could heat pipes & vapor chambers be the future of cooling tech on barrels?
wouldn't it be great to slot a heat pipe into the flutes of a barrel to actively cool it down?
maybe have a hand guard with a vapor chamber lining it to always stay cool?

Machine guns are pretty much finished as implements of war, precision shots from drone-mounted guns are the future.

It also sure was convenient that we got legal full auto guns just as soon as drones proved to be the future of warfare

They've been around for quite a while by now, so odds are that if it was worth the added weight they would have been a standard feature on guns by now. Alas, they're found on basically no guns whatsoever, so...

I don't think a sealed evaporative cooling cycle can handle the heat that would boil even a huge water-cooling jacket.

>>64066662
They are fragile, easily bent and punctured. They are made from pure copper, not exactly the toughest material. Besides, you still need fins to dissipate the heat, making the whole thing bulky.

>>64066585 (OP)
cooling jackets, heat dissipators, water tanks, and even using the back blast to cool radiator fins, all of these are old technology.
They add weight and complexity to the gun.
I know JP Enterprises makes a thermal dissipator bolt on kit for their barrels and they're actually pretty affordable. They fit under the free floating hand guard and around the gas tube.

>new barrel-cooling tech
we've had quick-change barrels for more than a century now and even those have occasionally been judged not to be worth the weight and complexity

machine gun fire duration isn't the bottleneck for an infantry squad's ability to fight. soldiers usually die (to drones, mortars, airstrikes, mines, snipers) still carrying most of their ammunition.

>>64066585 (OP)
Heat pipes and vapor chambers don't cool things down, they pump heat from one location to another. Where are you planning to put the heat?

>>64066585 (OP)
Look up teludyne tech straight jacket barrel.

>>64067616
Heat dissipation is function of temperature AND surface. Moving heat from relatively small chamber area (most heat loaded area) to larger fins would increase thermal dissipation.