Gun companies balk at US Army's new requirement

kthomas said:
Fair enough :D. I'm training to dig holes in the ground, so you don't have to worry about me doing that.
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Don't worry, being an engineer you'll make the plans calling for a whole dug upwards. :D

But it works on paper, I have the math to prove it!

Oh engineers, I do not miss thee.
 
The HK G11 which fired a 4.73x33mm caseless cartridge fired right at 2,000 rounds per minute on burst mode and 480 rounds per minute in full-auto. It used a rotating (circular) chamber that was fairly complex in design but is said to have been pretty reliable.

It was specifically designed to increase hit probability in burst mode. If it put two rounds through the same hole, I don't know. I've never seen that demonstrated or discussed. But it certainly would come much closer to doing that than any other relatively conventional (if you can call caseless "relatively conventional") design.
 
SLANTO said:
The G11 was way ahead of its time. I think that a caseless type ammo will be where guns must go to make the next leap ahead. Caseless ammo is smaller, lighter and has a shorter cycling process. And I would take a 3 round burst with all rounds on target before the recoil impulse is even felt at a cyclic rate of 2000 rpm over any 5.56 mm assault rifle on the market today.These things cost enormous amounts of money when what is fielded now will still working quite fine. The G11 was a victim of resources and the fall of the Soviet empire(East Germany).
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I predict that if (and that's a big "if") anything replaces metallic cartridges in the near future, it will be cased telescopic ammunition. It has most of the advantages of caseless ammo, but you still have a case to function as a disposable heat sink to lower the vulnerability to cook-offs.

The same action types can be used for CTA as for caseless, such as the rotating breech of the G11. Feeding the new cartridge into one end pushes the fired one out the other end of the breech.
 
Here is a quick video of the Izhmash Nikonov AN-94 (Hyper Burst gun) in action. Listen close or you would not even know he is not firing in semi auto.

izhmash_nikonov_an_94_gp_34-tm-tfb.jpg


[youtube]x3Jw3Yhtcv4[/youtube]
 
greentips said:
Unfortunately engineers sometimes have the tendency to create products that they want, not necessarily what the clients want.
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Or can AFFORD!

The quiet reason that the G11 was not bought, was that when it was finally ready for sale, the Eastern Block had just collapsed, new uber weapons were not popular buys, "peace dividend" was the byword of the day, and the G11 would have been VERY expensive. Much cheaper to just rebuild G-3's for another decade. Same with the AN-94: it's reputed to be something like 3x the price of an AK-100 series, at a time when many units in their army are still issued AKM's in 7.62x39. So the Russian Army only intended to buy small numbers of AN-94's from the start.

Just because someone can engineer something, doesn't mean the intended customer can afford it. Otherwise we'd all be driving Ferraris!

America, and indeed the whole Western world, is now seeing the beginnings of some serious problems associated with our overspending. Putting a half-billion into a new military rifle, when what we already have works pretty well, isn't my idea of prudent spending choices. When we climb out of the debt hole, and the economy recovers, then sure, let's design some amazing stuff and put it into service. Until then, buy "off the shelf" systems developed already, or developed by private industry. IMO.
 
Typical government stupidity. Instead of defining the need (to penetrate a certain armor type) they define the solution not even knowing if it will do the trick.

So stupid.
 
I am not engineer but

wouldn't the simple easy solution be to design a better projectile that would penetrate armour with one round? something like an APDS round?
 
I'm all for better kit/boomsticks/etc, however, a key point to note is that the biggest limitation will always be the human body.
 
A single barrel is more accurate and I don't believe that multiple barrels are required for a gatling system to work in this application.
Recoil and heat of the high RPM are less of an issue as the requirement is not for a sustained automatic rate of fire. Recoil does have an effect on accuracy however.

I imagine a gatling system where only the .556 chamber revolves, like in a revolver. The chamber/cylinder will hold the # of rounds in the burst (3?), and the entire mechanism will recoil back in the housing on rails like an artillery piece, for the length of the burst, where, at the end of its cycle, the entire chamber is reloaded from the feed device and the barrel & chamber mechanism are returned forward into battery.
 
Quiet said:
A single barrel is more accurate and I don't believe that multiple barrels are required for a gatling system to work in this application.
Recoil and heat of the high RPM are less of an issue as the requirement is not for a sustained automatic rate of fire. Recoil does have an effect on accuracy however.

I imagine a gatling system where only the .556 chamber revolves, like in a revolver. The chamber/cylinder will hold the # of rounds in the burst (3?), and the entire mechanism will recoil back in the housing on rails like an artillery piece, for the length of the burst, where, at the end of its cycle, the entire chamber is reloaded from the feed device and the barrel & chamber mechanism are returned forward into battery.
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That's actually been done before, not in a rifle, but a Soviet machinegun (can't recall which). It worked well in WW2. But it would be complex mechanically. And REALLY expensive. I'm talking the price of 3 LMT customs for a single rifle like you describe. Cost/price really becomes a factor at a certain point.

Sad fact is, when an earlier poster suggested soon it'd be only 1911's and AR-15's, it's funny because it's becoming true right before our eyes! :eek:
 
anyone ever look up the SPIW? they asked for an impossible weapon and they came pretty close, it had the same basic requirements, but they also wanted a 3 round 40mm grenade launcher
 
mg4201 said:
wouldn't the simple easy solution be to design a better projectile that would penetrate armour with one round? something like an APDS round?
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As an item purely to defeat armour, absolutely. RUAG makes some fantastic tungsten-cored AP that looks like a needle under the jacket, with a rockwell hardness of ~60 IIRC. The problem after that is that leaves a >2mm hole straight through your target.

I heard of experiments with frangible tungsten penetrators, but I don't know anyone that has these in a small arms cartridge. Anyone at DND know anything about success/failure of these?
 
primers on the side of the casing two bullets in the casing with two different poweder charges would accompish the task. It would look a whole lot different than a conventional bullet but would fullfill the requirement with little effort.
 
Shouldn't we be onto hand held rail guns or lasers by now? Case-less ammunition seems like a great idea too, especially with new technologies out there. Just seems like there hasn't been much advancement in small arms since the 50's.
 
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