from overpenetration per say (since penetration isn't their mode of operation in the first place), but they would have issues bullets don't. Off the top of my head, a bullet can't light the room on fire if you miss.

Also, lasers specifically have an issue in that deflected or dispersed photons can cause blindness (or at least if Atomic Rockets is to be believed).

And anyway, no matter what kind of ranged weapon you are using if it can kill a human target you have to check your target before shooting. Glasers and other low penetration bullets can still hit an innocent and kill them. The same will be true of lasers.

 Post subject: Re: Energy weapons as civilian weapons?

Posted: 2012-03-29 07:45pm 

Bullets absolutely can, but admittedly only under very unordinary circumstances.
Under those same circumstances bullets absolutely can cause blindness. Ricochets, anybody?

 Post subject: Re: Energy weapons as civilian weapons?

Posted: 2012-03-30 09:27am 

Believable enough, we were repeatedly warned about the dangers of laser rangefinders and similar equipment in the military and expressly forbidden to use laser pointers to blind NV/IR kit because of the risk to the operator. It's prevalent enough that issued eyewear is designed to protect against it.

So yeah, I have no doubt that you could blind someone with it.

 Post subject: Re: Energy weapons as civilian weapons?

Posted: 2012-03-30 11:07am 

by 'energy weapons' are we talking about lasers, or just 'beam weapons' in general? I mean depending on your source or context you could treat hypervelocity or even relativistic weapons as an 'energy weapon' too I think. It will kind of matter because from what I understood (mostly off atomic rockets and things guys like Luke Campbell have said) how you intend the weapon to work will play a huge role here, as well as the kind of weapon (lasers and particle beams are different for example, and certain frequencies of laser can behave differnetly from others at least, IIRC.)

 Post subject: Re: Energy weapons as civilian weapons?

Posted: 2012-03-30 04:55pm 

I'm seeing a bit of a disconnect between the OP's question and some of the answers given. Rossum's asking about weapons for home defense, and some people have jumped straight to infantry weapons, those aren't the same roles, and don't need the same tools, though there is some overlap.

For an energy weapon specifically intended for home defense, what about a microwave projector? You probably won't kill a guy accidentally with it, he'll just hurt like hell untill you shut it off, and it won't overpenetrate. Not sure about setting the room on fire, though.

 Post subject: Re: Energy weapons as civilian weapons?

Posted: 2012-03-30 05:04pm 

I suppose some sort a "wireless taser" might be possible as well as civilian weapons wouldn't have to be leathal

 Post subject: Re: Energy weapons as civilian weapons?

Posted: 2012-03-30 06:13pm 

The medium laser pistol described by Luke Campbell here at Atomic Rockets could work quite well as a home defence weapon. Its beam energy is 1.6 kJ, about halfway between a tenth and a fifth of the beam energy of the battle laser he describes in the same section. He estimates that the battle laser's penetration of sandstone, which probably has properties fairly comparable to drywall, would be 25 cm. Assuming the effects of the battle laser can be proportionally scaled down to those of the medium laser pistol, the latter would make a hole roughly 3.75 cm deep. I would guess that most interior walls are slightly thicker than that, so a shot by a medium laser pistol might be stopped by one. Of course, sustained shots at the stated rate of fire of 2 per second would quickly penetrate.

 Post subject: Re: Energy weapons as civilian weapons?

Posted: 2012-03-30 06:14pm 

'energy weapon' in a sci fi sense can mean anything that is vaguely 'realistic' (like a laser) to stuff that isn't remotely realistic like blasters, Delameters, and phasers. Or your sci fi neural disruptor. And evne then with 'realistic' weapons it can depend on how the weapon works. A 'heat ray' style laser is probably going to be so energetic that risk of fire is going to be a considerable one (especially if you opt with the Luke Campbell style 'flamethrower' heat ray - again think of a Delameter.) A 'blaster' style laser (the fractional-second pulse trains) are another story, but can be another problem (playing around with numbers for around a single kilojoule 'sidearm' type pulsed laser on Luke Campbell's calculator still gave me some pretty disturbing numbers for penetration depending on how many pulses you go with - one example had something like penetrating 6+ inches of concrete, for example. Whether that can still cause risk of injury or death is another question but..)

 Post subject: Re: Energy weapons as civilian weapons?

Posted: 2012-03-30 06:23pm 

The properties will depend greatly on the parameters, specitically the number of pulses and specific energy of a pulse. Fewer pulses will mean less penetration, for example. A 1.6 kj beam (1mm spot diameter) with 10 microsecond delay between shots and 40 individual pulses of 40 joules apiece (1 cm diameter 'permanant damage' - eg hole - estimated, and ~13 cm depth/penetration)
If you cut the pulse number in half (20) and 80 joules apiece its about 8.3 cm depth and 1.4 cm 'diameter' approximately.

The funny thing is you could actually have the weapon deliver a very energetic single pulse and have far less penetration. 20 kj in a single pulse would make a 8.6 cm diameter and only 4.3 cm 'depth'. Depending on the baseline you use for humans, the single pulse should be pretty good at stopping a target.

Also if you note later on in describing the effects Luke notes that he may have overestimated the beam power by IIRC a factor of two, so I dont know if the effects are equivalent to the beam power he lists or if they're for half that value.

 Post subject: Re: Energy weapons as civilian weapons?

Posted: 2012-03-31 04:58am 

I think problem with laser weapons will be that they will tend to set stuff on fire. A regular bullet is unlikey to cause fire when hitting furniture or something. A powerful laser will almost certainly cause fire in indoors shootout. Even a few watt laser can set things on fire.

 Post subject: Re: Energy weapons as civilian weapons?

Posted: 2012-03-31 09:57pm 

I don't know about 'almost certainly' but there's a definite risk. It'd depend in no small part on what the laser beam hits.

 Post subject: Re: Energy weapons as civilian weapons?

Posted: 2012-03-31 10:50pm 

Yes, and the danger of overpenetration with bullets very much depends on whether there is a human being or priceless object on the other side of the wall. Can we dispense with the annoying truisms, Bats? They don't add anything to the thread, and really, I already gave the only truism that's relevant-- you should always check your target before opening fire, no matter what your gun sends downrange. Glasers, low penetrating lasers, masers, etc. are just insurance in case you miss.

 Post subject: Re: Energy weapons as civilian weapons?

Posted: 2012-03-31 11:28pm 

This cannot be stressed enough.


I believe you're referring to the the electrotaser concept?

 Post subject: Re: Energy weapons as civilian weapons?

Posted: 2012-04-01 08:38am 

maybe, I not sure what said concept entails

 Post subject: Re: Energy weapons as civilian weapons?

Posted: 2012-04-01 01:18pm 

Itihnk he means electrolaser, where you use an ultraviolet laser to ionise a small column of air between you and the target and use that to deliver your electric shock. Clever idea, but the last I head the thing is the size of a kitchen table with a range of 100 meteres or so.

 Post subject: Re: Energy weapons as civilian weapons?

Posted: 2012-04-01 02:04pm 

Well, if you can miniaturize it enough for it to be gun-sized and with a 20-meter range, that'd be ideal for personal defense and room-to-room fighting I believe.
'Could be used as a Taser-equivalent of the Flashball, maybe. Still going to have blinding hazards, though [*].


[*] : flashballs are infamous for their tendency to blind people when shot in the face...

 Post subject: Re: Energy weapons as civilian weapons?

Posted: 2012-04-01 07:20pm 

Yeah that's what I meant. Sorry for any confusion. 100 meters is more than acceptable for home defense; however that size issue definitely kills the concept. Maybe in another 50 years or so?

 Post subject: Re: Energy weapons as civilian weapons?

Posted: 2012-04-01 07:24pm 

50 years? I think you greatly underestimate the progress of technology. Ten years, perhaps. Consider, the last time I heard anything of the electrolaser's size was reading an article four years ago. I would be surprised if progress had not been made in that time. After all, no amazing new dicovery needs to be made; it's simplyan engineering problem to wrestle the size down.

 Post subject: Re: Energy weapons as civilian weapons?

Posted: 2012-04-02 11:48am 

Any bullet that can be expected to penetrate deep enough into a person to reliably stop them will penetrate at least 2-3 interior sheetrock walls. .223 rounds are "better/worse" in a miss situation like this. On one hand, their trajectories are almost impossible to know once they first hit something (like a wall). The other hand hand, they lose a lot of their momentum once they start tumbling. And the "frangible ammo" has serious reliabilty problems last I checked a few years ago. It's prone to squib-loads (bullets without enough power to get the slug out of the barrel), which is a good way to get yourself killed.

Current tasers usually only offer one shot, can be hard to aim, and can be expensive to practice with. Cops use them because they have a 9mm on their hip in case things go wrong.

What would be cool is some kind of taser "dart gun." Something like a automatic-action gun with 30 round magazines of pen-sized taser darts with a short duration immobilizing shock. When the shock runs out, just shoot them again. Repeat until police arrive. I don't know how small you could make something like that with the required voltage and wavelength.

Hell, an airsoft frame (spring firing system with electronic action) would be lightweight and more than enough to get the job done.

This is another good idea if you could get enough power in something ~ the size of a handgun or short-barrel carbine. Feeling like your skin is on fire would get rid of most intruders.

 Post subject: Re: Energy weapons as civilian weapons?

Posted: 2012-04-03 01:41am 

More like repeat until they soon die. You could most likely make that right now if you wanted to pay for some very expensive ammunition. It'd also be a good way to kill the target every time. Any idea based on incapacitating someone for a significant period of time with electrical pulses is really a non starter. Successive bursts rapidly increase the risk of heart failure, in almost all of the hundreds of documented taser deaths involve multiple shocks in a short period.