Needlegun
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- For the 19th-century German military weapon, see Needle-gun.
A needlegun, also known as a needler, flechette gun or fletcher, is a fictional weapon that fires slivers of metal, ice, glass, hard plastic, or any other rigid, sharpened material, resembling common sewing needles. There have been some attempts to engineer working needleguns based upon this fiction, but these have not produced generally useful weapons.
This weapon is featured in numerous books, notably:
- Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius stories (after which it is also the title of a Hawkwind song)
- William Gibson's Neuromancer et seq.
- The weapon named Reason in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash
- Terry Pratchett's Strata
- Marvel Comics' Nick Fury, Agent of SHEILD
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, 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.
Most 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.
The Halo needler is a similar weapon in both principle and operation, but fires slow-moving, homing, explosive crystalline projectiles.