Have you heard of the movie Aliens? Because you may have heard of an ETC without realizing it as the Pulse Rifle's ammunition lore wise is electrically ignited.
Not necessarily. A few important things to note before even getting even a little bit hyped for this that the video didn't bring up: 1. They have yet to make this remotely efficient after 30+ years of research and development. 2. The system requires significant power and the associated electrical systems to even fire. If any of these are damaged or if the tank/vehicle gets affected by an EMP strike (like USA is currently developing for use in artillery shells), the weapons will simply be incapable of firing unlike traditional guns. 3. Faster projectiles combined with much more potent, hotter-burning powder/liquid propellant mixes (along with the heat from the ignition system) will severely reduce the life-time while increasing the needed maintenance of the barrel. 4. More components (especially electrical ones) increase the risk of things going wrong and/or requiring more maintenance of which said maintenance would also require a degree of specialization.
@@KageRyuu6 Really, I must of missied that, then again I have only ever watched the films and read a couple of the thrashy 90's era novels so I always thought of Alien as a horror franchise. Is there alot of lore for the Aliens weapons then?
The first time I ever heard about a ETC gun was in Frontlines Fuel of War. The Western Coalition MBT used a 120mm ETC gun while the Red Star tank used a conventional 140mm.
YES! As he was describing a 120 mm ETC gun vs. a conventional gun I thought, "didn't Frontline do that with the two tanks in-game?" Lo and behold, I checked the wiki and the M1B Fuller has a 120 mm ETC while the T-119 has a regular 140 mm gun. Spooks, you should consider doing this game's tanks for an ep of "Everything wrong with"!
Given that it's such a relatively minor change to the weapon mechanisms (basically an electronic primer but with way more... zap), no wonder this tech is less known and under the radar. Since not much has to be changed around the gun design and surrounding logistical factors, I guess it just doesn't draw that much attention in return. (Yet?)
Well , if the gun performance changes as much as he said in the video , this might flip things on their heads : the current race between armor and guns is a stalemate , however if these guns come up and the armor doesn't adapt in time we might see a resurgence of tankdestroyers since they would be able to capitalize on their superior firepower while ditching infantry support all of a while tanks might become more like infantry support veichle , with less focus on the gun and more focus on bringing the infantry in a favorable position to spot the destroyer before the destroyer spot the tank , or at least that's my speculative opinion , anyhow I think atgm are the future for tanks they just make the whole machine lighter while offering the same killing potential ...
@@davidegaruti2582 Except missiles DON'T have the same killing potential. They have a drastically lower speed, so they have to use shaped-charge warhead to penetrate armor. The (relatively) low speed makes active defense systems a fairly effective counter, and give the target something of a chance to dodge; the shaped-charge warhead can be countered with fairly simply armor designs. Against modern MBTs, missiles just aren't reliable enough killers to warrant replacing a high-velocity cannon.
Davide Garuti Tank destroyers still exist in the modern day in the form of attack helicopters and, well, main battle tanks. To build a specialized tank destroyer, in my opinion, is rather wasteful since it locks a vehicle into a more specialized role, and that costs resources. It would take a significant change in doctrine to have ground-based dedicated tank destroyers again. After all, main battle tanks happened because it's easier to standardize around a few vehicles that can do more roles. The gun performance here allows "normal" guns to continue being effective against armor by improving penetration while still retaining everything needed to fire more "standard" munitions (i.e., high explosive) for infantry support, all at the cost of maybe needing some additional space tacked on for the plasma ignition system (or maybe just a more powerful APU, who knows). I'm just saying, if a MBT can carry these improved guns, it's going to go on the MBT. The armor vs gun race has been here before: the 1950s with Leopard 1 was basically this. Tanks are there to support the infantry- if it has enough armor to resist infantry anti-tank weapons, then that's arguably good enough, even if the armor can not withstand enemy tanks. It's a shoot-first-kill-first world, after all, armor is only a backup plan these days.
@@gelatinoussire7772 yeah , i agree with that , a miniaturized version of a railgun would exert more power than an etc gun , however we don't have such a WMD ( a railgun would be that dangerus ) , so imo for the time being a etc gun would do the trick ...
1:42 The only problem with increasing muzzle velocity is that at extreme speeds there's quite a large possibility of the penetrator and armour melting during the impact. This poses its own challenges which would require a redesign of the armour piercing rounds to better exploit fluid dynamics. Still the advantages of ETC guns are undeniable.
There are already munitions that can tolerate higher velocities and impacts, not to mention armor behaves as a liquid when hit with something going that fast anyway.
@@goddepersonno3782 what I mean is that it acts similar to a fluid when hit with an object with enough kinetic energy and sufficient durability to not shatter. Some might describe it as plastic like, but fluid covers some of the properties better. By the way, shaped charges are sometimes described as creating jets of molten metal, but this is wrong, it's more like some of the metal is deformed into a penetrating projectile that is partially stretched out sometimes or even fragmented into pieces behind the penetration projectile.
Not really an issue, since modern rounds use tungsten and DU, the High melting point of these metals and DU's ability to self sharpen makes them fine even at ludicrous speeds, you might be thinking of older Solid steel tank rounds.
Reminds me of a funny detail, when Armored Warfare added the tier 10 version of the abrams, they called it XM1A3, even though that’s not even a valid syntax (the A3 version of something not in service?), the designation, as per a declassified pdf regarding the XM360, is M1E3. Did not realize the thumper was using the 140mm ETC gun, always thought it was a conventional 140mm and ETC development was why it was dropped.
For that matter, if you ever want to get a good laugh, somebody on deviantart took the ETC design concept and put it on crack cocaine. He called it the Nuclear Pulse Gun, and the idea is to take a Projection Orion nuclear heat pulse unit and surround it in a thick block of silicon. Shove it into a barrel and put a massive bullet in front of it. When the kiloton yield nuclear shaped charge detonates, it vaporizes the silicon into a gas and launches the projectile. Barrel ablation would be decreased by the fact you're essentially using lube as a propellant medium, but the barrel would still need to be swapped per few shots. If you are at all interested in a lot of crazy, insane, and terrifyingly well thought out and researched weapons I'd heavily recommend checking out the AtomicRockets website. It's both impressively well researched and also contains some weapons that are the stuff of nightmares. Theoretical spaced, nuclear explosively formed penetrators that can throw meter wide slabs of metal at 10+ kilometers a second come to mind. Heavily recommend. www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/
Exactly how big is the gun that pressures of the vaporizing silicon doesn't just blow the barrel apart? I pretty much always assume that the nuclear gun doesn't survive more than 1 shot. Although depending on the application, 1 shot is all you need. Figured a good anti-kaiju weapon (so effectively sci-fantasy) would be a large unmanned hydrogen(or helium) blimp carrying a giant single shot nuclear gun.
How do they solve overpressure? Conventional guns cannot handle a detonation wave. Period. That's why they use gunpowder and not C4. So how'd they make it survive a detonation wave from a nuclear device, which is both more a million times more powerful and is produced in like 10 nanoseconds, not 100 microseconds.
Thanks. This site is quite fun to read, like an unrestricted playground for imaginative kid-dults springboarding from the hard and sometimes solid science and science fiction.
Well, this was enlightening, it makes so much sense when you think about it, our actual limitations are something that can be easily reached, simply using more advanced propellants would solve two quite important problems without needing excessive R&D like a railgun would Neat stuff
Assuming ETC gets a wide adoption on vehicles, I wonder if a down scaled system could finally make caseless ammunition a viable alternative in firearms as from my limited understanding of the subject what is currently holding it back is that the propellants used are not "clean" enough (well that and the fact there is no current need to go caseless). food for thought.
The main problem with caseless ammo isn't the ignition, or even the residue that you mentioned: it's the lack of an ejectable heat sink (cartridge). When there's no cartridge to dump the heat into, all the heat goes into the barrel, the receiver, the firing mechanism behind it, etc. That's a ton of thermal flux, especially given these large, hot munitions. Thermal flux always causes problems. Look at the G11. Tl;dr: caseless sucks for more reasons than an ETC can solve.
@@mikechurvis9995 There's also the issue of ceaseless ammo being deformed from heat or just from the soldier doing soldier things before it even gets fired.
I believe Titanfall's small arms either have this or electrically primed polymer ammunition. It's really interesting just how realistic Titanfall's ballistic weapons are
Never heard of these ETC Cannons, however, If the assumptions and implications of them hold up. The possibility of having a vastly reduced ammunition detonation caused by penetration is a colossal leap forward in tanker saftey. I look forward to seeing the results of this.
Not gonna lie, I'm actually really happy that I made a comment on your railgun video about ETC guns and their practicality, and the next video I see from you is about ETC guns. I've been researching them and some other similar weapons for years as I work on a sci-fi post-modern setting, and I'm really glad that more people know about them now. Keep up the good work, man. You earned a repeat watcher from me. By the way, in terms of propellants, the ability of the plasma to allow the propellant burn to be fiercely regulated and controlled means that you can delve into the the more exotic propellants. Composite explosives could even, in theory, be used as propellant for ETC guns insomuch as they would need their burn rates scaled down enough to not detonate the breach in the process.
I love this channel. Not only because I like this kind of information, but because I was developing a futiristic sci-fi role game and this kind of information is perfect for me.
Rail guns may still phase out ETC guns in the future if the energy requirement problems for rail guns gets sorted out. Rail guns rounds would consist only of the penetrator and sabot making them smaller an lighter thus allowing more to be stored and either easier handling by loaders (due to reduced weight) or increased penetration. (Due to denser material) Of course if the capacitors and power plant for the railgun tank can’t be made small enough than the size difference in rounds wouldn’t matter.
Personally, I am always intrigued by weaponry that is still based on conventional principles, but being tricky about them. Light Gas Guns are fun for that too to get railgun tier performance out of a relatively minor chemical reaction.
Actally, yes ! like, obviously the threads are WAY too small to support vehicules of the bigger weight classes on sand; but cruisers with 2 batteries for a footbal field worth of surface make sense to srpead the weight of the guns over a larger surface (if only the threads under weren't baby sized) !
Pierre-Marie Caulliez yeah, a 150,000 ton aircraft carrier supported by 6 treads that offer probably 100 square meters of surface each? Yeah, the Kapisi’s sinking.
@@thexlonewolf671 At least the Gaalsiens have anti-grav vessels, which DO make sense to avoid sinking or sanding your hull. Then again, deserts have lots of dunes and overtanks don't do well on hills... And hovering technology tends to be complicated, like : complex, like : the kind of stuff that DOESN'T like sandgrains entering inside of it...
That's not the point as far as I understand the video. The weapon you are talking about isn't a cannon, it's an ETC autocannon. The kind that is mounted on IFVs. The major difference between conventional guns and ETC cannons is the propellant ignition method. The fire rate will propably be similar. The shell is still the same size, just much more efficient.
This video isn't saying that tanks will fire as dude above me stayed, it's saying the velocity of the round will be much higher, though theoretically there could be an increase in fire rate.
Yeah except that no, ETC gun have disadvantage, one of them being that it build up more heat so quick fire rate ain't a good idea. there is also no need for extreme firerate on the battlefield.
@@benjamin1359870 If there was no need, why would autocannons and assault rifles exist? High fire rate is obviously a preferred approach when dealing with soft targets, especially in large groups. For tank guns fire rate is good as well. If you can put out rounds 1.5 times faster than your enemy, you will be killing 1.5 times as much shit. Of course, at a certain point the autoloader you'd need to install would get too mechanically complex to be reliably used, and there would be problems with the aforementioned heat buildup. But up until a certain point, increase in fire rate is a desirable outcome.
@@martydi2519 But those are far for extreme, you just have to compare the fire rate of a GAU-8 Avenger to an autocannon, or an assault rifle, there is not anee for extreme fire rate, that's why no modern machine gun has the fire rate of an Mg42 despite most of them being based on them, because there is a point where the fire rate is just a hassle. Tank cannon don't need high fire rate they don't deal with soft target in a way that need high fire rate. and on't carry even ammo to really be able to afford to even miss a target, if you never miss your shot you on't really need to worry about how fast your second come; and most of the times in combat situation tank rarely have to shot in quick sucession when a high firerate would help.
this makes sense to me; I always thought railguns seemed more suited to larger platforms, like battleships, while tanks needed something a bit more practical at smaller sizes..
Supercapacitors are getting pretty good. Maybe the diesel engines in tanks could just serve as generators, driving power to separate supercap banks, a main one for movement and other standard technical systems, then a small one for the cannon.
I never heard of the term ETC, but have been obsessed with the concept of electrically primed ammunition for a while, thanks a ton for informing me that people aren't just sleeping on this amazing tech.
I thought of this a while ago when I was making a sci fi universe. In it batteries where a issue so I couldn’t use rail guns so I came up with the idea to uses coil guns mixed with etc guns. With the main power coming from the etc and the coil increasing its power as it when down the barrel of the gun. With a diamondoid bullet with a tungsten core and a super conducting material on the surface of the bullet going down the barrel at Mach 15.
The only issue with that is cooling and the resulting local atmospheric heating from firing more then a few shots potentially frying nearby friendly infantry.
Demo_the _man The marines in it where genetically enriched cyborgs Wearing power armor and the gun and armour where made of a super alloy that could take a lot of heat and recoil
@@primaris7045 not something I can discuss at great length in a RUclips comment. "Going 15Ma" is not very believable in the universe I want to envision, especially not in handheld firearms, so I use ETCs accelerated with gaussrifles / coilguns instead... and possibly full-on railgun if I see it fit. It won't be feasibly man-portable at this universe's current state of affairs; only vehicles and emplacements can wield such a weapon.
Anyone else hear the Mechanicus OST playing in the background? lol Also I would like to point out that the M41AE2 Heavy Pulse Rifle from Aliens, is called a "Pulse Rifle" because the propellant is electrically ignited.
I was thinking the same thing about the pulse rifle. Makes me wonder if ETC technology would actually give an advantage to small arms. I suppose it could improve armor piercing or effective range when you need it with the push of a button.
@@2Potates It's not a change with a button press; you'd be swapping out the ammo, because the ETC ammo uses a different propellant than conventional ammunition. Also, using ETC propellant with the same bullet will increase the recoil, with all the problems that will cause. A gun designed from the ground up for ETC would be able to use smaller ammunition with higher velocity to impart the same amount of kinetic energy, but would have to carry around a power supply for the igniter which could negate most of your advantage there. Also, any power supply is also going to be something else that can explode when shot.
I've been using the Mechanicus OST as background audio whilst reading 40k books for the last few weeks. Genuinely thought I was losing it until I saw it credited in the description ;w;
@@boobah5643 An ETC system could allow you to modify the burn rate and thus the muzzle velocity. And yes i know about the increase in recoil wich i why i said you push that button *when you need it* and besides if you constantly went with the super high velocity you'd cause your therminal ballistics on soft targets to be worse. Your rounds would just start ice picking instead. There's a limit to how small and fast you can make your rounds before they become ineffective against human targets. Also i've hardly heard of any cases where someone's gun got shot.
The problem with ETC, or at least was with the pieces tested that they offered dramatically less performance increase than they are promised. I don't know what's going on with the ETC research now but the XM-291 only offered 7% increased muzzle energy which was deemed very disappointing. I agree that there is future in ETC technology but for decades now they had been a letdown and only increased complexity and expenses for little benefit. Furthermore the introduction of ETC will be occouring in stages. Stage 1 - electronically primed munition, more stable performance and increased ammo safety Stage 2 - electronic heat management to achieve increased performance from munitions Stage 3 - usage of new compounds that make use of the plasma heats utilized Stage 4 - electronic heating as extra propelling force Stage 1&2 are tried but compared to the promised yields as I said they are pretty disappointing. Stage 3 AFAIK is fairy tale right now because nobody invented a new supreme propellant which explicitly needs plasma heating. And Stage 4 is something you'd only consider at the brink of the "railgun age". Another problem with hypersonic tank rounds is that more than the limits of propellant what holds back further improvements on velocity are the impact physics themselves. 1.5-1.8km/s is the optimum range where the projectile still behaves like a projectile. If you get to 2.5-4km/s you might as well throw lead balls at your target, it'd have almost the same effect. At a certain velocity solids cease function normally and they adopt liquid-like properties. Modern armor-piercing sabots already make use of this but if you increase the velocity further then rather than increasing penetration, you'd make your cannon perform worse. Some considerable leaps are required in material technology to overcome this. Ironically enough the way ETC is right now it has little benefit for fighting vehicles but can be massively relevant for naval gunnery and artillery. ETC has a very stable velocity curve as you already explained and offers room for a whole new family of insensitive munitions. This should result in way greater accuracy, increased overall performance and overall reliability increase. An artillery piece using ETC may not have any amazing properties but it'd be ultimately a much better weapon to use.
@@thefirstprimariscatosicari6870 Wasn't really my point but I have to concur with you regardless. Ships have way more room for all that tech we want to squish into them than an AFV. It might seem odd or even dumb to invest in better naval cannons but those weapons can still have a purpose. Another development, one that was actually initially tested for ETC, is the development of anti-air guns. These weapons already require tremendous amounts of power due to their sensors and electronics so adding a plasma ignition system is less strenuous than for other weapons. Why would you want it though? Because of reliability. An ETC gun would have far less variance of muzzle velocity, will assuredly ignite every round unless it has an electric failure (which would doom the gun anyways) and could enable using new munitions with less weakpoints to their casing to allow rougher handling. The consistent velocity matters more and more small to medium caliber AA guns operate using timed fuses which are set when the projectile exits the barrel. A tiny error in measured velocity can easily mean the projectile detonates way ahead or way after the target thus causing no damage. So yeah, having an ETC mechanism would help these considerably.
I think a ship could do with ETC enabling faster rounds while railguns are still being refined (wring more range out of the guns so you don't have to resort to missiles that soon)
@@aguywhodoesntexist Most ETC guns wouldn't have dramatically larger velocities and by the point you get there the railguns would be a superior alternative. ETC would likely have more niche for a weapon system which doesn't need too much range but has to work really well. CIWS, naval guns for self-defense and similar roles all could benefit from ETC. Railguns are intended to replace some roles of missiles but I can't see ETC guns doing it. The reason is range. Railguns can replace a lot of short range missiles but the same cannot be said for ETC guns unless you get to some really arcane levels of advancement. The realistic expectation is that ETC guns just become the new norm for firearms and their less obvious but very real benefits would be a common comfort for modern military hardware. For example it's often stated that small arms development is stuck at the M16 still, that we still use the same kind of guns when previous eras had entire weapon types replaced within decades. While this is partially true in the fact that we don't look for wonder bullets much due to "the long peace" which is over the world lately. But firearms did improve massively, in every aspect. A modern 5.56mm NATO round is way higher standard, has its weird quirks tamed, works in every weapon and even its raw performance is increased significantly. Same way the "ETC era" would improve gunnery but only at incremental speed, it wouldn't be so earthshattering. Just good.
I still say ETC be more practical than a rail gun all the benefits he mentioned once the technology is in a mature and more developed state might have more benefits than your standard ammunition and the current railgun we are testing can only be shrunk down to a miner degree but to make it go hypersonic or to propel it Worth damn to get the full benefit takes way more f****** energy than a etc Cannon not only that but railguns have been known to fall apart and damage themselves when firing yes they could survive a few rounds but it's going to take way more maintenance and highly specialized materials
If i remember correctly, the germans did researched this technology in the early 80's and it turned out to inpractical for common use - especially in real war scenarios. And there where also problems when the inviromental temperatures are to hot or to cold. I did a quick search but i could not find anything on the web. Im sure i read this in a museum.
Also one thing that interests me is the miniaturization of this technology. The possibilities for improvements in firearms design is interesting, though not without its own challenges
I'd love a video focused more broadly on "The Future of Tanks" in general. They've been pretty de-emphasized in the last two decades due to the focus by the US in the war on terror. But for the perceived renewed great power competition coming up they don't seem particularly useful or well suited to the future battlefield either
Do we even have shells (or materials we could use for shells) capable of being fired at such high velocities without simply shattering on impact? We already transitioned from steel shells to tungsten-carbide cored shells, and even those risk shattering on armor when fired from current guns. Some countries have depleted uranium shells, and long-rod penetrators are also made of very tough stuff. Are either of those materials viable for use in shells fired at extreme high-velocity from next-gen ETC, CLG, or rail guns?
One thing that you also miss is that with ETC gun the power of a round is no longer limited by the chamber volume and the burning temperature of the propellant, in a conventional gun the chamber volume limit the total amount of energy you can use to propel a round and the temperature of the gas is bound to the burning temperature of the propellant, with an ETC gun, it's no longer the case you can heat the gas even more increasing it's expansion velocity, that's why ETC gun can reach higher velocity, it also means that depending from the amount of heating the velocity of the projectile change, so it's not just ammunition with higher velocity, it's amunition with changeable velocity depending from the crew need.
I wonder if it will ever be possible for this electrothermal chemical system to be used in small arms to improve the muzzle velocity of which ever projectile it's firing
Generally less moving parts = better reliability. Better reliability means they can push the tech further. I knew about this technology before from small arms speculation but very interesting video. Thanks!
Ofc my comment is a vast oversimplification since it improves stuff like being able to use different propellants when you don't have to worry about chemical ignition and so on and so on
Russia has something similar I think. They have a microwave priming system on the Koalitsiya-SV self propelled howitzer. It ignites the entire charge at the same time.
I think the benefits of more consistent ignition would benefit more on the larger side. (Not that naval vessels use large bore cannon any more- missiles have extended the reach of many vessels whilst reducing the tonnage and displacement footprint of a vessel's weaponry and removing the need for a lot of dedicated plant and manpower for the same abstract combat value)
It could be scaled up for naval guns. Scaling down for small arms is a bit trickier. Electrically fired primers have some benefits and have been done before in rifles. But if you use ETC in a rifle it will probably make the recoil impulse much shorter and sharper, which can negatively affect accuracy of sustained fire. The energy required will also be higher than a simple electric primer, which means a larger and heavier battery that needs changing more frequently.
I can see some benefits in the munition's propellant not being ignited by enemy fire, but wouldn't the payload still detonate if the magazine were struck by enemy ordinance?
The advantage regarding change of chemical component for shells will be especially usefull for tanks who s design IS more prone to ammorack (like T64/72/80/90)
Finally, someone talks about ETC. Would be interesting if you did a video about laser defense systems for anti drone and anti aircraft seeing as how that is getting a lot of attention due to how effective drones have been in Syria.
Another point I've heard about ETC weapons is that due to more efficient propellant ignition and combustion the barrel life of the weapon is also improved, or potentially allow for extremely hot chamber temperatures without sacrificing barrel life.
you'd need a large battery and igniter on the gun, which would overcomplicate the design, make it more expensive and make it harder to maintain, so while its definetly possible it wouldn't be practical
I've actually been writing a more "grounded" sci fi story where human soldiers use ETC rifles firing a semi-caseless sub caliber penetrator with a polymer sabot. Man portable railguns exist in this world, but the batteries and power equipment are very bulky so they're normally crew served, but an ETC plasma cartridge is cheap, and can fire hundreds to thousands of rounds before running dry. You can even scale it up with rail or coil assists, instead of a tank just loading APFSDS, it loads a round that's basically a railgun sabot, and as it fires, coils around the gun barrel speed it up to hypersonic speeds. Honestly an underexplored weapon in sci fi, I feel
If they can shorten the shell casing by using a more potent propellant, modify the breach for the new shell, you could reduce the size of the turret shell stowage compartment allowing for a small APU (Aux. Power Unit) to be mounted to power the ETC Device.
I think that we might see an ETC concept combined with a Binary Propellant System to increase the gun's velocity WITHOUT increasing the size/weight of the gun. You would load the projectile, then introduce TWO separate "liquid or powdered propellants" [which are stable when alone but become volatile when mixed] by an injection system, and finally ignite the combined solution [or powder] with a plasma charge. The BP propellant component can be very compact (just look at the small-diameter bomb and its "hyperbaric explosive" compound) and the only major issue would be creating a barrel that can contain such large pressures.
I ammunition propellant can only be ignited by a plasma device it cannot be ignited by incoming enemy rounds. That is HUGE as most tank kills are due to ammunition cook off. It also increases crew surviveability. While an incoming round that penetrates the armor is going to be deadly on any crew unlucky enough to be struck by spalling and fragments of the perpetrator, not having you own ammunition explode in the turret with you, is a bit of a relief. My opinion would be that, if it increases round performance against enemy targets great, but if it maintained round performance similar to current chemical propellant , but increased crew surviveability by making the rounds impervious to cook due to vehicle armor penetration, then that is still a winner. A tank can be repaired from lots of battle damage. Its the trained crews that are harder to replace. A catastrophic internal explosion will usually destroy the tank beyond repair AND kill your crew.
All I want for Christmas is a compulsator charged flux compression Gauss cannon. The efficiency man, it could be so good. Just ignore resistive heating warming the barrel up a couple hundred degrees C per shot..
Ah mechanicus techno-chanting, a man of culture I see
Now off to the tranches with you Guardsman. The walls of Vraks aren't gonna siege itself.
*_O R G A N D R O P_*
To the Trenches he said "loads Bolt Gun"
Instantly recognised it and now i feel like programming because i listen to the soundtrack when i do
Wunderbar
Well I never heard of an ETC gun until now. Fascinating technology though, the implications are obvious.
Good I wasn't the only one
Check out the old metal storm videos, you can use ETC guns in arrays to get 1 million rpm machine guns and mortars
Have you heard of the movie Aliens? Because you may have heard of an ETC without realizing it as the Pulse Rifle's ammunition lore wise is electrically ignited.
Not necessarily. A few important things to note before even getting even a little bit hyped for this that the video didn't bring up:
1. They have yet to make this remotely efficient after 30+ years of research and development.
2. The system requires significant power and the associated electrical systems to even fire. If any of these are damaged or if the tank/vehicle gets affected by an EMP strike (like USA is currently developing for use in artillery shells), the weapons will simply be incapable of firing unlike traditional guns.
3. Faster projectiles combined with much more potent, hotter-burning powder/liquid propellant mixes (along with the heat from the ignition system) will severely reduce the life-time while increasing the needed maintenance of the barrel.
4. More components (especially electrical ones) increase the risk of things going wrong and/or requiring more maintenance of which said maintenance would also require a degree of specialization.
@@KageRyuu6 Really, I must of missied that, then again I have only ever watched the films and read a couple of the thrashy 90's era novels so I always thought of Alien as a horror franchise. Is there alot of lore for the Aliens weapons then?
Got the love a channel that acctually has good accurate content on tanks, not many out there, keep it up love from the Uk man.
The first time I ever heard about a ETC gun was in Frontlines Fuel of War. The Western Coalition MBT used a 120mm ETC gun while the Red Star tank used a conventional 140mm.
YES! As he was describing a 120 mm ETC gun vs. a conventional gun I thought, "didn't Frontline do that with the two tanks in-game?" Lo and behold, I checked the wiki and the M1B Fuller has a 120 mm ETC while the T-119 has a regular 140 mm gun. Spooks, you should consider doing this game's tanks for an ep of "Everything wrong with"!
@@Guy_GuyGuy I second this. That game gives me the feels with a lot of their weapons, armor and plot feeling somewhat believable.
Objective complete, the frontline is moving up!
Same here; that's where I heard of the concept first.
YES please
Given that it's such a relatively minor change to the weapon mechanisms (basically an electronic primer but with way more... zap), no wonder this tech is less known and under the radar. Since not much has to be changed around the gun design and surrounding logistical factors, I guess it just doesn't draw that much attention in return. (Yet?)
Well , if the gun performance changes as much as he said in the video , this might flip things on their heads : the current race between armor and guns is a stalemate , however if these guns come up and the armor doesn't adapt in time we might see a resurgence of tankdestroyers since they would be able to capitalize on their superior firepower while ditching infantry support all of a while tanks might become more like infantry support veichle , with less focus on the gun and more focus on bringing the infantry in a favorable position to spot the destroyer before the destroyer spot the tank , or at least that's my speculative opinion , anyhow I think atgm are the future for tanks they just make the whole machine lighter while offering the same killing potential ...
@@davidegaruti2582 Except missiles DON'T have the same killing potential. They have a drastically lower speed, so they have to use shaped-charge warhead to penetrate armor. The (relatively) low speed makes active defense systems a fairly effective counter, and give the target something of a chance to dodge; the shaped-charge warhead can be countered with fairly simply armor designs. Against modern MBTs, missiles just aren't reliable enough killers to warrant replacing a high-velocity cannon.
@@davidegaruti2582 tbh I feel like the railgun would become the new tank destroyer's weapon of choice.
Davide Garuti Tank destroyers still exist in the modern day in the form of attack helicopters and, well, main battle tanks. To build a specialized tank destroyer, in my opinion, is rather wasteful since it locks a vehicle into a more specialized role, and that costs resources. It would take a significant change in doctrine to have ground-based dedicated tank destroyers again. After all, main battle tanks happened because it's easier to standardize around a few vehicles that can do more roles.
The gun performance here allows "normal" guns to continue being effective against armor by improving penetration while still retaining everything needed to fire more "standard" munitions (i.e., high explosive) for infantry support, all at the cost of maybe needing some additional space tacked on for the plasma ignition system (or maybe just a more powerful APU, who knows).
I'm just saying, if a MBT can carry these improved guns, it's going to go on the MBT. The armor vs gun race has been here before: the 1950s with Leopard 1 was basically this. Tanks are there to support the infantry- if it has enough armor to resist infantry anti-tank weapons, then that's arguably good enough, even if the armor can not withstand enemy tanks. It's a shoot-first-kill-first world, after all, armor is only a backup plan these days.
@@gelatinoussire7772 yeah , i agree with that , a miniaturized version of a railgun would exert more power than an etc gun , however we don't have such a WMD ( a railgun would be that dangerus ) , so imo for the time being a etc gun would do the trick ...
E: Epic
T: Terrifying
C: Cannon
Yep.
I cannot understate how much I love your content man, l’d never have guessed learning about tank engineering would be so fucking cool
brb lemme hit some mfer with my new M1A5's et cetera cannon
That profile pic just makes it much more admirable
Underrated comment smh
1:42 The only problem with increasing muzzle velocity is that at extreme speeds there's quite a large possibility of the penetrator and armour melting during the impact. This poses its own challenges which would require a redesign of the armour piercing rounds to better exploit fluid dynamics. Still the advantages of ETC guns are undeniable.
There are already munitions that can tolerate higher velocities and impacts, not to mention armor behaves as a liquid when hit with something going that fast anyway.
@@jayburn00 not exactly
armour is not a fluid, and it has different, strange properties associated with it
@@goddepersonno3782 what I mean is that it acts similar to a fluid when hit with an object with enough kinetic energy and sufficient durability to not shatter. Some might describe it as plastic like, but fluid covers some of the properties better. By the way, shaped charges are sometimes described as creating jets of molten metal, but this is wrong, it's more like some of the metal is deformed into a penetrating projectile that is partially stretched out sometimes or even fragmented into pieces behind the penetration projectile.
Not really an issue, since modern rounds use tungsten and DU, the High melting point of these metals and DU's ability to self sharpen makes them fine even at ludicrous speeds, you might be thinking of older Solid steel tank rounds.
I am a simple man. I see a Spookston video, I like and only then watch.
Same! I always know that Spookston will make excellent content. Like first, watch video later!
Reminds me of a funny detail, when Armored Warfare added the tier 10 version of the abrams, they called it XM1A3, even though that’s not even a valid syntax (the A3 version of something not in service?), the designation, as per a declassified pdf regarding the XM360, is M1E3.
Did not realize the thumper was using the 140mm ETC gun, always thought it was a conventional 140mm and ETC development was why it was dropped.
Theirs a latest Q&A video by the_chieftain talk about the Thumper's fate.
@@howlerofthegrey9368 I imagine the end of the cold war made it seem unnecessary in addition to its other issues.
@@Phos9 then Bush came in with Middle eastern boogaloo
HERPY DERPEDY didn’t need a 140mm gun for downgraded T-72’s.
@@Phos9 would have made it a piece of cake though
Drinking game : take a shot everytime Spooks says ETC
You won't survive.
Should I call the EMT in advance?
Hello I have died from alcohol poisoning
was looking for that comment
"ETC gun"
Yo that was one of the best explanations of a complicated topic I've ever seen, that was amazing!
*lol i figured out how to do bold text* *dunno why im flexing*
@@DoggosGames*Dude do you know how to Italicize text because I still don’t*
I never knew about these guns and It is quite interesting! Really makes me curious about what the future holds for Tank warfare.
Damn, yours vids pierced my armour of ignorance better than an amoured-piercing round. Keep auto-loading dem vids in the channel. They're priceless.
Every time a new video gets uploaded on this channel i learn something useful about tanks/ifv's, etc
tl;dr: tech that makes your boom stuff go *boom* REAL GOOD
For that matter, if you ever want to get a good laugh, somebody on deviantart took the ETC design concept and put it on crack cocaine. He called it the Nuclear Pulse Gun, and the idea is to take a Projection Orion nuclear heat pulse unit and surround it in a thick block of silicon. Shove it into a barrel and put a massive bullet in front of it. When the kiloton yield nuclear shaped charge detonates, it vaporizes the silicon into a gas and launches the projectile. Barrel ablation would be decreased by the fact you're essentially using lube as a propellant medium, but the barrel would still need to be swapped per few shots.
If you are at all interested in a lot of crazy, insane, and terrifyingly well thought out and researched weapons I'd heavily recommend checking out the AtomicRockets website. It's both impressively well researched and also contains some weapons that are the stuff of nightmares. Theoretical spaced, nuclear explosively formed penetrators that can throw meter wide slabs of metal at 10+ kilometers a second come to mind. Heavily recommend.
www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/
Exactly how big is the gun that pressures of the vaporizing silicon doesn't just blow the barrel apart?
I pretty much always assume that the nuclear gun doesn't survive more than 1 shot.
Although depending on the application, 1 shot is all you need. Figured a good anti-kaiju weapon (so effectively sci-fantasy) would be a large unmanned hydrogen(or helium) blimp carrying a giant single shot nuclear gun.
www.deviantart.com/evilonavich/art/Nuclear-Pulse-Gun-29999385
Found it.
How do they solve overpressure? Conventional guns cannot handle a detonation wave. Period. That's why they use gunpowder and not C4. So how'd they make it survive a detonation wave from a nuclear device, which is both more a million times more powerful and is produced in like 10 nanoseconds, not 100 microseconds.
Thanks. This site is quite fun to read, like an unrestricted playground for imaginative kid-dults springboarding from the hard and sometimes solid science and science fiction.
Well, this was enlightening, it makes so much sense when you think about it, our actual limitations are something that can be easily reached, simply using more advanced propellants would solve two quite important problems without needing excessive R&D like a railgun would
Neat stuff
Assuming ETC gets a wide adoption on vehicles, I wonder if a down scaled system could finally make caseless ammunition a viable alternative in firearms as from my limited understanding of the subject what is currently holding it back is that the propellants used are not "clean" enough (well that and the fact there is no current need to go caseless). food for thought.
The ETC is the potential way to create caseless rounds closer to Gyrojets.
The main problem with caseless ammo isn't the ignition, or even the residue that you mentioned: it's the lack of an ejectable heat sink (cartridge). When there's no cartridge to dump the heat into, all the heat goes into the barrel, the receiver, the firing mechanism behind it, etc. That's a ton of thermal flux, especially given these large, hot munitions. Thermal flux always causes problems. Look at the G11.
Tl;dr: caseless sucks for more reasons than an ETC can solve.
@@mikechurvis9995 There's also the issue of ceaseless ammo being deformed from heat or just from the soldier doing soldier things before it even gets fired.
I believe Titanfall's small arms either have this or electrically primed polymer ammunition. It's really interesting just how realistic Titanfall's ballistic weapons are
I feel that the plasma cartridges would generate so much heat that the gun would suffer from overheating.
Never heard of these ETC Cannons, however, If the assumptions and implications of them hold up. The possibility of having a vastly reduced ammunition detonation caused by penetration is a colossal leap forward in tanker saftey. I look forward to seeing the results of this.
Not gonna lie, I'm actually really happy that I made a comment on your railgun video about ETC guns and their practicality, and the next video I see from you is about ETC guns. I've been researching them and some other similar weapons for years as I work on a sci-fi post-modern setting, and I'm really glad that more people know about them now.
Keep up the good work, man. You earned a repeat watcher from me.
By the way, in terms of propellants, the ability of the plasma to allow the propellant burn to be fiercely regulated and controlled means that you can delve into the the more exotic propellants. Composite explosives could even, in theory, be used as propellant for ETC guns insomuch as they would need their burn rates scaled down enough to not detonate the breach in the process.
Somehow they remind me the hunting rilfe that use an electric charge to ignite gunpowder that I saw on Forgotten Weapons.
A entron I think it was called?
I suppose that can be seen as a version with a much lower powered ignition sytem.
I remember when it came out reading about it in Outdoor Life. No one was interested
@ArkonDrakk that's right
hm
I love this channel. Not only because I like this kind of information, but because I was developing a futiristic sci-fi role game and this kind of information is perfect for me.
did you ever finish it?
@@lainhyugatha3762 Kind of
Rail guns may still phase out ETC guns in the future if the energy requirement problems for rail guns gets sorted out. Rail guns rounds would consist only of the penetrator and sabot making them smaller an lighter thus allowing more to be stored and either easier handling by loaders (due to reduced weight) or increased penetration. (Due to denser material) Of course if the capacitors and power plant for the railgun tank can’t be made small enough than the size difference in rounds wouldn’t matter.
and here we are. GD just teased the next-gen abrams with an ETC gun being quite likely
Funnily enough I stumbled on this channel and pretty much was hooked. Keep er going
Man, that Mechanicus music in the background...truly a great display of taste.
Personally, I am always intrigued by weaponry that is still based on conventional principles, but being tricky about them. Light Gas Guns are fun for that too to get railgun tier performance out of a relatively minor chemical reaction.
Spookston: this means that the ammo won't go off when the tank is penetrated by an enemy
Gaijin: Too bad. Your ammo is yellow, your tank is gone.
Can you do a video about the vehicle design in deserts of kharak?
Actally, yes ! like, obviously the threads are WAY too small to support vehicules of the bigger weight classes on sand; but cruisers with 2 batteries for a footbal field worth of surface make sense to srpead the weight of the guns over a larger surface (if only the threads under weren't baby sized) !
Pierre-Marie Caulliez yeah, a 150,000 ton aircraft carrier supported by 6 treads that offer probably 100 square meters of surface each? Yeah, the Kapisi’s sinking.
@@thexlonewolf671 At least the Gaalsiens have anti-grav vessels, which DO make sense to avoid sinking or sanding your hull. Then again, deserts have lots of dunes and overtanks don't do well on hills... And hovering technology tends to be complicated, like : complex, like : the kind of stuff that DOESN'T like sandgrains entering inside of it...
@@pierre-mariecaulliez6285 It is said that Kharak has lower gravity than of Earth's, so tank threads do not need to be as wide there.
Wow!
Epic gun with quick fire rate like this sure will be a huge change in tank manufacturing.
:D
That's not the point as far as I understand the video. The weapon you are talking about isn't a cannon, it's an ETC autocannon. The kind that is mounted on IFVs. The major difference between conventional guns and ETC cannons is the propellant ignition method. The fire rate will propably be similar. The shell is still the same size, just much more efficient.
This video isn't saying that tanks will fire as dude above me stayed, it's saying the velocity of the round will be much higher, though theoretically there could be an increase in fire rate.
Yeah except that no, ETC gun have disadvantage, one of them being that it build up more heat so quick fire rate ain't a good idea. there is also no need for extreme firerate on the battlefield.
@@benjamin1359870 If there was no need, why would autocannons and assault rifles exist? High fire rate is obviously a preferred approach when dealing with soft targets, especially in large groups. For tank guns fire rate is good as well. If you can put out rounds 1.5 times faster than your enemy, you will be killing 1.5 times as much shit. Of course, at a certain point the autoloader you'd need to install would get too mechanically complex to be reliably used, and there would be problems with the aforementioned heat buildup. But up until a certain point, increase in fire rate is a desirable outcome.
@@martydi2519 But those are far for extreme, you just have to compare the fire rate of a
GAU-8 Avenger to an autocannon, or an assault rifle, there is not anee for extreme fire rate, that's why no modern machine gun has the fire rate of an Mg42 despite most of them being based on them, because there is a point where the fire rate is just a hassle. Tank cannon don't need high fire rate they don't deal with soft target in a way that need high fire rate. and on't carry even ammo to really be able to afford to even miss a target, if you never miss your shot you on't really need to worry about how fast your second come; and most of the times in combat situation tank rarely have to shot in quick sucession when a high firerate would help.
Good idea, good narration, good technology, good war thunder gameplay, good everthing!!!
As someone trying to design futuristic vehicles for my large scale military organization. This shit helps, keep it up.
They call it the ETC gun because when it starts firing, it just keeps firing, and keeps firing, etc
*fires* Etc, etc, etc,
Haha gun go brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…… etc…… etc…… etc……
this makes sense to me; I always thought railguns seemed more suited to larger platforms, like battleships, while tanks needed something a bit more practical at smaller sizes..
05:18
OMG Spookston, I never thought you would bully a poor Russian milkman just out to deliver some milk.
Supercapacitors are getting pretty good. Maybe the diesel engines in tanks could just serve as generators, driving power to separate supercap banks, a main one for movement and other standard technical systems, then a small one for the cannon.
Awesome. Never heard of ETC guns. They are so cool! I look forward to your next video!
I never heard of the term ETC, but have been obsessed with the concept of electrically primed ammunition for a while, thanks a ton for informing me that people aren't just sleeping on this amazing tech.
I thought of this a while ago when I was making a sci fi universe.
In it batteries where a issue so I couldn’t use rail guns so I came up with the idea to uses coil guns mixed with etc guns.
With the main power coming from the etc and the coil increasing its power as it when down the barrel of the gun.
With a diamondoid bullet with a tungsten core and a super conducting material on the surface of the bullet going down the barrel at Mach 15.
The only issue with that is cooling and the resulting local atmospheric heating from firing more then a few shots potentially frying nearby friendly infantry.
You and I both, blood God.
Demo_the _man
The marines in it where genetically enriched cyborgs
Wearing power armor and
the gun and armour where made of a super alloy that could take a lot of heat and recoil
KajiTetsushi
Nice what was your story about
@@primaris7045 not something I can discuss at great length in a RUclips comment.
"Going 15Ma" is not very believable in the universe I want to envision, especially not in handheld firearms, so I use ETCs accelerated with gaussrifles / coilguns instead... and possibly full-on railgun if I see it fit. It won't be feasibly man-portable at this universe's current state of affairs; only vehicles and emplacements can wield such a weapon.
Anyone else hear the Mechanicus OST playing in the background? lol
Also I would like to point out that the M41AE2 Heavy Pulse Rifle from Aliens, is called a "Pulse Rifle" because the propellant is electrically ignited.
I was thinking the same thing about the pulse rifle. Makes me wonder if ETC technology would actually give an advantage to small arms. I suppose it could improve armor piercing or effective range when you need it with the push of a button.
@@2Potates It's not a change with a button press; you'd be swapping out the ammo, because the ETC ammo uses a different propellant than conventional ammunition. Also, using ETC propellant with the same bullet will increase the recoil, with all the problems that will cause.
A gun designed from the ground up for ETC would be able to use smaller ammunition with higher velocity to impart the same amount of kinetic energy, but would have to carry around a power supply for the igniter which could negate most of your advantage there. Also, any power supply is also going to be something else that can explode when shot.
I've been using the Mechanicus OST as background audio whilst reading 40k books for the last few weeks. Genuinely thought I was losing it until I saw it credited in the description ;w;
@@boobah5643 An ETC system could allow you to modify the burn rate and thus the muzzle velocity. And yes i know about the increase in recoil wich i why i said you push that button *when you need it* and besides if you constantly went with the super high velocity you'd cause your therminal ballistics on soft targets to be worse. Your rounds would just start ice picking instead. There's a limit to how small and fast you can make your rounds before they become ineffective against human targets. Also i've hardly heard of any cases where someone's gun got shot.
@@boobah5643 the g11 was almost a etc gun
Hardly believed my ears when I heard that faint mechanicus music. Blessed video.
Woah... I was just listening to the Mechanicus OST, put on your video, and promptly thought I lost my mind.
The problem with ETC, or at least was with the pieces tested that they offered dramatically less performance increase than they are promised. I don't know what's going on with the ETC research now but the XM-291 only offered 7% increased muzzle energy which was deemed very disappointing.
I agree that there is future in ETC technology but for decades now they had been a letdown and only increased complexity and expenses for little benefit. Furthermore the introduction of ETC will be occouring in stages.
Stage 1 - electronically primed munition, more stable performance and increased ammo safety
Stage 2 - electronic heat management to achieve increased performance from munitions
Stage 3 - usage of new compounds that make use of the plasma heats utilized
Stage 4 - electronic heating as extra propelling force
Stage 1&2 are tried but compared to the promised yields as I said they are pretty disappointing. Stage 3 AFAIK is fairy tale right now because nobody invented a new supreme propellant which explicitly needs plasma heating. And Stage 4 is something you'd only consider at the brink of the "railgun age". Another problem with hypersonic tank rounds is that more than the limits of propellant what holds back further improvements on velocity are the impact physics themselves. 1.5-1.8km/s is the optimum range where the projectile still behaves like a projectile. If you get to 2.5-4km/s you might as well throw lead balls at your target, it'd have almost the same effect. At a certain velocity solids cease function normally and they adopt liquid-like properties. Modern armor-piercing sabots already make use of this but if you increase the velocity further then rather than increasing penetration, you'd make your cannon perform worse. Some considerable leaps are required in material technology to overcome this.
Ironically enough the way ETC is right now it has little benefit for fighting vehicles but can be massively relevant for naval gunnery and artillery. ETC has a very stable velocity curve as you already explained and offers room for a whole new family of insensitive munitions. This should result in way greater accuracy, increased overall performance and overall reliability increase. An artillery piece using ETC may not have any amazing properties but it'd be ultimately a much better weapon to use.
So in short for cool new technologies we should look at ships first, and only later tanks.
@@thefirstprimariscatosicari6870 Wasn't really my point but I have to concur with you regardless. Ships have way more room for all that tech we want to squish into them than an AFV. It might seem odd or even dumb to invest in better naval cannons but those weapons can still have a purpose.
Another development, one that was actually initially tested for ETC, is the development of anti-air guns. These weapons already require tremendous amounts of power due to their sensors and electronics so adding a plasma ignition system is less strenuous than for other weapons. Why would you want it though? Because of reliability. An ETC gun would have far less variance of muzzle velocity, will assuredly ignite every round unless it has an electric failure (which would doom the gun anyways) and could enable using new munitions with less weakpoints to their casing to allow rougher handling. The consistent velocity matters more and more small to medium caliber AA guns operate using timed fuses which are set when the projectile exits the barrel. A tiny error in measured velocity can easily mean the projectile detonates way ahead or way after the target thus causing no damage. So yeah, having an ETC mechanism would help these considerably.
I think a ship could do with ETC enabling faster rounds while railguns are still being refined (wring more range out of the guns so you don't have to resort to missiles that soon)
@@aguywhodoesntexist Most ETC guns wouldn't have dramatically larger velocities and by the point you get there the railguns would be a superior alternative. ETC would likely have more niche for a weapon system which doesn't need too much range but has to work really well. CIWS, naval guns for self-defense and similar roles all could benefit from ETC. Railguns are intended to replace some roles of missiles but I can't see ETC guns doing it. The reason is range. Railguns can replace a lot of short range missiles but the same cannot be said for ETC guns unless you get to some really arcane levels of advancement. The realistic expectation is that ETC guns just become the new norm for firearms and their less obvious but very real benefits would be a common comfort for modern military hardware.
For example it's often stated that small arms development is stuck at the M16 still, that we still use the same kind of guns when previous eras had entire weapon types replaced within decades. While this is partially true in the fact that we don't look for wonder bullets much due to "the long peace" which is over the world lately. But firearms did improve massively, in every aspect. A modern 5.56mm NATO round is way higher standard, has its weird quirks tamed, works in every weapon and even its raw performance is increased significantly. Same way the "ETC era" would improve gunnery but only at incremental speed, it wouldn't be so earthshattering. Just good.
I still say ETC be more practical than a rail gun all the benefits he mentioned once the technology is in a mature and more developed state might have more benefits than your standard ammunition and the current railgun we are testing can only be shrunk down to a miner degree but to make it go hypersonic or to propel it Worth damn to get the full benefit takes way more f****** energy than a etc Cannon not only that but railguns have been known to fall apart and damage themselves when firing yes they could survive a few rounds but it's going to take way more maintenance and highly specialized materials
If i remember correctly, the germans did researched this technology in the early 80's and it turned out to inpractical for common use - especially in real war scenarios. And there where also problems when the inviromental temperatures are to hot or to cold.
I did a quick search but i could not find anything on the web. Im sure i read this in a museum.
Just because the issues were too hard to overcome in the 80's, that does not imply that they always will be
Also one thing that interests me is the miniaturization of this technology. The possibilities for improvements in firearms design is interesting, though not without its own challenges
They could be really useful for increasing the distance mounted guns are good for. With faster muzzle velocity there’s less spread
The music in the background fits perfectly with the context of your video.
Oh my god, mechanicus osts are everywhere!
This is about to blow tf up with this kind of videos. If he dont reach a mil this year ima be surprise.
Good explanation, thanks!
Congratulations on 10 million views bro! :) Great video 👍
Starting to become one of my favorite youtube channels
Fascinating. Never heard about it before. You gave me something to look further into.
Also.....that poor ASU-57....
And that 94-KM milk truck...
I love your content. You don’t do exclusively war thunder and that’s nice. The quick historical videos are amazing
Orkz:
DATZ A GUD SHOOTA DERE.
BUT YOU NEEDZ MOAR DAKKA YA GIT!
1:40 sir, you just killed a child.
That’s murder!
Great video keep up the good work.
Interesting! Had no idea this was a thing, it sounds so small yet significant
1:00 I was also surprised when I heard from a friend firing a normal gun has a short delay
Spookston drinking game:
Take a shot everytime he says "ETC gun"
loved the video, absolutely amazing. Keep this great content coming m8!!!
I hear that Mechanicus ost in the background, you cant hide form me!
Is that Mechanicus I hear?
... Subbed
4:08 bouncy rod
Dude your videos are so entertaining keep it up
Ain't nobody gonna talk about the one Soviet AA Milktruck he destroyed near the end of the video?
I'd love a video focused more broadly on "The Future of Tanks" in general. They've been pretty de-emphasized in the last two decades due to the focus by the US in the war on terror. But for the perceived renewed great power competition coming up they don't seem particularly useful or well suited to the future battlefield either
Once again yet another awesome video! 😁
0:10 I can’t be the only one thinking of the Scorpion right?
From the first five seconds, I'm just gonna go ahead and guess it's called an ETC gun because it goes, "BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG etc."
5:00 ah yes...the mbt and chopper killer russian milk truck
5:33 I love you.
Do we even have shells (or materials we could use for shells) capable of being fired at such high velocities without simply shattering on impact?
We already transitioned from steel shells to tungsten-carbide cored shells, and even those risk shattering on armor when fired from current guns. Some countries have depleted uranium shells, and long-rod penetrators are also made of very tough stuff. Are either of those materials viable for use in shells fired at extreme high-velocity from next-gen ETC, CLG, or rail guns?
One thing that you also miss is that with ETC gun the power of a round is no longer limited by the chamber volume and the burning temperature of the propellant, in a conventional gun the chamber volume limit the total amount of energy you can use to propel a round and the temperature of the gas is bound to the burning temperature of the propellant, with an ETC gun, it's no longer the case you can heat the gas even more increasing it's expansion velocity, that's why ETC gun can reach higher velocity, it also means that depending from the amount of heating the velocity of the projectile change, so it's not just ammunition with higher velocity, it's amunition with changeable velocity depending from the crew need.
I wonder if it will ever be possible for this electrothermal chemical system to be used in small arms to improve the muzzle velocity of which ever projectile it's firing
Plot Twist, we go full circle and go back to fuse-exploding shells as the Main AT-ammo :D
Not entirely new but I now understand the concept.
I was artillery they talked about using either a rail gun or ETC.
Generally less moving parts = better reliability. Better reliability means they can push the tech further. I knew about this technology before from small arms speculation but very interesting video. Thanks!
Ofc my comment is a vast oversimplification since it improves stuff like being able to use different propellants when you don't have to worry about chemical ignition and so on and so on
Can you do a video on the ground vehicles in Star Wars Forces of Corruption used by the Empire, Rebels, and Zann Consortium?
Every step forward in weapons is a step backwards in humanity
Russia has something similar I think. They have a microwave priming system on the Koalitsiya-SV self propelled howitzer. It ignites the entire charge at the same time.
How scale able is this tech? Could it be scaled down to firearms, or scaled up to naval weaponry?
The prototype that appeared at the beginning of the video was a 60mm but larger caliber ones existed (such as those on the tank at 4:40).
I think the benefits of more consistent ignition would benefit more on the larger side. (Not that naval vessels use large bore cannon any more- missiles have extended the reach of many vessels whilst reducing the tonnage and displacement footprint of a vessel's weaponry and removing the need for a lot of dedicated plant and manpower for the same abstract combat value)
It could be scaled up for naval guns. Scaling down for small arms is a bit trickier. Electrically fired primers have some benefits and have been done before in rifles. But if you use ETC in a rifle it will probably make the recoil impulse much shorter and sharper, which can negatively affect accuracy of sustained fire. The energy required will also be higher than a simple electric primer, which means a larger and heavier battery that needs changing more frequently.
I love your Outro music a lot
Sounds like graphene batteries would be a must for these weapon systems.
I can see some benefits in the munition's propellant not being ignited by enemy fire, but wouldn't the payload still detonate if the magazine were struck by enemy ordinance?
The advantage regarding change of chemical component for shells will be especially usefull for tanks who s design IS more prone to ammorack (like T64/72/80/90)
Finally, someone talks about ETC. Would be interesting if you did a video about laser defense systems for anti drone and anti aircraft seeing as how that is getting a lot of attention due to how effective drones have been in Syria.
Another point I've heard about ETC weapons is that due to more efficient propellant ignition and combustion the barrel life of the weapon is also improved, or potentially allow for extremely hot chamber temperatures without sacrificing barrel life.
Warhammer 40,000 Mechanicus OST, Nice touch
I wonder if etc could be scaled down to conventional infantry rifles. Just food for thought.
you'd need a large battery and igniter on the gun, which would overcomplicate the design, make it more expensive and make it harder to maintain, so while its definetly possible it wouldn't be practical
I've actually been writing a more "grounded" sci fi story where human soldiers use ETC rifles firing a semi-caseless sub caliber penetrator with a polymer sabot. Man portable railguns exist in this world, but the batteries and power equipment are very bulky so they're normally crew served, but an ETC plasma cartridge is cheap, and can fire hundreds to thousands of rounds before running dry. You can even scale it up with rail or coil assists, instead of a tank just loading APFSDS, it loads a round that's basically a railgun sabot, and as it fires, coils around the gun barrel speed it up to hypersonic speeds.
Honestly an underexplored weapon in sci fi, I feel
If they can shorten the shell casing by using a more potent propellant, modify the breach for the new shell, you could reduce the size of the turret shell stowage compartment allowing for a small APU (Aux. Power Unit) to be mounted to power the ETC Device.
I think that we might see an ETC concept combined with a Binary Propellant System to increase the gun's velocity WITHOUT increasing the size/weight of the gun. You would load the projectile, then introduce TWO separate "liquid or powdered propellants" [which are stable when alone but become volatile when mixed] by an injection system, and finally ignite the combined solution [or powder] with a plasma charge. The BP propellant component can be very compact (just look at the small-diameter bomb and its "hyperbaric explosive" compound) and the only major issue would be creating a barrel that can contain such large pressures.
Yeaaah can recognize adeptus mechanicus soundtrack anywhere!
Researched it last week, it's quite interesting.
The pictures of this ETC gun is looking similar to the gun of the german Puma (APC) but it is launching big grenades.
I ammunition propellant can only be ignited by a plasma device it cannot be ignited by incoming enemy rounds. That is HUGE as most tank kills are due to ammunition cook off. It also increases crew surviveability. While an incoming round that penetrates the armor is going to be deadly on any crew unlucky enough to be struck by spalling and fragments of the perpetrator, not having you own ammunition explode in the turret with you, is a bit of a relief. My opinion would be that, if it increases round performance against enemy targets great, but if it maintained round performance similar to current chemical propellant , but increased crew surviveability by making the rounds impervious to cook due to vehicle armor penetration, then that is still a winner. A tank can be repaired from lots of battle damage. Its the trained crews that are harder to replace. A catastrophic internal explosion will usually destroy the tank beyond repair AND kill your crew.
So basically they are the Quickest Irons instead of Biggest Irons
But he made one fatal slip...
All I want for Christmas is a compulsator charged flux compression Gauss cannon. The efficiency man, it could be so good. Just ignore resistive heating warming the barrel up a couple hundred degrees C per shot..