Needlegun

There are other articles with similar names; see Needle gun (disambiguation)

A needlegun, also known as a needler, flechette gun or fletcher, is a firearm that fires small, sometimes fin-stabilized, metal darts.

History

The first projectiles in early gun systems dating from the 14th century were typically hand wrought iron flechettes wrapped in a leather sabot. However, due to the expense and trouble of making these darts in a pre-industrial society, they were soon replaced with the less accurate stone cannon ball.

Flechettes again came into mass use in World War I, when they were dropped from airplanes. More recently, several flechette weapon systems have been developed, but none appear to be in mass production.

Flechette ammunition encased in a sabot is available for the M-16, shotguns, and other weapons.

There are some makes of underwater firearms which fire a steel bolt just over 4 inches long (but without fins).

The US Army established a Special Purpose Individual Weapon program which produced several successful automatic flechette rifles, but none had enough advantages over the M16 to switch.

Advantages

Theoretically, the advantages of a needlegun over other projectile weapons are its compact size, high rate of fire, and ultra-high muzzle velocity. A needlegun takes advantage of the principles of kinetic energy and conservation of momentum, allowing a low-recoil delivery system to inflict significant damage to a target. Recoil is governed by momentum, which is the product of velocity and mass. By conservation of momentum, the change in momentum of the gun must equal the change in momentum of the projectile. The needle projectile has a very small mass, so its large change in velocity does not result in much recoil (change in velocity of the gun itself) since the gun has a mass much larger than the mass of the needle. Damage inflicted is related to the kinetic energy imparted by the projectile on the target, which is 1/2 the projectile's mass multiplied by its velocity squared. Since the needle has a very high velocity and a negligible mass, recoil is minimized at little cost to the kinetic energy of the projectile and its damage potential. The high rate of fire allows the user to fire many needles quickly with a minimal loss of accuracy due to recoil effects, giving the needlegun supposedly large damage potential and precision in combat.

Some hypothetical needlegun designs are solid state, meaning that the delivery system has no moving parts other than the projectile itself. For instance, see coilgun and railgun.

Disadvantages

Terminal Ballistics

In real-world firearms, terminal ballistics is often at least as important as aerodynamic efficiency. Rather than inflicting their full kinetic energy on a target, needle projectiles tend to pass smoothly through the target with little damage, similar to needles for textiles or medical usage.

Low-Recoil Operation

A powder-based propulsion system requires a barrel seal, which needles have a hard time providing at high rates of fire without damaging the barrels. Sabot systems result in smaller decreases in recoil (which is proportional to momentum) compared to a full-size projectile, they allow an increase in projectile velocity per unit of barrel length. A typical full bore projectile might Mass 147 grains, but a typical Flechette and Sabot for the same 7.62X51 weapon would Mass only 38 grains, for a substantial reduction in recoil and a very large increase in MV.

Projectile Materials

Lead, used almost universally in firearms for its high density and softness which allows it to pass through rifled gun barrels at high velocity, is unsuitable for a needle for this same reason - it cannot hold its shape without a stronger jacket. Steel jacketed lead core Flechettes are used in some sporting ammunition. Other dense, strong metals like tungsten and depleted uranium have not had the same historical evaluation as projectile materials because of their comparative rarity - and electromagnetic propulsion systems would not work with projectiles made purely of these materials.

Collateral damage

Flechette projectiles do not deflect off typical surfaces as easily as regular bullets due to the longer distribution of mass and reduce the danger to bystanders. In addition to this many flechette systems use self-discarding sabots that exit the barrel at dangerous speeds which can potentially harm allies or bystanders close by the muzzle. Their low mass and large, irregular shape give them poor aerodynamic qualities and very short danger zones.

Flechette-firing rifles

The Special Purpose Individual Weapon was a long-running United States Army program to develop, in part, a workable flechette-based "rifle", though other concepts were also involved. The concepts continued to be tested under the Future Rifle Program and again in the 1980s and 1990s under the Advanced Combat Rifle program, but neither program resulted in a system useful enough to warrant replacing the current M16.

In fiction

This weapon appears frequently in science fiction. For example it is featured in:

• Gene Wolfe's The Book of the Long Sun and The Book of the Short Sun
• Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child's Riptide
• Frank Herbert's Dune universe (variously referred to as needleguns, flechette guns, "Chandler" guns, and "maula" guns)
• Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius stories (after which it is also the title of a Hawkwind song)
• Terry Brooks Genesis of Shannara series
• William Gibson's Neuromancer et seq.
• The BattleTech universe
• Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat stories
• Robert Heinlein's The Number of the Beast and other novels and stories
• Terry Pratchett's novel Strata
• Marvel Comics' Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD
• Larry Niven's A Gift From Earth
• Gordon R. Dickson's Dorsai series
• Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, in the form of Reason
• Dan Simmons's Hyperion and Endymion, as flechette rifles
• Also in Dan Simmons's Ilium and Olympos.
• The AM-280, from The War Against the Chtorr by David Gerrold.
• Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga Universe.
• David Weber's Honor Harrington series.
• In Code Geass, Zero threatens Princess Euphemia with a ceramic needlegun.
• In The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, Kyon must use a needlegun to inject a program into Yuki Nagato after the collapse of the timespace continuum.
• In The Practice Effect, protagonist Dennis Nuel uses a Needlegun.
• In C&C Renegade (The Tiberium Flechette gun)
• In Halo - The Covenant Needler and Needle Rifle. Both fire long, sharp pink crystalline shards that can "supercombine", causing an explosion if a target has taken a certain number of them; the Needler is appropriately known as Type-33 Guided Munitions Launcher.
• In Isaac Asimov's Lucky Starr series of novels, Starr's sidekick, Bigman, uses a needlegun.

In the Hyperion fictional universe based upon Dan Simmons' novels, the flechette rifle or flechette pistol was loaded with "egg shaped" cartridges that, when fired, deployed into a cloud of several thousand hyper-velocity steel needles, in a manner similar to the discharge of a shotgun shell, though much more deadly and effective for longer range than a shotgun. In the Warhammer 40,000 universe, the Inquisition uses weapons called Needle Rifles or Needle Pistols that fire shards of crystallized venom that can be deadly when penetrating an unarmored or lightly armored target.

In video and computer games

• Messiah featured a weapon named "Pak Gun", or, simply, "The Pak", which fired small ice shards at a high rate; the shards had a tranquilizer-like effect, freezing the foe and causing good damage.
• A regular and Super-Nailgun were prominently featured as weapons in Quake. They were the equivalent of machine-gun style weapons that were able to fire rapidly by holding down the trigger. Quake II mission pack 1 featured a Flechette Rifle that functioned much like Quake's Nailgun. Quake III Revolution contains a nailgun, but it fires only a single barrage before pausing to recharge. Quake 4 features a rotary nailgun that functions much like the Super-Nailgun, but has a secondary homing function.
• Fallout 2 included a Needler weapon.
• A Tiberium-based Flechette Gun was also usable in Command & Conquer: Renegade.
• System Shock features a Flechette machine pistol.
• A needle gun is available for Regina in Dino Crisis 2. It is only used underwater, however.
• Bungie Studios's Marathon Infinity featured the KKV-7 submachine gun, which fired 4 mm flechettes from a 10 mm cartridge and was usable underwater.
• Bungie Studios's Halo series features the Needler, which fires pink spikes that lock onto a target and explode when inert. In addition, the most recent game in the franchise, Halo: Reach, features the Needle Rifle, which is essentially a longer semi-automatic version of the needler that lacks homing capabilities.
• In Turok: Evolution there is a Flechette gun which is the only weapon in the game to be able to fire underwater.

• Also, in Devil May Cry, the main character Dante has a weapon called a needle gun. It is the only weapon he can use underwater.
• In F.E.A.R. there is a rapid fire weapon known as the 10 mm HV Penetrator that fires nails that can be used to stick enemies to walls.
• The Medic class in Team Fortress 2 is armed with a Syringe Gun which fires what appear to be extremely sharp used medical syringes, and the Scout class was originally going to have a nail gun as its primary weapon.
• In the popular online video game Team Fortress Classic (precursor to Team Fortress 2), one of the main weapons is a flechette launcher called the nailgun, looking rather like a Sten sub-Machine gun.
• The Engineer class in Star Wars Battlefront 2 can earn an upgraded shotgun called a "Flechette shotgun" and can only be used by a player controlled character.
• In Thing Thing 4 there is a Flechette Rifle available in the final levels. It features minimal recoil but is difficult to find ammo for.
• In Half-Life 2: Episode 2, enemy types called "Hunters" fire flechettes that can either disintegrate the enemy or detonate for explosive damage.
• In Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday, your team could equip a high rate of fire weapon called a "needler" which used needle-like projectiles.
• In the video game Aliens versus Predator and its sequel Aliens vs. Predator 2, the Predators' speargun fires a powerful metal needle-like projectile, called a spear.
• Fallout 3 included a gun called the "Railway Rifle", which launched railway spikes.

In role-playing games

Drawing their inspiration largely from similarly themed literature, science-fiction role-playing games frequently include needle-guns in some form. For example:

• BattleTech, as needler pistols and rifles
• Star Frontiers, as needler pistols and rifles
• Gamma World, as needler pistols and rifles
• Traveller, in the form of gauss-pistols and gauss-rifles firing 4mm darts.
• Shadowrun, as flechette pistols and rifles

See also

• Flechette
• SCIMTR
• Steyr ACR