That's how most rifle grenades work I believe. The issue with that setup (which I believe OP is trying to address) is that you would need to waste precious seconds unloading your conventional ammo before launching the grenade (unless you want to be a dumbass who walks around with a mag full of blanks. Even in a sidearm that's just asking for trouble). Also, I don't believe grenade-launching rounds cycle the action properly, so you couldn't "fire 15 of these as fast as he can reload" the way OP suggests because you'd have to be racking the slide each time as well.
Proposal
Julian Robinson
Xavier Davis
I suppose that mostly depends on the design of the catch.
The momentum of the bullet minus the energy converted to heat/noise will wind up being the same as the momentum of the grenade+catch+bullet. It depends on a lot of design elements, and I'm interested to see if it's feasible.
This is trivially solved by using explosives that are not sensitive to impact. It's not really an issue.
There are systems that do that, but that defeats the purpose of OP's design. At that point you might as well not even bother to design it.
Christopher Martinez
Did the physics calcs, it works. See
It would be interesting to see how much energy gets turned into heat. Trivially simple enough, just fire the bullet at a pressure plate.
I don't think it would be enough to cause any problems, but it's true that this would be one of the product testing issues.
William Rodriguez
You would not get the same level of accuracy out of a spherical munition rather than a conical munition.
This is why everything from Bullets out a handgun to Mortar rounds to Naval Artillery is all shaped relatively similarly, because it's the most efficient for accuracy, which matters more than being autistic about cubic centimeters of killing power.
And that's not to mention that I don't think there'd be enough energy in a pistol round to propel a grenade at distances you'd actually find useful. Might as well just toss the grenade by hand because the round simply does not have the energy to do what you're asking of it.
He's talking about the chamber of the sidearm being able to handle the extra pressure. It's akin to plugging the barrel like looney toones. It's the reason why rifle grenades used blank rounds rather than the retarded amount of pressure a real bullet causes in the chamber/barrel of the gun.
Living up to that Canadian shitposting meme.
James Jackson
Grenade launching blanks are fucking nasty to shoulder and god forbid you actually use one in a M1 Carbine, nothing like CRACK to ruin your lawn golf.
Jayden Scott
Why not just use the M79 again? Or the China Lake?
Eli Gomez
[DRUMMING OF HOOVES AND FAINT THROAT SINGING ECHOS ACROSS THE STEPPE]
Thomas Ross
I did the calc over here you could double check if you like.
Dude what? Look at 4th image, there are vents, only the momentum of the round is transferred. Gas contact might not even be enough to counteract the energy lost to heat on bullet trap impact.
Josiah Martin
40mm Diameter = 33.5103 cm3 volume
Composition B = 1.65 g/cm3
HE = 55.29 grams
Time to calculate the grenades velocity based on the muzzle energy of .45 ACP.
K = 1/2mv2
K = 800 J (being generous with +P energy)
m = 55.29 g
v = 170.113 m/s
I'm impressed, I thought the idea would be DOA at this point.
Now lets encase the HE and add an impact fuse. For fusing lets use the 40×46mm M386 as a baseline, total weight 230 grams.
The good news is we don't need the case, propellant or primer (~30 g) the bad news is we need a bullet trap (~50g) for a total weight of 250g.
Now lets see what speed we can launch this at:
K = 800 J
m = 250 g
v = 80 m/s
Using shooterscalculator.com it recons we should have only 6" over or under our aimpoint out to 30 meters when zeroed to 20 meters.
This is way better than I would have expected, now lets account for the fact that a lot of energy isn't going into the projectile and is instead being converted into heat by the bullet trap.
Assuming half the energy is lost to the trap we get:
K = 400
m = 250 h
v = 56.57 m/s
Now we are within our 6" arch out to 25 meters when sighted to 20 meters.
I did all this math expecting it to be be a totally retarded idea that would barely drop the grenade at your feet, instead I found it to be plausible if you have the balls to fire .45 +P with a quarter kg on the end of the barrel.
Jaxon Reed
Because like those tiny breaching shotguns they're dead weight when not being used. Yes they're awesome in situations like being on a gun truck or river boat and yes they're a gorillion times better than mounting a tube under your rifle but some dude humping it for miles is going to be more tired than just carrying rifle grenades. Imagine carrying five or more grenades with little tubes/sticks attached that mount on your rifle barrel (or in the canucklefucks proposal a pistol) and as you fire them off you get rid of the launching device too. Meanwhile the GL guy has to carry a bunch of grenades along with what is essentially another rifles worth of weight/bulk and as you launch off your grenades you may lose the weight but you're still left with the rifle.