BaronEngel
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Suppressed mouse firearm
🕑 Added 2015-12-15 21:07:38 +0000 UTC Geez! I thought I had posted this years ago! Mice and rats present some really neat, and at the same time maddening, bits of world building and tech design for my Andur and variants of my Angel and Knight dreamscapes.Having sentient, bipedal individuals who range in size from 7.5" to 12.5" living in many cases side by side with bigums who range in height from 36" to almost 96" creates all kinds of fascinating studies in architecture, manufacturing, medical, exploration, and popular culture. It also create all kinds of opportunities, and nightmares, for military affairs, security, and rescue operations.
Mice and rats are unusual rugged and strong for their size. A mouse weighing only a few ounces is capable of lifting several times their own body weight. Except for Petina who just runs on her own rules. However they still don't have the mass to exploit their great strength. This can be quite a problem when it comes to design weapons for them. Especially firearms.
This is a suppressed firearm I designed for mice and rats several years ago. It is intended to be used as a close range sniper weapon for discreet removal of individuals or key pieces of non-hardened technology. It meant to be used at ranges of less than 100yds from its target. Now at those distances even if you are tiny there is a chance your opponent may find you or see your muzzle flash. Also the problem arises of how do you fire a weapon with a large enough projectile to drop a target like a six foot tall bigum quickly and consistently when you are only a few inches tall.
In this case the answer is to develop a recoilless, suppressed firearm that can transported by a mouse sniper and his spotter/assistant. For this design I came up with design that incorporated some elements of the German Armburst anti-tank weapon with elements of Soviet/Russian suppressed, flashless pistols. The projectile,cartridge, propellant, barrel are assembled as one prepackaged unit that is loaded on to the launcher unit. Not unlike the Milan missile. The operator cocks the striker spring by brace the butt stock against his shoulder and pulling the twin cocking levers toward him. This cocks the striker/firing pin assembly. Upon firing a firing pin strikes the bottom edge of cartridge which crushes a primer material in the bottom cartridge wall.
This detonates the powder which drives two pistons. The first piston punches a cartridge forward upon which the bullet engages the rifling to give it some stabilization to the projectile which then exists the barrel. The piston diameter is slightly larger than that of the barrel, so it is stopped at the mouth of cartridge both muffling the denotation trapping a flash inside the barrel.
At the same time the detonating powder drives a heavy metal counterweight piston rearward. This piston is eventually stopped at the rear of the tube however at this point the recoil pulse is over and the weapon is done firing. At this point the team will either lay low for awhile, exit the area, or begin the process of reloading the weapon which entails removing spent barrel projectile assembly and locking a new one to the main body. The old one can either be disposed of on site or carried away to remove evidence for the scene.
The projectile fired is roughly 5.56mm and is designed with a light penetrator tip to help break through bone, especially skullbone, the rest of projectile is of fragmentation variety that is filled with small shot that quickly travel in widening cone inside the body. The projectiles will travel about eight inches inside the body but in the case of a shot to the brain cavity this can result in catastrophic damage to the brain. However it may not even create an exit wound, and with only 5.56mm entry wound it may not be immediately obvious to folks standing around the target that it has been shot. The target just suddenly falls to ground, only a few seconds later would blood begin flow from the head.
Comments
Caerdwyn
RW: the seal around the pistons would not be tight enough to hold the resulting 15,000psi for long. It would vent down to maybe a thousand psi or so over the next few seconds. Now, if you want something dual-use and you grant an adequate seal to hold the 15,000psi chamber at that pressure, you can posit something like this: once the round has been fired, what you have left is a small pipe-bomb waiting to go off. A tiny shaped charge along one side with an RF-based proximity detector could be armed, and the discarded mouse-gun would then become a booby trap... not enough to kill, but damaging enough to make bigums hesitant to rush in to find the sniper. Once the bigums learned that mouse-snipers leave "toe poppers" in their wake, they would be more cautious (meaning: slower) to find the snipers... and the snipers would therefore have more time to get away.
Vet
How would one dissipate the pressure generated. According to the info all pressure is contained but I did see the SP-4 Russian cartridge does this but the charge is low resulting in only 25 meter range at best so the shot would have to be real close. The pressure it seems stays in the cartridge like a pressured up can.
Caerdwyn
So using the MATADOR as the equivalent... your mice are 1/7 the height of human males, therefore 1/343 the mass. The MATADOR's projectile generates 60,000 ft-lbs of muzzle energy. 1/343 of this is 175 ft-lbs... therefore the same kind of design would generate power equal to a .38 Special (158 grains at 700fps, about what you get from a snubby revolver). Not a 100-yard weapon, but up close, very effective. A lot of bad guys have been taken down by .38 Specials. If you can put up with about 2.5x the muzzle energy, you are into the .300 Whisper subsonic (220 grains at 1040fps), which can do exactly what you describe at 100 yards. Sectional density for the win! At that energy, about 450ft-lbs, you're at the same pressures and power as a 147-grain +P+ 9mm subsonic. Barrels which can handle this... standard barrels like the one in the Glock... weigh only about 2-3 ounces. No problem at all. Proof loads in 9mm run at about 49,000psi, so for a disposable weapon, this is completely workable, carryable by a pair of 8-ounce anthro mice with as-described proportionally higher strength, and capable of what you propose. The firing team would need damned good hearing protection, and face the prospect of the being knocked about by the shock wave coming from the projectile, but this is a realistic threat, IMHO.
Caerdwyn
The Israeili MATADOR (gotta love military acronyms) anti-tank recoilless rifle works on this exact principle, and fires a 90mm 2.6kg round at 250m/sec.
Eric Hinkle
I do wish I knew enough about technology to intelligently comment on the work you shared above, but it does show why it's helpful for artists to know something about the tech before they try illustrating it.
Vet
However in this weapon there would be a lot less pressure with lesser powder load but now velocity suffers slowing the bullet down. Enough to were the velocity would be nothing in a few meters. Like a primer shot sans powder.
Vet
The problem is containing the internal pressures when the charge ignites. It can reach 60,000psi. They can reach very high and must dissipate through some means of venting.
