For example: laser rifles or pistols, anything that shoots out concussive energy that you see in sci-fi shooter games. This is obviously in the realm of science fiction but I can’t imagine that kind of technology is impossible to come by. With those weapons they can probably hold up to hundreds of rounds worth of energy/plasma/etc.
What would be the main roadblock with this kind of weaponry?
In: Engineering
Plasma acts primarily like a gas, to oversimplify, so I don’t know how shooting what is effectively an ionized gas is going to do at any real range.
Laser weapons exist and are used, but they’re not going to give concussive energy. Lasers are light, so they just transmit energy in a beam to a target causing it to overheat.
Also the energy storage for a handheld personal laser gun would be ridiculous with current energy storage tech.
The biggest problem is storing energy and allow the system to be charged back quickly. We do have the airborne laser prototype, it uses a chemical laser and the energy storage took the back of a 737. Whereas a bullet has chemical energy ready to go “analog” vs charge shoot and recharge
If you want them to do a lot of damage, they need a lot of energy.
If you need a lot of energy, you build the weapons into a huge power source.
If you want them to be portable, then you need a huge power source which is also portable and has so much capacity that it can keep supplying power at full effectiveness for hundreds of rounds…
…and that doesn’t exist. If it did, electric cars would be using it too, for example.
Portable power storage and generation. The tech we have today is *quite* chunky and still very dependant on weather conditions.
I don’t know about video linking but I can point to one wich is basicly an hour long powerpoint on laser and microwave weapons.
Power requirements makes energy weapons alot less mobile.
For laser based weapons ability to concentrate the beam over long range is difficult and requires fragile lenses that might not be able to handle the power.
Styropyro on youtube has made a very impressive lasers worth a look
Concussive? We have nothing that does that. We don’t know how to move kinetic energy around without just applying it to an object and then letting the object apply it to the target when it gets there. Which we do with projectiles of many kinds.
As far as directed energy weapons like microwaves or lasers: those weapons absolutely could not hold a bunch of shots with our tech. It takes a LOT of energy to weaponize and we’re having trouble producing a sustainable amount in something the size of a tank, forget handheld. We just don’t have the energy storage/generation tech to support that.
Now, the equipment to take that power and emit it in a useful, coherent form at weaponized levels is also very bulky compared to something handheld but the power supply is the current big issue in trying to being light vehicles scale version to the field so that will have to be solved before we get into the emitter as a limiting factor.
The main problem is that it’s less efficient than throwing very small, very fast bits of metal at things. It’s possible, and if they were more efficient more research would go into them to improve them, but for the majority of applications its better to just fire a traditional projectile.
Aside from battery technology being nowhere near what you need the biggest problem is copper jacketed lead does the job just fine. A laser or plasma weapon would have no real advantage. I do I tend to conceal carry full size pistols, but they are downright tiny in comparison to what you’re describing. Likewise my AR’s, AK and shotguns are 7-9 pounds loaded. odds are we won’t have man portable energy weapons for at least a few hundred years.
A gun is energy based. It shoots a bullet full of kinetic ernergy. Same goes with fists directed towards my face when I’m being pedantic though.
The main thing holding us back is generally battery technology. Those types of weapons need a *lot* of energy and current battery tech is good but not that good yet.
For example we have railguns that are stationary, and can fire solid objects pretty damn fast, but they are also massive machines and take hefty juice.
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