Since finances will probably push a new pistol purchase to when I become Imperator, a question becomes "what sort of new unconventional technology exists for sidearms?"
We know that telescoped caseless or semi cased ammunition has progressed to the point that plausible service weapons like LSAT, a rifle derived from the LSAT and the HK G-11 rifle were developed and in the case of the G-11 even adopted by the armed forces (for a breif moment anyway). Miniature explosive rounds like the 20mm rounds for the XM-25 and the Korean K-11, or explosive Frag-12 gauge shotgun shells for the AA-12 are another evolutionary path that longarms are going, but this seems a bit unlikely for sidearms (Of course, saying "Go ahead, make my day" when holding a 20mm pistol would be pretty convincing....).
So looking down the road, is there some new concept that will change sidearms, or maybe we should be thinkig of something entirely different like PDWs to replace the idea of sidearms?