This isn't American originated technology per se, but if what one of the articles suggests is true, then it's likely to end up being used by the American military in the near future.
One of my friends came to visit me during the weekend, and during the course of supper one evening, he happened to mention a new type of gun that he had read about at some point.
After doing a little bit of digging around, I was able to find a few articles concerning this new style of weapon as well as the company's website. It seems that this gun, dubbed Metal Storm, is operated entirely through electronic rather than mechanical means. The gun itself basically consists of a barrel (or barrels) filled with rounds very similar to caseless rounds and a firing mechanism. The rounds are stacked inside the barrel with propellant sandwiched behind each round. Electricity is used to ignite the propellant for each round almost simultaneously. The effect is that a staggeringly high effective rate of fire can be achieved. Another selling point of the system is that it is easily locked down, so that unauthorized personnel cannot make use of the weapon. It will be interesting to see (and possibly terrifying, if the test-firing videos are any measure) of what becomes of this technology in the future.
CNN Article
Another Article
Metal Storm website
I mentioned caseless ammunition earlier... This provides an explanation of what caseless ammunition is, and it tells the tale of the ill-fated H&K G11, which is an interesting enough story in and of itself
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