Anti Lightsaber-Wielder Ammunition (ALWU)

[Rusty]

Image Source: N/A

Intent: To create a projectile that will bifurcate while passing through a lightsaber blade without excessive deflection, loss of mass, or loss of momentum.

Development Thread: http://starwarsrp.net/topic/66157-rcfc-rd/?p=1001139

Manufacturer: Rusty's Custom Firearms and Cutlery

Model: N/A

Affiliation: Open Market

Modularity: Available in various calibers and with various powder loads

Production: Production: Minor

Material: Iridium, copper

Classification: Ammunition

Size: 10mm, .45 ACP, .45 LC, 50 BMG

Length: Varies dependent upon round

Weight: Varies dependent upon round

Ammunition Type: Yes, it is.

Ammunition Capacity: Depends on weapon firing it

Effective Range: 50 meters for pistol rounds, 1000 meters for the rifle

Rate of Fire: Varies dependent upon round

Special Features: Can pass through a lightsaber blade without excessive loss of mass or velocity, and without excessively altering the trajectory.

Description: I first came up with the idea for using iridium as a projectile when I came across David Drake's Hammer's Slammers series. In his universe, the main characters ride into battle in massive hovercraft tanks clad in iridium armor, valued for its density and refractive properties. Further research showed that, while cool as hell, iridium had one massive flaw when considered for use as armor: it's hard, but brittle. Much like the ceramic strike plates the Army uses in its vests, it would likely shatter after a few sturdy hits, and would be even more painful to drop on your foot in the morning while trying to overcome a hangover and get to guard duty.

That same hardness would also be a barrier for using it as a projectile, as the surface of a bullet must deform in order to properly engage the rifling. Using it to make sabot rounds would also be difficult, as machining complex shapes with the stuff is extremely difficult, and not something Rusty can do at this time. To ensure that the iridium projectile is able to engage the rifling, it's placed in a copper jacket through a process known as swaging. Long story short, intense mechanical pressure and a series of dies are used to form a uniform copper layer around the preformed iridium projectile. The brittleness can be a problem in this step. However, by applying the pressure slowly and evenly, I hope to keep the cracking to a minimum. So long as the projectile doesn't become unevenly balanced and the copper jacket holds, the round can still be used, though I imaging the target won't be too happy to find a bunch of little pieces of burning hot metal to deal with instead of two or three.

The properties that make iridium useful as a projectile are its density, resistance to heat (including the ability to remain mechanically sound at temperatures that would have steel running like rainwater), and its refractive properties. It lacks the properties of the known lightsaber-resistant materials such as beskar or phrik that would allow it to interact with the blade in an atypical manner. Instead, it'll behave much like any other metal we've seen lightsabers contact in the movies: it'll be sliced and diced like it wasn't even there. However, it's my belief that the brief exposure to the blade will not result in complete destruction as it would with tradition copper jacketed lead rounds. Lead has a very low boiling point, and although copper is highly conductive of heat, it's not likely to fare any better in the long run than lead.

Upon ideal contact with the blade, I expect the bullet to be bifurcated perfectly. There will be some sublimation, and the resultant rapidly expanded gas will push the two halves apart. After a few meters, they'll likely whiz off erratically to the point of uselessness, but since most people don't hold their lightsabers that far from their bodies, it shouldn't be a major problem. At the average arm's length, I estimate the separation to be about 20-30 cm. If one edge is nicked, the thrust from the resultant sublimation will likely alter the projectile's trajectory, allowing for a certain degree of deflection, but it's not likely to change it more than a few degree within the span of distance and time allowed.

The two halves of the projectile would strike the target and proceed to behave much in the same way that a bullet would: ripping, shredding, and generally making a mess of things internally. Unfortunately, or fortunately if you're the target, death from blood loss is highly unlikely, as they would almost certainly be hot enough to cauterize the wound cavity on their way through. This limits kill power, but does not rule out a fatal hit to the heart or brain, and may cause fatal complications in the long run.

Because iridium is so brittle and because the projectiles will likely be yawing when they hit the target and the impact will be spread out on a wider area, I predict little to no effectiveness against medium to heavy armor, and limited effectiveness against light armor.

The increased density of the rounds also means one either has to accept increased recoil or decreased velocity. I opted to decrease the velocity of the rounds, which reduces their effective range dramatically. If someone wants to try to hand load them with a larger powder charge they're more than welcome to, but I will require them to idemnify me from legal action in the event of personal injury. I will not be held responsible for their supreme idiocy.

 

[Popo]

RESEARCH REVIEW

Star Wars Canon:
Pending initial review

Starwars Chaos:
Pending initial review

WITHOUT DEV THREADS
Pending initial review

WITH DEV THREADS
Pending Initial review

SUGGESTIONS
Pending Inital review

 

[Popo]

[member="Rusty"]
Alrighty, first and foremost I like the concept. It's nice to see other folks making slugthrower ammunition on the board.

Problem is, this isn't gonna work the way you're aiming for it to work.

Iridium has a very high melting point, this is true, but lightsabers don't really have a labelled and listed heat level or temperature. We see them cut through durasteel here and there in books and movies, a material stronger than real life steel, as well as various other substances nigh effortlessly. Also, and this is gonna sound a little out there, but lightsabers can cut through beskar, it just takes a long while to do so and you're likely to kill your lightsaber battery doing so. Canonically and on the board, there are lightsabers that can actually cut through beskar with ease, albeit not for long.

Taking that into account and taking into account that even in the modern world we can melt iridium, this bullet will not do what you hope for it to do: passing through/around a lightsaber blade to hit the target on the other side.

The best you could hope for is a puff of hot iridium gas coming out the other side, maybe a spray of molten metal for very large calibers, but that's about it.

On a side note, love seeing another Hammer's Slammers reader. Good book series.

 

[Rusty]

I disagree.

Everything we see in the movies shows lightsaber cuts are very fine. There's not a whole lot of gaseous discharge when they cut through metal objects. What we see instead is a very clean, very narrow cut with signs of heat transfer from coronal discharge. In Episodes 5 and 6, when Luke and Vader go at it, they chop through durasteel railings cleanly with nothing but scoring. When Qui-gon cuts through the metal blast doors in Episode 1, we see a lot of melted metal and a messy cut, but only after prolonged contact with stronger than average metal.

That they also cut through flesh without boiling off all the water in the victim suggests that there's not a whole lot of immediate energy transfer going on.

Though durasteel is stronger than regular steel, it can still be worked by hand, which places an absolute limit on how hot it can be if it's gonna be worked by anything other than machines. Beskar is similar in a lot of ways, and it's implied that the process of being forged is how it gains its strength. That's also why it's useless to anyone that doesn't know how to work it, which is one problem the Empire ran into.

And yes, we can melt iridium, but it takes a lot, and it doesn't happen quickly. We're talking about a metal that can remain mechanically sound at over 1600°C. With boiling a point of 4130 °C (7466 °F), and the fact that a lightsaber is so efficient that the hilt can actually be made out of wood, I think it can pass through the blade as described.

[member="Popo"]

 

[Popo]

[member="Rusty"]
You have very good points that I honestly did not consider, however I must disagree.

You are correct that the cuts do tend to be narrow and that the blades don't flash-boil the water in flesh into steam, but we must keep in mind that due to the powers of plot convenience and space wizardry, heat doesn't come off the blade itself until the electromagnetic field holding the plasma inside is breached. At that point, an item is affected by the lightsaber's heat.

Now, as the standard lightsaber can feasibly cut through beskar given plenty of time and can shear through a decent amount of durasteel and similar metals near effortlessly, I'll hold my ground on the issue. However, you do have a point. The transfer of energy would not occur instantaneously enough to revert to a gas. That said, the lightsaber would not cut the bullet cleanly down the middle. Despite the fine cuts and such in the movies, we must remember that the films were restricted in many ways on their special effects with the lightsabers. I also remember a debate I was involved in where a lightsaber's blade thickness was roughly estimated and it was equivalent to the diameter of - using something you may be familiar with as a fellow gun nut - a 20mm round.

By that logic while keeping in mind the concept of game balance, I'll concede that I was incorrect on the puff of iridium gas, however at best you'd be making contact with a bullet that is now rendered a spray molten metal or, at larger calibers, a formless ball of molten material. Painful and damaging, yes, but nothing that would penetrate armor effectively.

Also, keep in mind that this is considering a standard lightsaber as the recipient. There are lightsabers that could easily remove the bullet from existence such as the pair of lightsabers capable of rending beskar or other high heat intensity 'sabers.

 

[Rusty]

The math I've done has shown that small caliber weapons are pretty much useless. That rules out most rifle rounds, as a .30 caliber bullet in whatever flavor would likely be screwed, and .223 is right out.

Once you get up closer to a half-inch, more and more of the projectile remains. For the sake of balance, would you be willing to compromise at .45LC as the minimum useful size? Can't spray and pray like you can with a .45ACP, unless you've got extensive experience with the weapon. I can dump five rounds from my Colt 1851 Navy in about 2 seconds into center mass at about 10 meters, but I've been working on the thing for the last five or six years, and I've put about $400 into customization. (See the header image for [member="Eralam"] for reference. That's my baby.) Your average shooter is going to want to try to aim.

Once you get into the .50 cal handgun rounds, I'm pretty sure it'd be absolutely, wrist-breakingly useless. That was reflected in the dev thread. I've fired a few rounds from the S&W .500 before, and all I've got to say is nope nope nope. That was not fun. You try to make the recoil any more fearsome and it's gonna suck diseased camel wang trying to hold your wristbones together.

The .50 BMG is a hoss of a round. It's so big and so fast, I'm pretty sure it'd make it through a normal lightsaber with just steel core penetrators.

I'm willing to add in that one of these super sabers will completely vaporize the rounds in whatever caliber.

[member="Popo"]

 

[Ellie Mors]

[member="Rusty"]
I am taking over for [member="Popo"]

Under Review

 

[Rusty]

[member="Braith"]

Cool. Thanks.

 

[Ellie Mors]

Special Features: Can pass through a lightsaber blade without excessive loss of mass or velocity, and without excessively altering the trajectory.

A lightsaber is surrounded by a containment field which keeps all of its energy contained and constantly recycled so there is no energy expended until it comes in contact with an object that is sufficiently solid. At the moment of contact that energy is expended at that single point (rather than constantly emitting a giant field of melting death on the wielder) and deflects physical projectiles due to the field present. Unlike a common rod of plasma (which you can construct by putting two conductive wires parallel to the other and hooking up a powerful generator to it and allowing the electricity to arc across and climb the two) the lightsaber is not a melting rod that just melts what comes in contact with it so that it doesn't fly through the other side. While the more powerful the round and the higher the velocity the harder it will be for the person holding the lightsaber to properly keep the saber in place to deflect the projectile (you can rip it right out of their hands with a rail gun) it will not pass through from one side to the other, in much the same manner that two lightsabers will not push into the field of the other regardless the force applied. It is possible to break the blade by means of metals such as cortosis or a lightsaber powered by a synthetic crystal or another special crystal, but it is not canonically possible to pass an object through a lightsaber.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Lightsaber
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Slugthrower

When cutting through dense material, the immense electromagnetic field generated by the arc caused resistance rather than letting solid matter enter and interrupt the arc. This gave the blade a feeling of being solid when immersed in dense material. Rarely, some solid materials could actually pass through the electromagnetic field and short out the arc. Other electromagnetic energy fields and coherent energy were also repelled by lightsabers' arcs. These include most force fields, blaster bolts, and other lightsaber blades.

The "rarely, some solid materials" portion refers to Cortosis Ore, which is explained directly below.

Cortosis, although a rare and expensive metal, was a popular defense against lightsabers. Purified cortosis ore had the ability to momentarily "short out" a lightsaber blade, rendering it inoperable for a brief period of time before the wielder could reactivate it. Lightsabers with Mestare crystals were known to be immune to this effect. Cortosis alloy was sturdier than purified cortosis ore, but was only capable of deflecting a lightsaber blade and not deactivating it. One reason why cortosis was so expensive was the need to refine it. Pure, unrefined Cortosis ore was—for unknown reasons—dangerously ionized and anyone who touched it would be killed instantly. There were multiple methods of forging cortosis armor and weapons, each with varying effects.

 

[Rusty]

Your interpretation of the lightsaber blade's mechanics is flawed when compared against both the visual evidence of the movies and the way they're portrayed in the books.

There are two instances in the movies in which the lightsaber blade does not cleanly shear through a solid object without utterly failing to affect its momentum: Episode 1, in which Qui-gon encountered a blast door that was actually thicker than his blade was long:

https://youtu.be/pUbXyd-fK8Q

and in Episode 3, when facing the Magna Guards on Grievous's ship's bridge:

https://youtu.be/mOs1vxDfuy0

When Luke fights Vader in Episode 5, we see several objects of great mass being sliced cleanly without regard for the mass or density of the object in question.

https://youtu.be/C-DeI3ohVbY?t=3m36s

The novelization of the same movie involves a training exercise devised by Yoda, in which a small bar of metal was hurled at Luke, and he was to slice it cleanly into 9 pieces before it struck the ground. One can hypothesize that it was cut from the movie because Mark Hamill wasn't actually all that good with a sword.

Time and time again throughout canon, lightsaber blades interact with matter in the same way. The few notable exceptions (beskar, phrik, ultrachrome, songsteel, cortosis, some really resistant rock encountered in the Hand of Thrawn duology that, though not impossible to cut offered a great deal of resistance) were extremely rare and extremely valuable.

In canon, we rarely see any attempt for the authors to employ slugthrowers against Jedi or Sith. There are two instances that come to mind. Firstly, Verpine Shatterguns were employed by the Kiliks in the Dark Nest trilogy, as their immense velocity made it almost impossible for anyone to get a blade in the way. In the final book of Fate of the Jedi, Apocalypse, a group of commandos known as Void Jumpers use silenced slugthrower rifles in a multipronged attack against Sith forces in the Jedi Temple. The idea was that the slugthrowers were infinitely more stealthy than the blasters, and the confused and disoriented Sith, many of whom were recent amputees, were unable to effectively counter the assault before big stompy exosuits were brought in to finish them off.

What you describe is similar to a high powered blaster bolt contacting a lightsaber. In Rogue Planet, Obi-wan tries to deflect bolts from a starfighter and, while successful, nearly has the blade ripped from his hands in the process. In one of the latter Legacy of the Force books, when faced with a trio of YVH droids, Luke and Saba both manage to deflect the bolts, but a lack of experience nearly proves fatal for Ben, until he realizes that he can use a more shallow angle of deflection to avoid the brunt of the momentum.

An objective look at the situation would suggest that the containment field allows the blade to interact with energy as though it were solid, but unless the solid in question has special properties, does not offer resistance to solid objects.

[member="Braith"]

 

[Ellie Mors]

An objective look at the situation would suggest that the containment field allows the blade to interact with energy as though it were solid, but unless the solid in question has special properties, does not offer resistance to solid objects.

No.

When cutting through dense material, the immense electromagnetic field generated by the arc caused resistance rather than letting solid matter enter and interrupt the arc. This gave the blade a feeling of being solid when immersed in dense material. Rarely, some solid materials could actually pass through the electromagnetic field and short out the arc. Other electromagnetic energy fields and coherent energy were also repelled by lightsabers' arcs. These include most force fields, blaster bolts, and other lightsaber blades.
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Lightsaber

The energy field offers resistance to all materials it comes in contact with in order to keep the raw plasma of the lightsaber contained. It allows the heat of the plasma, and its energy, to be transferred at the point of contact with the object (which you can see when Qui-Gon is cutting the blast door, which is sublimating the metal into gas) in order to expend energy and also retain it when not actually being used, even if left on. The Magna Guard scene does not lend anything to this topic as it doesn't disprove what I was stating (the rods are made of phrik, which is why the lightsaber did not cut through them. The electricity on the end arced around the lightsabers).

When a slug (bullet) comes into contact with the lightsaber it meets resistance in the form of the electromagnetic field (which I quoted from the lightsaber wookiepedia page, which is sourced from any number of books). The "resistance" is that the object is pushed away from the field to maintain the lightsaber blade's state of being. If the field is broken, as is done when it comes in contact with Cortosis Ore, the entire lightsaber shuts off because of the dimetris circuits which are within the electromagnetic field (which are only brought into EU to explain how cortosis shorts out a lightsaber by mere contact) that cause a chain reaction and trip the whole field, which in turn shorts out the lightsaber for a variable amount of time.

As this isn't cortosis, and isn't trying to short out the containment field, we reach the issue that without removing the containment field (which is what causes the resistance) you are allowing your projectile to be pushed away (in that the projectile is directed forwards at an angle, like a ricochet rather than a blaster being completely reflected back) and also being somewhat molten due to the sudden contact with an object that can cut through Mandalorian steel/beskar with sustained contact over variable periods of time, depending on the lightsaber's available power output and power source.

The point of contention here is that you are trying to bypass this field without taking into consideration that solid objects that come into contact with it are met with resistance and pushed away from it (like your hand moving through water, for lack of a better example on my part). I am totally fine with this being reworked to trip the energy field and break the lightsaber blade with varying degrees of effectiveness, but it simply not going to fly to have a projectile pass through a lightsaber blade.

 

[Rusty]

It's not passing through, it's being cut in half. That's the idea.

 

[Rusty]

To clarify, "passing through" is an attempt to explain, in layman's terms, the act of the bullet being sheared in half by the blade without excess change in velocity, trajectory, or mass. It's not breaking the blade, nor is it interrupting the field. It's doing what nearly every other solid object, save the few aforementioned exceptions, that has ever contacted a lightsaber blade has done.

[member="Braith"]

 

[Ellie Mors]

[member="Rusty"]
Okay, could you please change your special feature to state that, explicitly?

Once that is done, we need to get the volume/size of this projectile down so we understand how capable this is of happening. A lightsaber blade isn't a single line of energy, it has a width, so depending on how small the projectile is it won't succeed in being bisected. Because of the shape of the lightsaber (being basically an irregular cone/cylinder hybrid due to the rounded/pointed tip and cylindrical blade length) it is somewhat easier to make the two parts of a large enough caliber round reach the other side (just the angle will vary depending on velocity and density). As you've used Iridium, which we're not going to quantify a melting point because that doesn't help us figure this out due to not knowing the temperature of a lightsaber, we can assume the density portion allows for a large enough caliber, let's go with anything big enough across to survive being melted down the center of a ~3-3.5 cm blade and being pushed across, to properly reach the other side at a small enough angle of change, we're looking at about 15-30 degrees if the lightsaber is held at forearm's length from their torso in order for a projectile to still hit their arms.

If this was a straight point/edge you were coming into contact with, even a flat surface of a few milimeters or even a centimeter, I would support your estimation in your submission's description. However we have to account for the entire width of the blade providing resistance and also pushing the blade further from its original trajectory, which is likely going to be more than 20 cm by a good chunk. Not enough that you don't have a chance of your intentions happening, it just becomes exponentially more unlikely because you are having the same force applied to the projectile for every moment of sustained contact along every portion of the blade's surface, so rather than just cutting and being pushed away like cutting through butter with a knife, for example, where the width of the blade's edge and its tapering is the only portion of resistance found, the energy field that encapsulates the lightsaber will continue to push the bullet away from it even as it reaches the sides of the lightsaber, adding to the degree of change upon bisection. So where you'd normally have an angle of about perhaps ten degree at most of change, you now have forty to sixty because the initial resistance is constantly applied at all points of contact. A way around this is a sufficiently dense projectile with ample velocity, or a sufficiently high velocity projectile with ample density.

Basically what I need done are:

• A minimum sized caliber to achieve bisection without being melted down.
• A maximum sized caliber to reach the velocity required to keep a minimal degree of change.
• A notation that this is up to the angle at which the projectile strikes the lightsaber and the surface area of the lightsaber present, there are lightsaber crystals and such which cause a wider blade to occur, and at various angles of impact your projectile has a large chance of zooming by the target.

 

[Ellie Mors]

[member="Rusty"]
What is the status of this submission?

 

[Rusty]

Given that this submission is based off the notion that the actual cutting area of the lightsaber blade is quite small when compared to the rest of the blade (first mentioned Thrawn Trilogy, has been referenced multiple times since and appears to be the case whenever we see the blade cut something in the movies), whereas you subscribe to the theory that the entire visible portion is a cutting edge, there's no point in continuing this submission at this time. That [member="Popo"] and myself nearly had this thing sorted before you took over appears to be irrelevant, and I don't particularly feel like arguing my case a third time, so there will be no request for a second chance.

Please archive, and thank you for your time.

[member="Braith"]