Not just tricky, but pretty much impossible due to a couple of quaint little ideas called Newton's Third Law and the Law of Conservation of Momentum.

I'm pretty sure this is some type of rifle that lessens the straight back recoil at the expense of shooting off some momentum at weird side/upward angles and possibly putting adjacent people at risk. Maybe they could do it with little high pressure gas tanks or something.

Sounds fishy to me. A recoilless rifle works by sending a big part of the propellant explosion blasting backwards, instead of being trapped in the gun. Good part: No recoil. Bad part: Ineficient, and don't stand behind it!

But if the blast gets sent in some other direction, then it won't balance the forward movement of the projectile. Or so I would guess...Cold fusion?

The Russians have been tinkering for a while with systems that damp the recoil impulse by moving a countermass rearward to balance the forward motion of the bullet - see the AEK-971 and AK-107/108 rifles. This can't, of course, violate conservation laws of physics, but the springs in the countermass system smooth out the recoil, making full-auto fire more controllable. The extra weight, complexity, and expense of such systems has kept them experimental, especially given that most modern military rifles fire pretty low-recoil cartridges to begin with.

The Russian AN-94 deals with recoil in a different way - by cycling 2-round bursts so quickly that the recoil has hardly moved the barrel by the time the second round is out the muzzle. The experimental German caseless rifle of the '80's, the G11, had a similar rapid-burst feature among its many innovations.

The solution was so easy! They just have side by side barrels, firing projectiles in opposite directions at the same time.

The Australians are giving these guns to gang members for testing right now. Brilliant, no recoil!

Maybe they could use two spinning disks, kind of like one of those automatic baseball pitching machines.

The momentum of the forward-direction projectile would be imparted to the disks, which would be slowed down momentarily by the energy transfer, but the apparatus as a whole would remain essentially stable.

And CHUCKY SCHUMER will want to ban it before we even might see one

Ironically, the solution to the recoil problem is that Aussie Gun fires a boomerang shaped projectile.

Wow, that blog ad is really distracting.

I'd like to know how this is different from a conventional muzzle brake. As Allen correctly points out, Newton's 3rd and conservation laws are in play here. Allowing a large mass to move backwards will damp recoil, but at the expense of using propellant to accelerate it (you can't make it too heavy or the action won't cycle reliably).

Perhaps the reason nobody solved this problem before is because it isn't really a problem. I mean, anyone who has fired different weapons will figure out the recoil of each, and adjust accordingly. It ain't that big a deal, unless you're an idiot and/or a sissy.

An Aussie was also responsible for the Metalstorm project a couple of years back. Dunno if anything ever came of that, but the test-firing videos impressive as hell.

(Main site here, blocked by my employer's cybernanny software).

Ace-- these guys have an official site that has virtually nothing on it, but if you hunt through their Prospectus, they've got plenty more flashy graphics.

Unfortunately, they really have no clear details how this stuff works. It may all be proprietary, but I've seen enough defense scams to make me worry that there's not a clearly enunciated description of the physical principles at work. Looks to me like they just want money, with results to be promised later.

They could be just a vapoware company trying to hook investors, or they could be the Next Big Thing. Just dunno.

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

Perhaps the reason nobody solved this problem before is because it isn't really a problem. I mean, anyone who has fired different weapons will figure out the recoil of each, and adjust accordingly. It ain't that big a deal, unless you're an idiot and/or a sissy.

Yeah, for current calibers. My impression, however, was that recoil was the main constraint on the size and power of handheld weapons. You might be able to build a .50 caliber automatic rifle light enough for a single man to carry, but if the first shot knocks him on his butt, it's not that useful.

Cool. Sounds like our down-under-syndrome mates have invented the science fiction star-drive engine that will get us effortlessly to light speed. Apparently we can now accellerate without creating an equal and opposite reaction. This is awesome. But if there is no more conservation of momentum, can there still be anything out there for us to visit? These darned catch-22s.

I heard that the Giro-Jet rocket pistol has a slight *negative* recoil, kind of sucks you forward.

Great, now it always gives me the choice of signing of as "Dave Munger, Republiqueer fagsucker", or "D" since I accidentally signed that way one time.

What else besides its joey dose a kangaroo carry in its pouch? a conceled weapon and the emu is carrying a M-16 and the koala is armed and so is the kookaburra

I'd like to know how this is different from a conventional muzzle brake. As Allen correctly points out, Newton's 3rd and conservation laws are in play here. Allowing a large mass to move backwards will damp recoil, but at the expense of using propellant to accelerate it (you can't make it too heavy or the action won't cycle reliably).

Conventional muzzle brakes simply vent gas upward to counter muzzle rise. Some also have surfaces similar to a jet engine's thrust deflectors, to provide a bit of forward pull. Most designs are practically worthless, especially in non-fully-automatic fire, and those that are not (the AK-74's has a decent reputation) tend to increase muzzle flash a lot.

The countermasses in the weapons I linked to above are moved by tapping the same gas that pushes the bullet and works the weapon's action; by the time the gas is tapped for these purposes, more than halfway down the barrel, it's really not giving all that much extra push to a bullet anyway. As for the conservation laws, while the energy of the recoil is conserved under any system, its power can be lowered by stretching it out over a longer time, which is what the Russian systems do with their springs and countermasses, making it steadier, less choppy/jerky, and easier to control. The masses involved needn't be all that large; ten times the mass of a 110-grain bullet is still only about 2.5 ounces. The site I linked to for the AEK-971 claims that of four major sources of motion (true recoil reaction to bullet's acceleration, bolt group flying backward, bolt group hitting back of receiver, bolt group slamming shut and chambering new round), all but the first are effectively damped by the countermass system.

Ross Verba could do this. In fact, Verba's sweat can cure cancer....

Verba aside, these people need to look at basic artillery pieces and a term called "muzzle break". But, heck, it seems like crap like this gets funding X1000 more than the real research.

They will be the ones rolling in diamond covered escalades in 2007, not us. Heck, I need to sell a dumb idea to the govt.

The energy from the recoil is shunted to an alternate universe.

Soon, angry aliens from that universe will invade and destroy us for recklessly endangering them.

So distracted by my fagsucking, I spelled it like some kind of sandwich, and didn't put in a link. Here are Two Gyrojet links that you've probably already linked five years ago.