Handheld energy weapons

[Avalancheon]

We don't give a date for handheld beamweapons coming into the setting but it's entirely possible they would be later than a few centuries. They may mature in a time when A) "human" soldiers aren't a thing anymore and B) machinery can be built as complex as an organism.

Okay, you have a point there. Having mature nanotechnology imbedded into a plasma rifle could help overcome some of the reliability problems. But how well can nanomachines handle high temperatures? Would they be able to patch up erosion spots in the barrel of a plasma rifle thats glowing white hot?

What is more reliable: a mechanical pump or a human heart? When we talk about technology in OA we're often talking of machines as complex as biological systems with the capability to self monitor, self repair, built with a lot of independent redundancy etc. It's not always true that more complexity is less reliable.

But that raises a question for me, how many different ways are there to design the same tool, especially if its something simple in nature? Lets say that in OA, you have primtech enthusiasts who like to use automatic rifles and gasoline engines: Would they look anything like the analogues we use today? Would a rifle built in the future use fundamentally different mechanical principles to achieve the same thing?

You're also making a bit of a false assumption that even if an item had relatively more failure modes that it is of lower utility. A modern fighter plane is hideously more complex than a spit fighter but that increase in complexity, failure modes and maintenance is more than balanced out by increased performance. In the case of beam weapons (which are not the only type of handheld weapon in the setting) the near instant muzzle velocity, immunity to most environmental conditions and ability to carry a lot of "ammunition" in the form of superconductive batteries (or even a backpack conversion reactor) more than makes up for their complexity.

Yes, but a fighter jet is an actual weapons system with many other sub-systems in its frame. Airborne fighters are going to be complex regardless of what you do (not so for a rifle). The cost/benefit analysis is different for them than for monolithic items like howitzers, mortars, and small arms.

Back to your statements above:

a) Pass the cost/benefit analysis of the military - what do you mean by this? Are you claiming some level of knowledge of how military cost benefit analysis is conducted? What is the context for the analysis in question? What starting assumptions are you (or the hypothetical military people performing the analysis) making as part of this?

b) It being 'somewhat unlikely that even mature energy weapons would be competitive with regular small arms' - What is your reasoning that leads you to this conclusion? Define 'mature energy weapon' in this context. What is the basis for this conclusion? Do you bring actual knowledge of small arms to the discussion or is this just a 'gut feeling'?

c) You not being able to see a laser weapon being carried into battle a century or two from now - Ok, but why not? Please explain what leads you to this view.

d) Lasers strengths not being enough to overcome their weaknesses - What strengths and weaknesses are you referring to? We can't think about or respond to the statement effectively if we don't even know what you are talking about.

I consider myself to be a military historian, although that simply comes from having read lots of books and papers. I have conducted my education at my own pace, outside of colleges or academys. I am not without some knowledge of how militarys decide to choose a new weapon...

The U.S. army has been using the M-16 pattern rifle for over 50 years now, despite numerous attempts to replace it: There was the ACR program of the late 80s, and the OICW program in the 90s. The XM-8 rifle was mechanically identical to the M-16, but had far superior ergonomics. It would have been a great replacement weapon, but the U.S. army decided not to go through with it. The costs did not justify the performance returns, in their opinion. The U.S. is extremely stingy with programs for small arms: They'd rather spend their money on big ticket items like missiles, jets, ships, and tanks, to the result is that they get stuck with somewhat obsolescent hand weapons.

While other militarys are less obstinate in that regard, my reasoning holds firm. Even when they become practical in the distant future, handheld energy weapon would not pass a militarys cost benefit analysis. They might be used in niche applications, but its unlikely they will ever replace the rifle as a premier small arm.

Fair enough - but please explain how you are determining how far that is and that this distance is cannot be 'traveled' by expert systems and superbrights and just ongoing improvements in the state of the art?

Again, you're making pretty firm declarative statements without providing any reasoning to back them up.

They can only streamline the design of a plasma rifle by so much, because there are certain irreducible elements required for it to work. Again, this weapon requires 1) cyrogenically frozen hydrogen, which must be 2) superheated to a plasma, then 3) forced down a magnetically sealed barrel, and 4) follow a vortice tunnel created by a laser beam.

Its certainly possible to make this weapon work, its just not going to work as consistently as a mere projectile weapon. Its common knowledge, for instance, that bolt action rifles are more reliable than semi and full automatic rifles. Unless mechanical engineering undegoes a fundamental change at some point in the future (such that they use completely different designs for automatic rifles and whatnot), we should expect that to remain true.

Please provide proof for these declarative statements. Not only regarding the current state of the art, but also demonstrating that it is physically impossible for laser weapons to ever be improved to the point that these issues can be made to go away. We generally prefer online references and journal articles whenever possible.

BTW solid-state lasers with no moving parts are already a thing.

Thats an unreasonable demand, because I can only extrapolate from what is currently know about science and engineering. There might be some enabling technology which would make laser weapons as reliable as rifles, but people can't exactly predict that sort of thing. But as for my point about 'more advanced weapons having a higher chance of failure', I can offer an interesting anecdote for this. On another forum, I spoke with some firearms savy guys about the use of burst fire in automatic rifle. (I.E, when the rifle fires three rounds at a high cyclic rate, usually 700 RPM or more) They pointed out that such a feature has a knock-on effect in complexity that requires more parts than is first apparent, because the rifle must fire three rounds and no more (!) even if the trigger is held down. Rifles capable of burst fire need a complex and relatively fragile clockwork mechanism compared to those without it.

BTW, I already knew about the solid-state lasers, they were part of my 'certain exceptions.'

Please define 'soldier proofed'. Also, what you mean by 'future infrastructure'.

Coming at this from another direction, are you asking us how such a device might work or stating it as equivalent to a law of physics that such a device can't be made?

For that matter, what is the context you are talking about? Are we talking about using such a weapon (or any energy weapon for that matter) in space? On the ground? Underwater? Etc. Some weapons can be tremendously effective in one environment, but not much good in another. So the desired operating environment needs to be specified.

'Soldier proofed' is when a piece of equipment is made durable enough for the rigours and abuse of warfare. A colleague of mine was criticising laser surveillance equipment when he said the following: ''A physicist may consider such a laser system perfectly fine, an electrical engineer may consider it slightly troublesome yet functional - a soldier would probably put it in the trash after a couple weeks if no-one was held accountable for it.''

And just so we're clear, I'm not trying to get these subjects retconned or stir up ridicule about them. I'm merely offering my opinion that plasma weapons would be difficult to soldier proof, even with the manufacturing techniques and materials we would expect to see of the future.

What is a phaser for purposes of this discussion? Yes, I know what they are in a general way in the context of Star Trek. But I (and probably many other people here) have no idea what you're talking about when you mention particles that don't/can't exist. Please unpack your statements like this or we can't really address them constructively.

I meant phasers as they were described in the star trek encylopedia. The weapons which produce a beam of subatomic particles called rapid nadions. Such particles are fictional, of course, and have propertys that defy the laws of physics.