on the order of hundreds of bucks

i mean thats kindof objectively not always true

computerized control has made a lot of things cheaper

because its way less effort to make it work right

you just tell the machine what you want and it does it

in terms of timing and such thats a fairly good deal

yes and you can use the same sorts of parts

everywhere

because they are pretty general purpose transformers of input into arbitrary output

you dont need a new computer for every application generally speaking

and a whole huge assembly line

you could probably do it off of timing alone, but pressure sensing is just a transducer

i mean in a lot of cases the whole (generally carefully tuned) gas system is purely to drive the unlocking timing

based more or less off of when the trigger was pulled

its not like it actually understands the pressure of the system

if you use the wrong ammo it simply doesnt work right

sure but the fact remains that they arent doing the job of a pressure sensor hardly at all

except for reacting to the fact that there is pressure

if it didnt rely on a pressure sensor then yeah it would need consistent ammo

well if it did rely off of pressure readings then it could concievably unlock when pressure drops to a safe level

and then let the bolt cycle normally

no pressure system, not neccesarily a need for the primer in cartridges

well because ammo costs money

a fair bit these days as well

i dont personally see that much use in the inconsistent ammo thing im just pointing out it could do that way better than a gas system

sure, so moving on it does away with the gas system and requires less fiddling

ammo is consistent so it takes the exact same time more or less every time to go from ignition to extraction

and you just unlock it at the right time

you mean like

from scratch?

machine the parts

heat treat

et cetera

because my understanding is there is generally years of work going into a new design

well, you could offer a system that in principle is able to be re-engineered relatively quickly to fire new kinds of ammo

it wouldnt remove all of the difficulty, but in terms of getting it to time extraction properly it would be easy

potentially a lot of people, things are starting to move a lot faster

no i mean more like

just any change in the ammo characteristics whatsoever

which is currently not so well supported

just different pressure curves is what im referencing, whatever might cause that

hey i want a new gun from you guys that shoots this new bullet

ok we will start making the new barrels which is now the only hard part

like how the army wants to go to a 6.8mm gpmg

only if you were an asshole with it, which most engineers i know would be

most of them are not practically minded people

then why do they generally buy a whole new gun

i mean except for like very special purpose stuff they seem to want new stuff

army

if you want like 200 guns that fire your new SOCOM ammo they tend to repurpose existing actions but in terms of like service stuff they seem to generally want new stuff

yes and then they go through a whole new procurement process which is a lot of hassle

i think you could be more agile if you involved electronics because there would be less tuning involved to get it to run right

potentially, i mean you could cage off the little computer and make it with extra thick traces

military grade microcontrollers already exist

it wouldnt be some new alien thing

im talking mainly about conventional ammo

with electronics involved

paladin they are currently trying to adopt new ammunition

ill agree the ammo is usually harder to make than the gun

it tends to need to be extremely finely toleranced in its own right

could potentially help with that as well if it did have some kind of pressure reactive system

for instance you can electronically detect stresses in metal

so you could potentially react to pressure purely off of strain on the bolt

then drive extraction off of that

mind you

afaik the cases are more the problem

than the same amount of powder in every cartridge

hence referencing the bolt

once the cartridge is coming out with the right force it could start letting the extraction go

so if its stuck then it would start extracting sooner

this is probably oversimplifying im just saying there are things you can do electronically you cant do mechanically

you can do fairly simple and robust things instead of over complicated whizbang bullshit that a lot of companies try to do

well it depends mainly on the cost of implementing it

yeah but i mean past a certain point your argument against attempting innovation breaks down

if it actually worked out well

then you could potentially have people with guns that have much cheaper ammo

and then you are going up against people with vehicle mounted miniguns because they can now easily do that

its guna be a while before powder gets outdone in terms of impulse energy generation

in terms of cost vs benefit anyhow

well i mean for small arms

afaik thats still mainly smokeless powder of some form

eh yeah but i mean

its mainly the air force that would have world ending prototypes

some super awesome man portable railgun is more on the very useful category

rather than the

ending the war in fifteen seconds category

well as engangered here pointed out

that we know of

mind you

its probably just not deployable if it exists

at this point in time

in terms of like cost

endangered*

it depends on the technology but yeah

they can reach way past the commercial market if they are trying to do one specific thing and have money

they have money

also no they do in fact do plenty of black projects

well yeah but the private sector has pretty much no use for 800 joules in 10 nanoseconds

or whatever

literally what would they use that for