Explosive Ramjet Rounds; Possible?

[Grell]

Wellington Industries produces both ramjet & explosive ammunition. Is there anything preventing explosive ramjet rounds?

[Killer Cyborg]

Wellington Industries produces both ramjet & explosive ammunition. Is there anything preventing explosive ramjet rounds?

The only factor I can think of would be room- in a standard sized round, you might only have room for one or the other.

[Grell]

Wellington Industries produces both ramjet & explosive ammunition. Is there anything preventing explosive ramjet rounds?

The only factor I can think of would be room- in a standard sized round, you might only have room for one or the other.

I agree & that had crossed my mind as well. Anything in canon to support or disprove the idea?

[Killer Cyborg]

Wellington Industries produces both ramjet & explosive ammunition. Is there anything preventing explosive ramjet rounds?

The only factor I can think of would be room- in a standard sized round, you might only have room for one or the other.

I agree & that had crossed my mind as well. Anything in canon to support or disprove the idea?

Not that I know of, but there may be something that I don't know of.

[Grell]

I appreciate the input! Explosive ramjets would be pretty potent though...

[Killer Cyborg]

I appreciate the input! Explosive ramjets would be pretty potent though...

I wrote some up for a railgun I created a while back:

BH-R25 Sniper's Rail Gun
Rumor has it that Bullhunter Arms created this weapon by analyzing Triax’s TX-250 Maxi-rail gun and redesigning it as a slimmer, more accurate weapon to be used by snipers.
The techs at Bullhunter have taken advantage of the built-in single-shot feature and superior range, while managing to lose some of the original model’s weight and bulk by reducing ammo capacity and losing the 30 round burst option, as well as significantly increasing the accuracy by creating their models with narrower specifications and more precise engineering than the mass-produced German originals.
They also designed special new ammunition designed for armor penetration and maximum damage, putting more care, effort, and expense into creating rounds that would be far too expensive to be used in regular burst firing. The new rounds are ramjet style ammunition similar to what is available from Wellington Industries, only much larger than the standard ammunition Wellington deals with. It is designed to work with rail guns, and is loaded with explosive armor-piercing charges. Each round, once fired, essentially becomes a miniature armor piercing missile. Each one of these "Dragonslayer" rounds costs 1,200 credits.

The PR department has been hyping this new weapon as the single best man-portable rail gun for use by snipers.
(Of course, the term "man-portable" in an age of M&Ms and D-Bees is somewhat up for debate.)

The BH-R25 Sniper’s Rail Gun
Weight: 165 lbs (including tripod)
Mega-Damage:
Standard Ammunition: 1d4 MD per single shot, 2d6 MD per 10 round burst
"Dragonslayer" Ammunition: 3d6 MD per single shot, 1d4x10 per 10 round burst.
The Dragonslayer Ammunition inflicts double damage when the modified strike roll is 18 or higher, and inflicts triple damage on a strike roll of a Natural 20.
Rate Of Fire: Single-shot or 10 round burst only.
Maximum Effective Range: 6,000 feet.
Payload: The standard magazine for the weapon holds 30 rounds, but it is also capable of being belt-fed (belt of 250 rounds).
Power Source: The BH-R25 can be hooked into any standard nuclear power supply, or it can utilize the E-Clip ports built into the legs of the tripod. Each leg can hold up to two Long E-Clips. A rail guns require tremendous amounts of power, each single shot uses up 3 charges from the E-Clips, and each burst uses up 6 charges.
Targeting: The BH-R25 comes with a built-in targeting system that offers +1 to strike. Moreover, the added stability of firing from the tripod adds an additional +1 to strike, regardless of range, and allows the shooter to use strike bonuses from WP Rifle instead of WP Heavy Mega-Damage Weapons if preferred.

[Grell]

Very nice! What size round do you envision for this beast?

[Armorlord]

Well, one is a hardened casing filled with jet fuel, the other is a shell packed with explosives.
Maybe you could fit the equivalent of both into, say, a 20mm round. Though I'd bump the explosive damage down a notch from having to blast out of a heavier material.

[Grell]

Well, one is a hardened casing filled with jet fuel, the other is a shell packed with explosives.
Maybe you could fit the equivalent of both into, say, a 20mm round. Though I'd bump the explosive damage down a notch from having to blast out of a heavier material.

Good point.

[Killer Cyborg]

Very nice! What size round do you envision for this beast?

Well, that's the question, isn't it?

I generally picture railgun ammunition to be significantly larger than conventional bullets, but I'm not sure if it ever really says.
This weapon is modeled after the TX-250 Maxi-Rail Gun, which is illustrated on p. 56 of the NGR book.
It weighs 250 lbs, and is carried by a 12' tall robot vehicle (der Jaeger).
Judging by the picture, for what that's worth, the rail gun's length is less than half of the Jaeger itself: I'd guess a little over 4' long.
The length of the weapon in the picture is about 4.25 inches, so I'll assume that the rifle is about 4.25 feet long, just to make thing easier.
The bore of the barrel measures about 1/8 of an inch by my rough measure.
So if every inch in the picture is roughly one foot in actual dimensions, and if my measurements are accurate, and if the picture is accurate, then the bore of the weapon should have a diameter of about 1/8 of 1 foot, or about 1.5 inches.
Which would make it something like 1.50 caliber, or about 38 mm, if my math is right.

Now a 7.62×51mm round is roughly as an arbitrary basis, we can see that the length of a bullet (though not all bullets) is about 6.7 times the width.
Which would put the length of the railgun round (assuming that it's a "spike," not a "ball" or "ring") at about 10 inches long, if the proportions are similar.
Which sounds pretty darned big, really, considering the gun is only 4.25 feet by this estimate, or about 51 inches long.
So I've probably made several mistakes, and somebody here would need to do some better math.

It's late enough that I'm not going to check over it tonight, but I can try to go over it myself tomorrow if nobody else shows up to do it right.

[Grell]

I can forgive any math errors, being horrendous at it myself. All in all, I like the write up and it may see play in my upcoming RIFTS adventure.

I'd love to see some regular appearances by Bullhunter Arms in the Rifter!

[Zamion138]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrojet
already been done they just didnt put bombs on the tips of the bullets.
it failed by the way possibly due to bad marketing and production possibly due to gun manufactures putting a stop to it.....I think the 3rd reich had something similar in trials as well.

[Killer Cyborg]

The Gyrojet failed because it's no good for targets that are closer than 30' away, and the models tested weren't very accurate.

Kind of wish the tech took off, though, and I'd love to have one.

[Zer0 Kay]

Yeah, yeah I bring it up every time and then someone comments on how expensive they be but here I go again.

DERVISH rounds (Depleted uranium Explosive Ramjet Vibrocavicating Inertial-resistant enriched Silver-plated Homing rounds)

[Armorlord]

Well, one is a hardened casing filled with jet fuel, the other is a shell packed with explosives.
Maybe you could fit the equivalent of both into, say, a 20mm round. Though I'd bump the explosive damage down a notch from having to blast out of a heavier material.

Good point.

Did recall something I forgot last night, Wellington's explosive rounds don't have a powerful enough charge for a solid MDC round. I'd suggest breakaway panels past a solid MDC penetrator
head with the explosive core. While this wouldn't help with surface damage, rounds that did penetrate would be introducing the target's insides to MD fragmentation.
The MD equivalent to a hollowpoint round.

[Akashic Soldier]

I think this is the kind of idea that deserves its own custom firearm.

Build a weapon that CAN fire them (and only them).

[Grell]

Did recall something I forgot last night, Wellington's explosive rounds don't have a powerful enough charge for a solid MDC round. I'd suggest breakaway panels past a solid MDC penetrator
head with the explosive core. While this wouldn't help with surface damage, rounds that did penetrate would be introducing the target's insides to MD fragmentation.
The MD equivalent to a hollowpoint round.

That's the reason that I ask is that the explosive rounds are stated to simply triple the round damage which would make ramjets a little more effective.

In Mechanoids: Invasion there is a Electromagnetic Boring Rifle that fires rounds that magnetically attach while a laser bores a hole for the explosive charge. Actually has a chance of automatically shutting down anything mechanical that it hits.

[Nightmask]

Sadly the idea of the gyrojet was too early for the technology and no one cares to revisit it in spite of the nearly 40 years of technological development since then. Which ironically the sci-fi movie Runaway (the 1984 Tom Selleck and Gene Simmons movie) actually explored as a plot point of what are pretty much gyrojets with the advanced tech to make them useful. Alas it had the misfortune of coming out as Terminator did and the killer spider bots weren't that scary unless you had arachnophobia and flopped.

Given sci-fi settings tend to allow for tech that we've not bothered to make work even if we could there ought to be things like explosive ramjet rounds around, since one can assume if we had something make it beyond prototype to sales that even if it performed poorly tech advances would make it work well later on. Some modern plane designs (including the Stealth Fighters I think) were developed decades before their actual implementation but were impossible to make work without the advances in computers as human beings simply can't directly deal with all the corrective issues and require that computer buffer automatically doing it for them. No different for things like the Gyrojet that work, but when originally thought up and tested didn't work well enough to keep trying at the time.