Assault rifles

[[R_H]]

Since we're evidently allowing carbines, LMGs, and 54mm cannons, here's a notion for a sci-fi less lethal weapon:

Pump-action electro-laser gun. Call it a Shockgun. The weapon chambers a 20mm discarding capacitor with a straightforward pump action. A power supply within the weapon (or possibly a backpack power supply) powers a laser when the weapon is fired, ionizing a stream of air between the operator and the target. After 0.03s, the weapon discharges the capacitor's charge across the ionized conducting path, zapping the hell out of the target. The capacitor partially vaporizes itself in the process, and is evacuated when the next round is chambered. While at higher energies, this could kill a person, the obvious limits of such a weapon (complete inability to penetrate a bed-sheet, although clothing and non-grounded armor would likely be close enough to the person for the weapon to work through them) make it useless as an standard infantry weapon. In stead, it sees use as a Less Lethal Weapon and aboard ships and aircraft where it poses no danger of punching holes through the hull, but can reliably stop a human target. Primary purpose for use in fiction: being a shotgun that shoots motherfucking lightning.

Schk-chuk - ZAAP!

Reasonable? Mis-designed? Wishful thinking?

Taser makes something similar, except it's just a (modified) shotgun which shoots mini-Tasers, I guess.

[Crazedwraith]

There is no precedence for an assault rifle being adopted by nearly all (it's just missing China and India, really) major world powers, no. Similar designs, yes, but not the same damn rifle.

It's replaced the M16 + the FAMAS, that's just America and France, as well as Spetznaz, so some of Russia's special forces. There's still a lot of the world that doesn't use it.

edit: Oops, some further research on wikipedia claims that about 15 of 28 NATO countries use the M16. Still there are significant places that don't for the most part. Germany and the UK, for example.

[Starglider]

Reasonable? Mis-designed? Wishful thinking?

The obvious issue is that it's extremely sensitive to atmospheric conditions. It won't work in rain, fog, dust or most likely strong winds. It will tend to ground out on nearby structures if fired in a metallic environment (e.g. on a ship).

Taser makes something similar, except it's just a (modified) shotgun which shoots mini-Tasers, I guess.

You mean the Taser XREP shotgun round? It's the same basic idea but it shoots the capacitor like a slug. AFAIK that didn't go into service, but the concept is solid, particularly as a sci-fi weapon benefitting from better capacitors and cheaper manufacturing.

If I was designing a near-future sci-fi assault rifle, I'd go with liquid propellants, either liquid binary explosive or electrothermal. More practical than an infantry-scale railgun, currently in development for artillery applications, both of these offer real advantages over conventional ammunition without requiring extreme advances (e.g. room temperature superconductors). That said smart projectiles (as in the XM-25) are more interesting than incremental improvements to conventional guns in terms of potential to change the tactical landscape.

[Feil]

Reasonable? Mis-designed? Wishful thinking?

The obvious issue is that it's extremely sensitive to atmospheric conditions. It won't work in rain, fog, dust or most likely strong winds. It will tend to ground out on nearby structures if fired in a metallic environment (e.g. on a ship).

It should actually work better in fog or dust, I believe. Blooming is desired, here, since the purpose of the laser is to spend as much of its energy as possible on the medium, not to impart that energy on a distant point target. Not sure how rain would affect it. Strong winds would be a problem, as they would disrupt the ionized path that the electricity needs to follow. I'm not sure how a metallic environment would affect it - un-ionized air has a pretty high breakdown potential, while ionized air is a very good conductor; I would suspect that arcing to ground wouldn't be an issue unless the shot passed within a few centimeters of the metal surface. TASERs deliver around 1E5V; the dielectric breakdown potential of dry air is around 3E6V/m, so dielectric breakdown shouldn't be a concern outside of 4cm if this weapon raises the conducting path to a similar potential above earth ground as the potential difference across the leads of a TASER dart.

The Taser XREP option you pointed out is probably better for many purposes, though, and has the advantage of being fired from an existing weapon and not needing a fancy power supply for the laser. On the other hand, it doesn't shoot lighting

[Covenant]

I'm guessing you mean the armour would have to be incredibly weak for a 5.56 to penetrate, in which case you're wrong, assuming you're talking about body armour. It does incredibly well against non-ceramic armour, better than 7.62N for example. Why the talk of livers and lungs?

I think he might be taking these values from 5.56 penetrators operating under 50 meters, at which point their high velocity causes the penetrator to fragment and lose the ability to punch through. A 7.62 does better close up, but the 5.56 still has better armor penetration values at medium to long engagement range, once the projectile has slowed to the point that it's tip won't frag itself on contact.

This is a notable problem with 5.56 when dealing with urban environments, as it can't cut through car doors or sandbag walls at that distance, but he's wrong about its behavior versus armor in general.

Av, You really need to tone down the wank and stop trying to make it sound so fancy. A three-round burst weapon is nothing unusual, and having them place all three rounds in the same spot is of debatable value, but it also raises questions about the mysterious fire and recoil dampening being used. It seems that it's so good you'd be better off with a larger round... but in reality, the recoil of a lot of modern weapons is pretty light on the user. Accounting for jump is one thing, but regardless of your recoil package a man-held weapon is going to bounce a bit at those RPM. Nobody would shoot it at those anyway, and your allotments are inconsistent with a mission profile that would demand this weapon. Plus, might as well make it a two-round burst if they're going to hit the same place, it'll save on wear and reloading and a doubletap is still very handy. You want to maximize lethality and usability per kilo of shit your poor infantryman has to carry.

I think that you're assuming too rapid an adoption as well. Jumping the weapon to a 6.6mm or as you have it, a 6.8mm is a reasonable future round that has good reasons to suggest an improved overall performance in a variety of missions, while also leaving 5.56 weapons available to branches of service that don't trust or care about the advantages of a sixsix, and various forces across the globe can continue to feel that way. Then you can have a more natural adoption as things prove it valuable. If you really want to give people something to chatter about have it bring back the .280 british and use the new recoil dampening system to make an extremely versitile, high-punch two-round selector weapon that has next to no recoil.

I also don't think you need a carbine of this weapon, due to the 5.56's poor performance versus targets at close range. For a dedicated PDW you need to maximize for penetration, so look into fivesix or 4.7 sizes to create an effective close-range weapon that can shred through a wall or a car door without risking injury to the user. Armor-penetrating rounds have a chance at bouncing back so don't rely on 5.56 AP when room-clearing. Urban usage will be more important in the future so addressing the risks of overpenetration in a civilian rich environment while keeping the ammo small and light suggests smaller bore ammunition.

If you want to be forward thinking drop the poorly-designed machinegun concept for a box-fed lightweight airburst weapon system. The XM-25 is perhaps a bit too bulky as a standalone airburst weapon, but the concept has merit and you can understand the value when paired with other suppression devices, like a normal SAW. There's no reason to phase out most of the MGs we already have on the books, and a 'pulse' system is certainly not necessary. It's a nice thought but it's barely even worth writing about.

[HELLHOUND]

As a former soldier, here goes:

1.Firing at center mass on burst or auto; the third round and beyond
fly over the targets shoulder at any real distance. The whole point of
burst limiters is to preserve ammo while giving the soldier an
emergency suppression capability.

2.machine gunners, meanwhile; fire bursts of 6 to 9 rounds below and to the side of
the targets hip, allowing recoil to walk rounds diagonally up. These bursts are alternated
with one or more other gunners to provide constant interlocking suppression fire
while the riflemen close on the enemy.

In short, tactical doctrine negates the need for obscene cyclic fire rates on
single barrel weapon systems anyway.

A reasonable version of the pulse rifle might look like this:

1.magazine fed 5.56x45mm NATO or 6.8 SPC
2.semi-auto and Burst
3.600-700 cyclic rpm
4.16-20 in barrel
5.collapsible buttstock

[Zixinus]

In few words of many, he's essentially proposing a assault rifle with a recoil compensator (which is what the whole impulse thing is, and its actually named "balanced action" according to my book) with 3-round burst capability and the ability to put several different types of ammo, including a proper "balanced" round that the British proposed way back with the EM-2. Oh, and with insanely high fire rate with to waste ammunition faster (there is a reason why most real-world assault rifles don't go much beyond 600 rounds per minute).

The rest is just wank. It does not really look like a substantial improvement over the assault rifles out now.

[Covenant]

As was noted elsewhere, a high ROF is handy for burstfire, but very unhandy for normal fire. This is why a 2000+ rpm is a good rating for a burst but you want your normal rpm to hover around the 500 mark. Selectable rate of fire can do that for you, but it's important to realize when designing a fictional weapon that you either want to say as little about it as possible, or make it as sensible as you can.

If you goal is to make a super high ROF future-gun, don't give a lot of info, as it will detract from the storytelling and not appease the quantifiers. If you want to make a realistic gun, just ask for a good basis for improvement over current firearms, since... really... modern firearms are fucking deadly. A modern rifle, or even a WWII era rifle, is not an ineffective weapon by any means against any lightly armored target out there.

Also remember that weapon systems are the sorts of things which are subject to debate even after extensive testing. You have seen the modern us rifle systems in use for a very long time and there is still hot debate about if it should have ever dropped 7.62mm or if it dropped the ball at other key junctures. You could literally design a revolutionary weapon system in perfect detail for your book and still hear a shrill chorus of detractors, and in many cases, even a perfect weapon will have enough downsides to give them a point or two. Overall, enjoy the fiction more than the tech, and remember that you shape the world first and then ask how the tech would move to catch up. Things can change pretty fast when a paradigm slips.

[Simon_Jester]

Avianmosquito, I think this one is honestly not that bad as a near-future assault rifle. Though you might want to push the timeline ahead another decade or two. You've got it entering widespread production in 2020, which would require them to be going through the prototype phase today... and we're not quite there yet, I think.

Why do you need a fast rate of fire for these weapons? Don't basic infantry weapons already put out a large enough volume of fire for their role?

The idea, as far as I know, is to use an extremely high rate of fire to put out a three-round burst fast enough that the third round leaves the muzzle before the recoil from the first round significantly shifts the point of aim. That way, you get a very tight three-shot group. Obviously, this only works with a burst selector. Fire such a weapon on full auto and you get wild inaccuracy and intense recoil forces.

Yah it works Norade, except all the parts of it that don't.

How does this gun keep from melting the barrel with such an obscene rate of fire? More importantly, why the hell do you need this rate of fire to begin with? How much ammo are you going to need to carry because of this?

I don't think the rate of fire is supposed to be vastly beyond what real automatic rifles are capable of. It's high but not "10000 rounds per minute" high.

How mechanically does this blowback pulse mechanism actually work?

I think he's picturing something like the H&K G11 prototype rifle, which actually had more or less this rate of fire (in principle) for three round bursts. The only exotic feature I'm seeing is the ability to hold down the trigger and fire burst-pause-burst-pause. I'm not a gunsmith, but I suspect that's at least within the realm of sanity.

How does this mechanism actually help against targets hardened against 5.56 rounds?

Not much; it's not an antitank weapon. On the other hand, standard 5.56 mm NATO ammunition will penetrate most soft body armor already; you have to get to pretty high-end stuff to stop it. So as an anti-personnel weapon, I really don't think there's anything wrong with this.

And now for storytelling elements. What are the distinctive features of the weapon? Any odd quirks or funky gremlins? Who doesn't use these and why? What psychological effect do they have on the nature of warfare?

Hmm. Well, those three round on target bursts are going to be extremely unpleasant on the receiving end. Aside from that, not much. It's a very minor upgrade on existing technology, more or less within the range of what's been prototyped today. So it's not going to make a colossal difference, I think.

In human terms the Slugga would translate to a 54mm semi-automatic cannon (or grenade launcher?), firing very low velocity rounds. The type of rounds loaded depends upon the nature of the task; for close assault they normally have shaped charge with a maximum range of approximately 120 meters. They also have shrapnel rounds, EMP, and long-ranged shaped charge and discarding sabot, along with others. The rounds are propelled by chemical propelent. They're basically big, fat, explosive bullets, probably fed in clips although originally I was thinking disintegrating belts.

So... the best analogy would be something more like a 40mm grenade launcher? There are 40mm revolver-type launchers already; a semiauto design is at least slightly plausible.

Edit - although that loses being able to swing in melee and shoot at someone else a split-second later

At close quarters, go to a sidearm- anyone big enough to carry this can carry a machine pistol for backup. These are more for field combat where the combat ranges are ~100 meters, not for inside a building where it's more like one to ten.

Okay, great idea, but there are a few problems I'm seeing here. Be forewarned: I sure as hell ain't a gun expert.

If you're firing on full auto, those three-round bursts are going to deplete your ammo pretty damn fast. Besides, that ridiculous rate of fire is going to heat up your barrel fairly quickly, and you're going to get a jam. Boom. Your gun's useless now. My advice: get rid of the full auto. You can pull a trigger fast enough to put a whole lotta lead down if you need to, and the less complicated your gun is, the less likely it'll break. If you've already gotten rid of it, I apologize for the redundancy.

The time averaged rate of fire in "burst-pause-burst-pause" mode ("pulse fire") is around 1000 rpm, which is the same rate used by normal automatic rifles. Assuming that the cooling mechanism is as good as or marginally better than that of today's weapons, I think it will be fine.

There is no precedence for an assault rifle being adopted by nearly all (it's just missing China and India, really) major world powers, no. Similar designs, yes, but not the same damn rifle.

Now here we have a relevant objection.

If this weapon is being used in a science-fiction setting, it's plausible that the human troops IN SPACE! (sorry) are part of a multinational force that, for the sake of logistics, all agree to use the same standardized weapons. But on the ground, the Soviets will still be using an AK-variant, though it may incorporate some of the design features of this new rifle. The Europeans will have a number of designs; Germany will probably build its own and thumb their noses at you for being so proud of your fancy knockoff of technology they developed twenty years ago.

The entirety of the chest is vital organs, and that's where a marine is going to place it. A marine will put 3 5.56mm bullets through your lung in less time than it takes to form the thought.

If the wound doesn't disrupt the CNS or cause enough bleeding to incapacitate, someone shot through the lung is still a threat.

Bullets passing through the lung are entirely too close to the spine and heart for comfort...

It only delays the impulse by a fraction of a second, and the details can be found on wikipedia if you search for the only real pulse rifle in the world, the AN-94.

Which is comparatively a complex and expensive weapon, and hasn't seen widespread adoption by the Russians for those reasons.

True. I can imagine the bugs being hammered out in the next generation or two of designs; that's not insane. Unless we are to assume eternal unchanging stasis in weapon design, it's reasonable that features which are now impractical for mass production will become practical in the future.

For example, when was the first automatic rifle designed and patented? If you guessed "StG 44 in 1942" or "Browning Automatic Rifle in 1917," you're wrong. It was the Mondragón rifle, designed in Mexico of all places, in 1887. However, the rifle was impractical for widespread use. It jammed easily, it was expensive to make, in general they were a mess.

Thirty years later, Browning produced something roughly similar but much more reliable and it went into common use for decades- a clumsy weapon by modern standards, but good enough to be very useful on the battlefield. Sixty years later, automatic rifle designs were coming out all over the place, in many different countries. Ninety years after the Mondragón was first developed, no one could imagine a semi-modern army without automatic rifles.

Today, technologies like caseless ammunition and high-ROF burst modes are still unreliable, expensive, and a poor choice for widespread use by the infantry. That doesn't mean they will remain so indefinitely.

EDIT: For another example, we can imagine the Ferguson rifle- again, it incorporated many features that were very advanced in hindsight, but problems of logistics and manufacturing made it impossible to make the rifle into an effective mass-produced weapon for several decades.

[Starglider]

The time averaged rate of fire in "burst-pause-burst-pause" mode ("pulse fire") is around 1000 rpm, which is the same rate used by normal automatic rifles. Assuming that the cooling mechanism is as good as or marginally better than that of today's weapons, I think it will be fine.

That makes no sense though. The whole point of fully automatic fire is to fill space, or rather saturate a beaten area. You use it when aiming precisely at the target isn't an option, either because there's too much relative movement or because they're in cover, so you fire a stream of bullets and hope one intersects with the enemy. Grouping the shots into threes reduces the chance of hitting the enemy at all to almost a third. It makes full auto (on an assault rifle) less effective at the one thing it's genuinely useful for.

[Zixinus]

To note: my post referred to the OP, not to HELLHOUND (CAPS!).

To add to Simon: to add another guy, there was a Russian man named Federov that produced a fully-functional automatic rifle, firing a cartridge of his own design that he later modified to the Japanese 6.5x50R Arisaka cartridge. It was dirt-sensitive but it worked well. In the 1920's, he developed a system that you can make anything from semi-automatic carbines trough assault rifles to machine guns with the same receiver and action. This would have simplified logistics. The reason why his work was not adopted was due to the civil war.

Even if the technologies and design necessary are made, it will take quite some time until a new weapon system is actually adopted. The reason for this, is that bullets are not going to become much deadlier any time soon. A change from 5.56NATO to 6.8SC is not worth it, not with all the 5.56NATO and 7.56NATO still lying around. A change from cartridge to caseless ammunition is going to be a fairly minimal change. Adapting burst-fire is also something difficult to justify within itself.

Changes will likely be in optics in the future, rather than the essential part of the rifle. Adding expensive-as-shit camera scopes that can see infra red and have a targeting computer, allowing to cap da motherfucke' way over there is a bit more useful than just getting a bigger bullet.

[HELLHOUND]

Changes will likely be in optics in the future, rather than the essential part of the rifle. Adding expensive-as-shit camera scopes that can see infra red and have a targeting computer, allowing to cap da motherfucke' way over there is a bit more useful than just getting a bigger bullet.

I think you're on to something here. Perhaps an 1-6x power adjustable dot sight with with IR and
rangefinder functions.

Another good idea is to mount laser target designators on rifles to facilitate precision air strikes.

[avianmosquito]

The T22PR was introduced as an infantry weapon in 2017, and quickly caught on due to the unique way its recoil behaves. The weapon fires fast enough that it is difficult to distinguish the sounds of the individual shots, and is designed to treat these three rounds as a unit, called a "pulse," which it could fire at a rate of 600/min. Since it fires three rounds so fast, with the weapons blowback shifted pulse mechanism giving a small delay to the recoil, the rounds spread less than a centimetre at 100m. This allows the soldier to effortlessy land 3 rounds on any part of the body they need, making up for the 5.56mm round's dismal stopping power. Greater accuracy can be achieved by getting the weapon chambered in 5.45*39mm, at the expense of loosing a bit of the range and stopping power, and greater stopping power can be achieved with the use of 6.8*43mm Remington SPC, at the expense of accuracy and sheer abundance of ammunition.

What is this tripe? By the way, it would be rather difficult to make a belt-fed bullpup.

It's a little rudimentary to be asking questions about, isn't it? Are you asking about the mechanism, because it's real. A working example would be here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN-94 As for the whole bit with the recoil delay, it's just a desired side-effect of the mechanism and is only a fraction of a second, but it allows the recoil to wait until the round is out of the barrel and the second one on its way.

That's because it's not supposed to be a belt-fed bullpup, it's just supposed to be a regular belt-fed machine gun, if a small one. I used a copy&paste for the "design" slot to save time, and forgot to remove that. Sorry.

[avianmosquito]

Since we're evidently allowing carbines, LMGs, and 54mm cannons, here's a notion for a sci-fi less lethal weapon:

Pump-action electro-laser gun. Call it a Shockgun. The weapon chambers a 20mm discarding capacitor with a straightforward pump action. A power supply within the weapon (or possibly a backpack power supply) powers a laser when the weapon is fired, ionizing a stream of air between the operator and the target. After 0.03s, the weapon discharges the capacitor's charge across the ionized conducting path, zapping the hell out of the target. The capacitor partially vaporizes itself in the process, and is evacuated when the next round is chambered. While at higher energies, this could kill a person, the obvious limits of such a weapon (complete inability to penetrate a bed-sheet, although clothing and non-grounded armor would likely be close enough to the person for the weapon to work through them) make it useless as an standard infantry weapon. In stead, it sees use as a Less Lethal Weapon and aboard ships and aircraft where it poses no danger of punching holes through the hull, but can reliably stop a human target. Primary purpose for use in fiction: being a shotgun that shoots motherfucking lightning.

Schk-chuk - ZAAP!

Reasonable? Mis-designed? Wishful thinking?

Taser makes something similar, except it's just a (modified) shotgun which shoots mini-Tasers, I guess.

It's called an electrolaser. The details and issues with its design can be found on wikipedia.

Nonetheless, the idea of using it from a shotgun is poor, untill you manage to find a way to make it into a shotgun shell. (Such as the shell doing the ionising, in which case, you might as well just use a taser.) You should probably try a smaller dedicated weapon, like a carbine, and take this to the "Directed Energy Weapons" thread, where I can discuss this with you in greater detail.

[Crazedwraith]

Anyway, to contribute my own design. I wrote this up a while ago. It's a bit overly fluffy, complete with silly fiction company name and number but its mainly based on the real Advanced Combat Rifle competition.

Nachet Arms Type 8 “Trigun” Advanced Combat Rifle (T8-ACR)

This rifle has been the premiere urban combat rifle in use for the last twelve of your Earth years. It is a lightweight weapon, optimised for medium to short range engagements. It has gained its named of ‘trigun’ from the distinctive triangular shape of the muzzle and barrel sections and its use of a triplex round; three small bullets fired from a single casing, vastly increasing the volume of fire such a rifle produces but at the same time decreasing the accuracy to the point where a responsible rifleman should carry two types of ammunition the type 8’s unique triple round and a more conventional 8.2mm singleshot rifle round for use at longer ranges.

Traditionally the use of triplex or duplex rounds had been hampered by the large recoil induced by firing multiple rounds had once, the Type-8 solved this problem by incorporating systems from their long line of large calibre anti-material and sniper recoilless rifles which allowed the barrel section free movement, to retreat under recoil leaving the main body of the weapon relatively unaffected. There are however limits on this function which prohibits extended automatic fire with the Type 8 without eventually incurring the rounds full recoil. For this reason, the factory settings of the Type 8 include only the ‘safe’ ‘single shot’ and ‘three round burst’ modes, although it is quite easy to modify the Trigun for fully automatic fire. The Nachet User’s guide strongly recommends against it unless the user switches to alternate ‘low-recoil’ rounds such as the duplex or single rounds or the ‘five-flechette’ round.

Like all good Rifles the Type 8 aims for flexibility, with under- and over- rails for the attachment of various scopes, sights and underslung weapons such as bayonets, shotguns or grenade launchers. As standard the rifles comes with a ‘red-dot’ reflex sight.

key points; Short-medium range rife for urban combat. Increases volume of fire by firing triplex round; ie) three small bullets bundled in one casing. (maybe 4.7 PDW type rounds?) Free floating barrel to help manage to the rather large recoil this produces.

Stuff that probably doesn't work in reality; being able to just switch mags to go from normal ammo to triplex rounds as well as lots of other stuff for you to point out.

[Starglider]

Increases volume of fire by firing triplex round; ie) three small bullets bundled in one casing. (maybe 4.7 PDW type rounds?).

A saboted flechette round fired from a shotgun would be a lot simpler and probably more effective.

How about using metal storm style stacked cartridges, fired in quick succession? That would avoid the need for three separate barrels and the complex triple-breech mechanism, but even still, I'm not sure what it buys you over normal caseless ammunition.

[avianmosquito]

To note: my post referred to the OP, not to HELLHOUND (CAPS!).

To add to Simon: to add another guy, there was a Russian man named Federov that produced a fully-functional automatic rifle, firing a cartridge of his own design that he later modified to the Japanese 6.5x50R Arisaka cartridge. It was dirt-sensitive but it worked well. In the 1920's, he developed a system that you can make anything from semi-automatic carbines trough assault rifles to machine guns with the same receiver and action. This would have simplified logistics. The reason why his work was not adopted was due to the civil war.

Even if the technologies and design necessary are made, it will take quite some time until a new weapon system is actually adopted. The reason for this, is that bullets are not going to become much deadlier any time soon. A change from 5.56NATO to 6.8SC is not worth it, not with all the 5.56NATO and 7.56NATO still lying around. A change from cartridge to caseless ammunition is going to be a fairly minimal change. Adapting burst-fire is also something difficult to justify within itself.

Changes will likely be in optics in the future, rather than the essential part of the rifle. Adding expensive-as-shit camera scopes that can see infra red and have a targeting computer, allowing to cap da motherfucke' way over there is a bit more useful than just getting a bigger bullet.

Ever heard of the AUG? Same idea, except this takes it further. It actually uses most of the same parts, except for a few differences:

The carbine is essentially the same, except for the bolt being lighter and lessening resistance to allow it to move faster. (At the cost of a few more jams because of the bolt not coming back forward, but hey, who's goanna live to complain about that?)

The Beltfed, on the other hand, is almost totally different, and is just grouped with the others for the sake of simplicity.

[avianmosquito]

Anyway, to contribute my own design. I wrote this up a while ago. It's a bit overly fluffy, complete with silly fiction company name and number but its mainly based on the real Advanced Combat Rifle competition.

Nachet Arms Type 8 “Trigun” Advanced Combat Rifle (T8-ACR)

This rifle has been the premiere urban combat rifle in use for the last twelve of your Earth years. It is a lightweight weapon, optimised for medium to short range engagements. It has gained its named of ‘trigun’ from the distinctive triangular shape of the muzzle and barrel sections and its use of a triplex round; three small bullets fired from a single casing, vastly increasing the volume of fire such a rifle produces but at the same time decreasing the accuracy to the point where a responsible rifleman should carry two types of ammunition the type 8’s unique triple round and a more conventional 8.2mm singleshot rifle round for use at longer ranges.

Traditionally the use of triplex or duplex rounds had been hampered by the large recoil induced by firing multiple rounds had once, the Type-8 solved this problem by incorporating systems from their long line of large calibre anti-material and sniper recoilless rifles which allowed the barrel section free movement, to retreat under recoil leaving the main body of the weapon relatively unaffected. There are however limits on this function which prohibits extended automatic fire with the Type 8 without eventually incurring the rounds full recoil. For this reason, the factory settings of the Type 8 include only the ‘safe’ ‘single shot’ and ‘three round burst’ modes, although it is quite easy to modify the Trigun for fully automatic fire. The Nachet User’s guide strongly recommends against it unless the user switches to alternate ‘low-recoil’ rounds such as the duplex or single rounds or the ‘five-flechette’ round.

Like all good Rifles the Type 8 aims for flexibility, with under- and over- rails for the attachment of various scopes, sights and underslung weapons such as bayonets, shotguns or grenade launchers. As standard the rifles comes with a ‘red-dot’ reflex sight.

key points; Short-medium range rife for urban combat. Increases volume of fire by firing triplex round; ie) three small bullets bundled in one casing. (maybe 4.7 PDW type rounds?) Free floating barrel to help manage to the rather large recoil this produces.

Stuff that probably doesn't work in reality; being able to just switch mags to go from normal ammo to triplex rounds as well as lots of other stuff for you to point out.

The issue with triplex is you essentially reduce your weapon's accuracy to that of a musket. Need I say more?

[avianmosquito]

The time averaged rate of fire in "burst-pause-burst-pause" mode ("pulse fire") is around 1000 rpm, which is the same rate used by normal automatic rifles. Assuming that the cooling mechanism is as good as or marginally better than that of today's weapons, I think it will be fine.

900rpm.

That makes no sense though. The whole point of fully automatic fire is to fill space, or rather saturate a beaten area. You use it when aiming precisely at the target isn't an option, either because there's too much relative movement or because they're in cover, so you fire a stream of bullets and hope one intersects with the enemy. Grouping the shots into threes reduces the chance of hitting the enemy at all to almost a third. It makes full auto (on an assault rifle) less effective at the one thing it's genuinely useful for.

You're thinking of the basic army grunt, marines and marksmen don't fight that way. When using an automatic weapon, they fire short, controlled bursts, upon a specific target. When an enemy takes cover, they shoot a few bursts through the cover, where they think the target is. (Which they usually get right.)

[Stark]

Using full auto on an assault rifle is just a quick way to waste ammo anyway. Starglider is probably talking about sustained fire weapons.

[Dark Hellion]

To skeet: Now I am not a mechanical engineer but from a cursory examination of how the AN-94s "blowback shifted pulse" works in regards to the burst firing I do not believe that you can arbitrarily increase it from two rounds to three. While it is most likely technically possible to do so, I believe that it would make for a pretty hideously complex integrated firing unit. Also, I believe you should quote the semi/full auto RoF instead of the burst rate. Also, just so you are aware, you don't actually get to cheat away any of the recoil by delaying it, you would get the full recoil of 2/3 shots at one time when firing the burst.

But, having looked over what the mechanisms this weapon is using (hint, if you are writing technical fiction please explain such technical details) I will agree with Simon that this isn't that bad. I don't think the three-round burst (as opposed to two round) is necessary and I think you should couch it in language referring to the AN-94. From my quick readings the AN-94 is a pretty decent gun but has some problems that need to be fixed such as ergonomics (seems easy), sighting (again easy), ease of use (no clue here), and the complexity of the trigger mechanism (can probably be handwaved). Patch up these problems, stick a bit of your own spin on it and you have a decent now+15/20 years gun.

To Simon: The points on rate of fire and mechanism are mostly handled by looking up the AN-94. From my understanding barrel wear (fatigue?) from heating is an issue for weapons once you get towards the 1000+rpm range and when I thought he was saying his guns would have twice the rate of fire of an FN P90 my hinky meter went off.

About armour, this was my mistake as I misread 2017 as 2071 at which point in time it is probably not ridiculous to theorize or assume smart materials or other advances which would render the 5.56 NATO less efficient. It should do fine against modern+1 gear.

At Korto: For the name, while slugga is taken you could just call it a slugger. You can backstory this a ton of ways, maybe slugger is slang for all slugthrowers, maybe when originally encountered the weapon only fired solid slugs, maybe the name for it in its native language is formed from the verb for a bullet/slug firing and a word-part that makes that word into the doer of said verb. Since bulleter sounds stupid and firer is too generic humanity called it the slugger and said "blam, done!"

Also, don't feel necessitated to use exact earth measurements for the weapon, it could be ~54mm (actually 53.891; the diameter of their war gods dick) and work just fine.

[avianmosquito]

For everybody asking how this is important to the story, you're asking a stupid question. This is the primary weapon of several characters, and the only 5.56mm weapon to have this honour, as most characters like 7.62mm battle rifles.

I'll pull a few quotes out of my writing, most of which come from a 6-year old.

"Do anything I don't like, and I'll have 3 HTAPs in your sorry ass before you even realise you've been hit." Assuming he has a really slow nervous system to account for the tenth of a second. -Tatiana Lebeda, DEVGRU

The marines stepped out of the Bird of Prey, most of them carrying the T22 Pulse Rifle, not a SCAR in sight. Engineers. That didn't help the theory that they were here to evacuate us, and neither did the stacatto sound of pulse rifle fire coming from all across the city. These men (and one woman) were a clean-up crew. -Sarah Sharp, civilian

I picked up the carbine and took a look at it. It was light, maybe 3 kilos, and adding a magazine didn't change that. The sites were aperture, clearly meant for accuracy. It had several settings on the switch, labeled "burst" "pulse" and "auto." I set my sights on the necros I'd side-stepped earlier, and fired. Once shot, I'd thought, but when I looked there were three shell casings. The cadavre hit the ground hard, but kept moving for a few seconds before slipping into shock, a single hole in his front, but a thousand small ones in his back. I saw no point in putting him out of his misery, there was more blood on the floor than I'd thought a body my size could contain, and he was still bleeding. -Sarah Sharp

"Don't worry kid, I'll be fine. Necros are afraid of 2 things, fire and pulse rifles. I've got them both right here." I knew better, I'd been in this bloody city longer than that. Necros might not like fire, but they're not in any way bothered by pulse rifles, incendiary rounds or no, they aren't smart enough to recognize it. -Sarah Sharp

Panicked and trapped, she reloaded, almost dropping the magazine because her hands were shaking, moved the weapon's selector switch to 3 o'clock-something I had never seen a marine do. Struggling to keep the weapon level, she empied an entire 60-round magazine into the oncoming horde in two seconds-and failed to make a significant dent in their numbers. I had to help her, but what could I do? -Sarah Sharp

I smashed a hole in the wall and pulled her through. She panicked and tried to shoot me with a pistol, but her shot went wide. As soon as she recognized me no words were needed. She followed me out, and we found a truck. "I'm going to smash the glass, disable the alarm as fast as you can." I didn't need to tell her why, as soon as the alarm came on, all those necros at the front of the building came as fast as they could. I readied my carbine and took one shot after another, the stacatto fire scaring the smarter ones away, but there weren't many of them to begin with. The truck was ready, I climbed onto the back and we started off. The necros pelted us with rocks, and I pelted them with bullets, my weapon let out a scream and then the weapon stopped, it's way of saying "enough already." The barrel was glowing red, steam was coming out of the water-logged barrel shroud, and the bolt in the back position. I pushed the handle forward, and saved the rest of the magazine. The necros didn't matter anymore, but they weren't all that was out there. -Sarah Sharp

[Stark]

I'm not seeing how that higlights importance to story; it's just samples of milwank fanfic. The silly codes and trivia don't actually matter plotwise.

[avianmosquito]

To skeet: Now I am not a mechanical engineer but from a cursory examination of how the AN-94s "blowback shifted pulse" works in regards to the burst firing I do not believe that you can arbitrarily increase it from two rounds to three. While it is most likely technically possible to do so, I believe that it would make for a pretty hideously complex integrated firing unit. Also, I believe you should quote the semi/full auto RoF instead of the burst rate. Also, just so you are aware, you don't actually get to cheat away any of the recoil by delaying it, you would get the full recoil of 2/3 shots at one time when firing the burst.

I do, believe it or not, possess sufficient skill at handwavery to not have to explain going from 2-3 rounds. The fire on full auto is the same. It's designed to use the same "cheat" as the AN-94, except it does it constantly to increase its rate of fire. The drawback: feedjams. If the weapon is well, maintananced and kept on burst, this isn't an issue, but on full auto in rain and mud, it's going to jam almost as much as an M16, and only that little due to Terratech's high standards.

I'm also well aware that the recoil is going to hit you all at once, but by then the last round is heading down the barrel. No issue to accuracy unless you plan on firing one burst after another without pausing to readjust your weapon. (In which case, you're an idiot.)

But, having looked over what the mechanisms this weapon is using (hint, if you are writing technical fiction please explain such technical details) I will agree with Simon that this isn't that bad. I don't think the three-round burst (as opposed to two round) is necessary and I think you should couch it in language referring to the AN-94. From my quick readings the AN-94 is a pretty decent gun but has some problems that need to be fixed such as ergonomics (seems easy), sighting (again easy), ease of use (no clue here), and the complexity of the trigger mechanism (can probably be handwaved). Patch up these problems, stick a bit of your own spin on it and you have a decent now+15/20 years gun.

No problem, but this is more detail on the weapon than ever appears in my books. (Except for one point when the weapon's designer is narrating, and takes a minute to explain the design to the reader. He does that a lot, and is the only one that does so, but hey, he's entitled, being the main character and all.)

About armour, this was my mistake as I misread 2017 as 2071 at which point in time it is probably not ridiculous to theorize or assume smart materials or other advances which would render the 5.56 NATO less efficient. It should do fine against modern+1 gear.

Maybe modern+2, seeing as the weapon will stay in service at least as far as the main series is currently mapped out. (2000s-2050s)

[Ritterin Sophia]

First, I thought that I had heard of a modern weapon using a 2-round burst in much the same way this weapon does a 3-round burst in that the second round is chambered and fired before the recoil disrupts the aim. If I recall though it would then revert to normal automatic fire after those first two rounds if used in such a way.

The AN-94 Abakan? The system in it sends the first two rounds out of the barrel at 1800 rpm, subsequent rounds at 600. The thing is it's a bit more specific than that, the three round burst has been used in this way for forty years, what that insanely high ROF does is it allows the rounds to exit the barrel on the exact same trajectory and impact the same spot. Now to understand why you'd want this ability you need to understand that modern body armor becomes useless if you hit it in the same spot, the first round opens the armor up for the next round to wound.

Second, would the pause between bursts do anything to help keep the weapon cooled; especially when combined with a cooling system?

What cooling system?

Third, I have heard it said that 3-round bursts work well, but more often I have heard it said that they are a poor choice and fire control and regular fully automatic fire is nearly always a better option. Which would you say is more correct?

I've heard it more often from Iraq and Afghan Veterans that you're going to use controlled pairs and in fact the US Army doesn't even use burst mode in their BCT M16 training.

You are, strickly speaking, correct, except that this is a different breed. This was the first dedicated suppression machine gun.

No it isn't, this is:


Seriously, this has been the doctrinal use of machineguns since WW1, suppress the enemy until you can get artillery fire. It has not changed since, the entire purpose of automatic and burst fire weapons is to pin the enemy down until the Chair Force can bring their lazy asses in to take all the glory with a 500 lb JDAM.

It only delays the impulse by a fraction of a second, and the details can be found on wikipedia if you search for the only real pulse rifle in the world, the AN-94.

You'll also note that the 1800rpm only applies on the two round bursts because the Russkies realize the problems with an 1800 rpm weapon. There's a reason the MG42 had it's ROF lowered.

The idea, as far as I know, is to use an extremely high rate of fire to put out a three-round burst fast enough that the third round leaves the muzzle before the recoil from the first round significantly shifts the point of aim. That way, you get a very tight three-shot group. Obviously, this only works with a burst selector. Fire such a weapon on full auto and you get wild inaccuracy and intense recoil forces.

This doesn't explain why he has a full auto capacity at all and why it's used on an support weapon, the MG42 was toned back specifically because of the muzzle wear at 1500rpm causes and how fast you eat through ammo.

I don't think the rate of fire is supposed to be vastly beyond what real automatic rifles are capable of. It's high but not "10000 rounds per minute" high.

It's not, the problem isn't that it's beyond what we're capable of, it's that it's unnecessary and wasteful. You're wasting ammo on targets that were dead with the first two or three hits, that kind of ROF causes some major friction so you have heating and wearing issues, so we're eating ammo and we need to carry more barrels.

I'm not a gunsmith, but I suspect that's at least within the realm of sanity.

Not being privy to the mechanism used in the G11 that's not a given, for all we know this firing mechanism would completely take up the place of a selective fire limiter.

The time averaged rate of fire in "burst-pause-burst-pause" mode ("pulse fire") is around 1000 rpm, which is the same rate used by normal automatic rifles. Assuming that the cooling mechanism is as good as or marginally better than that of today's weapons, I think it will be fine.

Those automatic rifles have greatly thicker barrels and a quick change barrel system and the operator has to carry more barrels to replace them, so yeah it's going to be a problem since you're increasing the soldiers load, the trend is for lighter but equal or better performing equipment for a reason.

There is no precedence for an assault rifle being adopted by nearly all (it's just missing China and India, really) major world powers, no. Similar designs, yes, but not the same damn rifle.

Now here we have a relevant objection.

Germany will probably build its own and thumb their noses at you for being so proud of your fancy knockoff of technology they developed twenty years ago.

Actually you'll find it's Germany that makes fancy, over-priced, knock-offs and then thumbs their noses because... German engineering. You should see the look on the faces of H&K reps when a civvie asks when they can expect a civilian model.

True. I can imagine the bugs being hammered out in the next generation or two of designs; that's not insane. Unless we are to assume eternal unchanging stasis in weapon design, it's reasonable that features which are now impractical for mass production will become practical in the future.

Actually the reason it is yet to be adopted for the entire Russian military is because of their obsession with a large reserve force they can't afford enough to equip their entire military. However, this practice has recently ended.

For example, when was the first automatic rifle designed and patented? If you guessed "StG 44 in 1942" or "Browning Automatic Rifle in 1917," you're wrong. It was the Mondragón rifle, designed in Mexico of all places, in 1887. However, the rifle was impractical for widespread use. It jammed easily, it was expensive to make, in general they were a mess.

Minor correction that's not an assault rifle, it's a battle rifle. Assault rifles use an intermediate cartridge, battle rifles use full-size.

From my quick readings the AN-94 is a pretty decent gun but has some problems that need to be fixed such as ergonomics (seems easy), sighting (again easy), ease of use (no clue here), and the complexity of the trigger mechanism (can probably be handwaved).

To address these all of them have more to deal with the Russian Doctrine; ergonomics and sighting are probably for training commonality with the Kalashnikov family (they aren't known for great accuracy, and while it's not bad it's not great either) and the complexity has to be taken in regards that the Russians are used to weapons you can give anyone and they can shoot for years without cleaning.