This paper sets out to describe some of the experimental work performed at QinetiQ, exploring the potential of electrothermal-chemical (ETC) gun technology. Work performed primarily by the Fraunhofer-Institut fur Chemische Technologie (ICT) and supported by Technologiezentrum Nord (TZN), both in Germany, has been repeated and extended. Their work, which used aluminium plasma initiation wires, showed internal damage was being done to the structure of propellant grains with translucent (but not opaque) propellant formulations, both in exploding wire-in-air and in exploding wire closed vessel tests. This damage was shown to increase the gas generation rate in closed vessel tests That work demonstrated the potential to use ETC plasma to alter the gas generation rate during combustion. If this could be achieved, then the piezometric efficiency of a gun system could be increased. The radiative energy from the plasma was assumed by ICT to be responsible for the damage sustained to the translucent propellant. However, no measurement of the incident radiation was made. Measurements of the incident radiative flux made at QinetiQ appear to indicate that there is no correlation between the radiation and the damage. Rather, the effect (in exploding wire-in-air tests) seems to be more associated with the type of material used for the plasma initiation wire. Aluminium produced a significantly greater effect than copper. Further tests conducted by QinetiQ explored the use of a capillary plasma generator (CPG) to produce the type of damage seen in some of the wire-in-air tests. No damage was observed to occur, although only copper plasma initiation wires were used in the CPG. Unsurprisingly then, no enhancement was found to occur in closed vessel tests with a CPG and plasma initiation wire made from copper.