Assault rifles

[Stark]

The Akaban's grip is at a really horrible angle; it's much worse than the AKs. I assumed it had something to do with some other feature of the gun.

[avianmosquito]

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.

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

Having fired a pulse rifle, (AN-94) I know blowback shifted pulse weapons do not move until after the second round is on its way out. With this as a result, and knowing that the bolt is striking the third round at this time, this means there would be no real issue with muzzle rise on tri-burst with this firearm.

As for your "reasonable version" you might as well just stick with an M16, because that would be universally inferior.

Also, you cannot have a collapsible buttstock on a bullpup weapon, and the weapon is already as short as a regular weapon would be with the stock collapsed. It's only 85/70cm. (33.5/27.5") There is no need to make it any shorter, and the barrel is as long as the M16's barrel. The high rate of fire is designed to give you more concentrated power on tri-burst, there is no need to worry about anything else.

Have you ever fired the AN-94? No? Than you likely have no knowledge when it comes to this kind of weapon, and you cannot just cry "soldier" to back a completely ungrounded opinion, especially on the internet, where anyone can make that claim.

[Dark Hellion]

Shatten, I think you misread about the complexity of the trigger mechanism. From what I understand it is far too complex (not too simple as I think you are implying).

Skeet: The two rounds to three rounds thing is not something you can simply handwave around without changing the method by which the bursts fire. The blowback method you want to use will AFAIK get horribly mechanically complicated in order to do so, requiring some funky engineering in the IFU, and making an already complex feed mechanism even more so. As a very broad guideline in this sort of practical creation you can handwave making existing capabilities work slightly better, slightly more efficiently, or require simpler engineering to accomplish but you can't really handwave away new capabilities, you have to explain how and why they have them.

I am also going to echo Stark. I am not sure you actually understand what the difference between story and plot is. If the technical details of these weapons have some plot signifigance that is nice (and you should tell us so we can evaluate them on that) otherwise you might as well just call it a "gun".

[Starglider]

When using an automatic weapon, they fire short, controlled bursts, upon a specific target.

If you are shooting in short bursts anyway, then it makes far more sense to shoot 3-round bursts in semi-auto, so that you can synchronize your firing with your efforts to re-center on the target after the recoil hits. There is no way having the gun fire 3 round bursts for you at some set frequency (in practice it probably varies with how fouled the gas mechanism is) is going to be better than firing bursts manually, particularly when (a) you have conventional full-auto as an option and (b) you can only fire 10 or so bursts before changing magazines. This is basically why the G11 is designed with high RPM burst and conventional low RPM autofire, your 'pulse auto' would have been easy to add, but the designers didn't do it because it would be useless.

[Stark]

If your trivia elements can be replaced with random crap like 'ELQ-97bis' and 'tri-bauxite penetrator' changing nothing, it's not important.

Unless your goal is to preen your military trivia and show how many books you've read.

[Starglider]

Unless your goal is to preen your military trivia and show how many books you've read.

In other words, you should only need to do it if you are writing 'alternate history' fiction, where the fanbase actively hungers for it...

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

It clearly is useful to have a full-auto mode in some situations, otherwise everyone would have stopped making ARs with that feature. Just not very many situations, and for minimally-trained infantrymen the drawback of wasting ammo under stress may be worse than the advantage of full-auto in those rare cases where you need it. The US Army certainly thought so, lots of other armed services didn't.

[Stark]

Oh yeah, the 'we'd have won xyz battle and conquered the world if we'd used Captain Johnson's patent volley-fire 6.8mm HVAPDSDT derringers' crowd.

Full auto is useful because nobody's dumb enough to hold the button down; discilpine can replace a 3-round burst option in many doctrines. Full auto gives you flexibility, especially at close range, but the machinegun is far more effective at supression.

[avianmosquito]

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.

It's not a future round. The 6.8mm Remington SPC is a real round used in several rifles already, including the Barret REC7.

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.

It may normally have poor close-range performance, but there is ammunition designed for this role. Hollow-Tipped Anti-Personnel (HTAP) ammunition is effective at short-medium range, regardless of the platform it is fired from. (A good real-world example is the 5.45mm 5N7) It has a cavity in the front of the boat-tail bullet to shift the centre of gravity further towards the rear, and cause it to yaw quickly. It then deforms and fragments, causing greater damage. The version used in this rifle is even more advanced, yawing in 10cm of tissue, fragmenting in 14cm, but using larger fragments as to allow them to keep the momentum to actually go all the way through the target. (They stop at 32cm)

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.

Hence why the light machinegun was adopted by only one military force in the book. Even the weapon's designer admitted he just got carried away on the concept, as only the marines could make proper use of such a weapon. Everyone else would find the pulses detrimental, and they didn't do much good on the platform anyway. He actually said, and I quote: "It's a joke, I just built it because I was high on the entire pulse idea. Just leaves a bunch of gaps, and even through you get hit a lot when you do get hit, that hardly matters. And then, if you set it to tri-burst, you've just got an oversized pulse rifle that doesn't do any better. Give me a BAR anyday."

[avianmosquito]

Maybe I should of put the data on its most common ammunition in the OP? It would show a bit more of the usage of the weapon, and its effects against its targets. Whatever, I'll just do it here.

5.56*45mm API

The 5.56*45mm Armour Piercing Indendiary is a fairly effective variant of the core penetrator concept. It loads a pyrophoric DU penetrator and thermite around it. This way, when it hits, the lead and copper are stripper off, the thermite released, and the depleted uranium ignites, sparking the thermite as well. This allows effective anti-material application in any size round, although it performs better in larger bore weapons than in 5.56mm.

5.56*45mm SAPHE/SAPHEI

The Semi Armour Piercing High Explosive round penetrates the body normally, then uses a small amount of explosive to force the round to fragment, sending bits of metal 10-20cm in every direction through the target's flesh and creating a massive shock from the explosive. (It's also excruciatingly painful.) The Semi-Armour Piercing High Explosive Incendiary uses a smaller charge, but also contains thermite, to add additional anti-material effect at the expense of anti-personnel stopping power. They both share a common weakness, however. The bullets explode 20cm into the target, which means they are innefective against, emaciated individuals and small children, both of which are thinner than 20cm, as such they explode in the air after having put a tiny hole through the target's body. Even if over 20cm, if the body is less than 30cm the round begins to lose a significant amount of its effect.

5.56*45mm HTAP

The Hollow-Tipped Anti-Personnel round penetrates the body, then yaws at ~10cm and fragments at ~14cm, sending fragments in a light spread pattern through the body, but the fragments are large enough to guarantee they still penetrate all the way through the body. However, the thinner the target's body the less effect they have, although this is less of an issue than it is for the SAPHE and SAPHEI rounds.

[Korto]

In human terms the Slugga would translate to a 54mm semi-automatic cannon. 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.
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.

The damn thing was meant to be a point-blank to medium range weapon, with the virtue that loadng it with different ammo gave it longer range capability. If it's now otherwise, I either need to redesign, or change the maximum effective range from approx 120m down to something more in keeping (what would that be? 50? 30?)
As said, the weapon was originally meant to be attached to the forearm armour so it could be used in HTH as a shield (HTH being a vital part of battle due to handwaved forcefield tech), and it needed to fire such huge rounds also due to said forcefields (even as such, they're only moderately effective), which unfortunately means a weapon such as a machine pistol would likely prove useless. Objections were raised that at range, a weapon attached to the forearm as I had described would prove completely inaccurate, which has led me to consider a more rifle-length weapon carried normally that can fulfill a dual role of gun/melee weapon (instead of gun/shield). Such a melee weapon however needs to more like a mace than spear, as not even a Tai'Qu can expect to pierce the hard armour all militaries wear.

Feil : I kind of like the shock-gun. It occurs to me that if the laser can stay on longer beforehand, it could be used for aiming (if visible), like a laser sight. Perhaps a light press activates the laser, a full press fires the weapon?

Dark Hellion : 54mm is an approximation. Obviously an alien race has their own measurements, but I didn't think I'd impress anyone on the board by telling them it was "one googlefrarg" or whatever the hell they call it.
About the name Slugger... yes, it really does seem the best name, what human grunts would call such a heavy hitter (specially with it then being used in melee), but it still uncomfortable all the damn similarities to orks.

[Ritterin Sophia]

I am also going to echo Stark. I am not sure you actually understand what the difference between story and plot is. If the technical details of these weapons have some plot signifigance that is nice (and you should tell us so we can evaluate them on that) otherwise you might as well just call it a "gun".

I'm going to disagree, but only slightly. If it's a near future war story a couple sentences on the M18A5 is not only okay it's a cool little blurb, just don't make it too verbose. Unfortunately the story he put it in and it's backstory don't work, there's no way you're going to see a one-world government set in the early 21st century, unless you have magic. Oh, and it's totally against all doctrinal sense.

[avianmosquito]

I am also going to echo Stark. I am not sure you actually understand what the difference between story and plot is. If the technical details of these weapons have some plot signifigance that is nice (and you should tell us so we can evaluate them on that) otherwise you might as well just call it a "gun".

I'm going to disagree, but only slightly. If it's a near future war story a couple sentences on the M18A5 is not only okay it's a cool little blurb, just don't make it too verbose. Unfortunately the story he put it in and it's backstory don't work, there's no way you're going to see a one-world government set in the early 21st century, unless you have magic. Oh, and it's totally against all doctrinal sense.

There is no world government you fucking moron. Save the bullshit until you've read at least some of it.

[Ritterin Sophia]

There is no world government you fucking moron. Save the bullshit until you've read at least some of it.

My bad, I got you confused with another no-name newbie near future fanfic author around here. It still doesn't explain your weapon, there's no way NATO and Russia are going to have commonality of weapons. Neither of us wants to be beholden to the other. Especially when your weapon design makes no sense wrt modern military doctrines, as such I have no interest in reading it.

[Covenant]

Avian, you put stuff out there and then respond negatively to criticism, or dismiss it as irrelevant, a stupid question, or unhelpful. People aren't going to simply improve or applaud an idea, and you're really lucky they're not just punting you off for trying to use SDN as a research base. It might be hard to hear people rip into your ideas, but that's exactly what they'd do if they saw it in print, so you're better off getting this good editorial advice now rather than later, when it would simply be negative criticism.

It's not a future round. The 6.8mm Remington SPC is a real round used in several rifles already, including the Barret REC7.

Yeah and it's really pretty similar to the .280 and the .30, that's not what I meant. I meant that it's not an unrealistic future round--that is, it's not an unrealistic mainstay ammunition, how else do you say it? Common-use? Standard? It's just not something you can 'drop in' as it were, as the higher pressure will cause significant wear and tear on the weapon. My point was that a slower deployment time would seem more reasonable. And before you go off on how it was slow, you need to realize you're not an established author, so don't react to people like they should have read whatever you haven't written yet. Given the established timeline there's reason for people to be raising eyebrows at how fast this weapon took over the NATO, US, and portions of Russian market.

It may normally have poor close-range performance, but there is ammunition designed for this role. Hollow-Tipped Anti-Personnel (HTAP) ammunition is effective at short-medium range...

You don't want to be firing those in a war atmosphere. First of all, NATO doesn't use hollowpoints at all, so no dice there. Secondly, their performance against armor is nil, so when you're dealing with an urban environment where you have to deal with shit getting in your line of fire, hollowpoints are going to make it harder to effectively wound a target. Sure, they don't ricohet as much (nice for police use) but you're better off using full metal jacket or armor-penetration, thus the mission profile of a weapon like the P90 using a small-bore armor defeating projectile.

I know what you're saying, but against armored targets at close range in a place with lots of cover, like fighting house to house, adding hollowpoints to the equation adds the whole issue of nonstandard ammunition in warfare (something NATO doesn't want to do) and also reduces your effectiveness against your expected targets. That's why I said for a carbine meant to be used close up, you're better off with a dedicated PDW, something a lot more people are expected to be carrying in the future anyway.

Hence why the light machinegun was adopted by only one military force in the book.

Why would it be adopted if it was a joke? I don't know... if you're willing to accept it as a bad design, then so be it, but you're opening up the fiction to criticism. Using quotes from your book isn't a defense, really, especially if those quotes only back up what we consider a legitimate point of contention.

If your intent is to create a series of weapon systems sold by a lowest bidder and considered somewhat shitty by the soldiers then I suppose you have a bit more carte blanche for creating minimally effective systems (though you should explain why they switched at all, especially so quickly), but if these are meant to be a legitimate upgrade then it might be more constructive to adapt ideas than defend them. Lowest bidder weapon systems could be an interesting plot point, but you don't want to make military fiction that military people will roll their eyes at. Which is also why I mentioned possibly leaving some of the numbers off anything but the most important new weapon.

[[R_H]]

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.

Which is improved to some extent by the new ammuntion.

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.

6.8 is an effective PDW round. Since when does 5.56 do poorly at close range? What I've read suggests that once its velocity (FMJ) drops too low (like if out of a short barrel), fragmentation no longer occurs.

[Ritterin Sophia]

Something I've been wondering about is something I call a SCAM (Shaped-Charge Anti-Material) round. Essentially it's a smallarm round with a shaped-charge warhead to address the current trend of lack of lethality in standard infantry weapons and at least give it parity to AP rounds. However, I'm not sure about the physics of it, specifically if you can miniaturize a shaped-charge enough and still get enough out of the molten copper jet to meet these parameters (if it can get through body armor or soft cover it should be good enough, there's not much you can do about a molten metal burning through you) or if you'll get a jet at all.

Any real world research into this would be awesome if someone could point me in the right direction, but all the shaped-charge weapons research I find deals with anti-tank weapons.

[[R_H]]

Something I've been wondering about is something called a SCAM (Shaped-Charge Anti-Material) round. Essentially it's a smallarm round with a shaped-charge warhead to address the current trend of lack of lethality in standard infantry weapons and at least give it parity to AP rounds. However, I'm not sure about the physics of it, specifically if you can miniaturize a shaped-charge enough and still get enough out of the molten copper jet to meet these parameters (if it can get through body armor or soft cover it should be good enough, there's not much you can do about a molten metal burning through you) or if you'll get a jet at all.

Shaped charges don't produce molten metal jets, the jets are just moving at several km/s.

[Covenant]

RH-

Sure, it's improved by the new ammo, but I wasn't talking about the new stuff. Afterall, that's why I singled out the 5.56.

The reason I said the 5.56 does poorly at close range when fighting in a dense environment is that it performs badly against cover. It doesn't go well through cinderblocks or sand or such, while a bit more beefy of a round can collapse cover or at least squeak a little bit through. It's important to remember that it's not a huge gap between it and other rounds, but it's not good enough to justify ignoring modern advancements in close-up weapon technology entirely when making a fictional setting.

Against tissue a close-up 5.56 is basically indistinguishable from a 7.62 while also having many advantages, but really, I don't think we're mapping our effectiveness versus unarmored tissue targets when we're talking about urban warfare. Anyway, that's why I was making a case for a different weapon for close fighting. A 6.8 performs similarly to a 7.62 in a lot of ways, which would let it crush through a more more cover materials. But a carbine isn't a PDW, carbines tend to be a bit bigger and more potent. PDWs are a more sensible version of a machine pistol, and is generally a backup weapon for someone like a grenadier.

Anyway, it's all semantics.

Depending on the mission, it might have an entirely different set of goals. I'm basing the parameters on a city-fighting metric, where you benefit greatly from being able to punch through a cinderblock-and-sand wall or a car door or thick glass, things which close range 5.56 can perform poorly upon.

I wasn't criticizing the 6.8, just the rapidity of it's adoption.

[Meest]

What about something based off the Metal Storm design, stacked projectile weapon, the bullets are all lined up and fired electronically. Just figure out a way to load in 2-3 or more fast enough or have few barrels that can reload between and rotate.

[avianmosquito]

It may normally have poor close-range performance, but there is ammunition designed for this role. Hollow-Tipped Anti-Personnel (HTAP) ammunition is effective at short-medium range...

You don't want to be firing those in a war atmosphere. First of all, NATO doesn't use hollowpoints at all, so no dice there. Secondly, their performance against armor is nil, so when you're dealing with an urban environment where you have to deal with shit getting in your line of fire, hollowpoints are going to make it harder to effectively wound a target. Sure, they don't ricohet as much (nice for police use) but you're better off using full metal jacket or armor-penetration, thus the mission profile of a weapon like the P90 using a small-bore armor defeating projectile.

I know what you're saying, but against armored targets at close range in a place with lots of cover, like fighting house to house, adding hollowpoints to the equation adds the whole issue of nonstandard ammunition in warfare (something NATO doesn't want to do) and also reduces your effectiveness against your expected targets. That's why I said for a carbine meant to be used close up, you're better off with a dedicated PDW, something a lot more people are expected to be carrying in the future anyway.

It's not a hollow-point. Hollowpoints are concave rounds with exposed lead, they expand on impact in order to leave a bigger hole. Both the design and effect are totally different from the HTAP. The HTAP merely has an air pocket, inside the jacket, to cause it to yaw. This way, it still penetrates almost as well as a FMJ, but then yaws and fragments to give it the stopping power of an expanding round. (more, actually) The drawback is that it yaws after hitting the first object, so it can't shoot through cover as well. (not like the 5.56mm is any good at that anyway.) There is no resemblence to hollow-points outside of the name.

[Jeremy]

I thought the hollow point was intended to deliver as much energy into the target as possible, hole size was secondary.

[Simon_Jester]

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.

This is a legitimate point; I'm convinced. It may be a mechanically possible feature to built a rifle that fires burst-pause-burst-pause, but that doesn't make it desirable.

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.

Hmm. Well, it would certainly be reasonable for Skeet to switch to two-round bursts.

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.

The thought that someone would or could measure this to micrometric precision is highly disturbing.

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.

It is not a stupid question, because there are many stories in which characters use weapons WITHOUT a complex, detailed explanation for how they work. "It's a machine gun. Deal with it" is a perfectly reasonable way to introduce the weapon to the story.

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

...a six year old? What the fuck?

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 wrote this, not Hellion. In any case, I understand what you're saying. But like the AN-94, this rifle only has the ridiculous rate of fire during its bursts; the sustained rate of fire for throwing an entire magazine downrange is half that (which would still be pretty high) or less, depending on the length of the pauses between bursts.

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.

That is true. I meant "realm of sanity" to mean "a sane person could think this possible." This assault rifle is within the realm of sanity, whereas an automatic rifle that fires 11mm slugs at Mach 9 is not (I've actually seen this in one SF setting).

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.

What I meant is that "pulse fire" brings the time average rate of fire down to near the range used by other automatic rifles, which are mostly in the 700-900 rpm range. It's still high, but it's not utterly absurd the way a sustained rate of 2000 rpm would be.

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.

I did not say a German who did this would be correct to do so; I just said they would thumb their noses at you for doing what is now cutting edge because they did it when it was bleeding edge. That doesn't mean that they aren't just making fancy, over-priced knockoffs.

But since the main technologies here were present in the G11, I think they might have a right to a bit of nose-thumbing.

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.

...where in my quote did I say "assault rifle?" I thought I said "automatic rifle" which means, well, a rifle that fires on automatic. It could mean either a light assault rifle or a heavy battle rifle, as far as I know.

The damn thing was meant to be a point-blank to medium range weapon, with the virtue that loadng it with different ammo gave it longer range capability. If it's now otherwise, I either need to redesign, or change the maximum effective range from approx 120m down to something more in keeping (what would that be? 50? 30?)

The problem is that it's too clumsy to make a good close range weapon, because the rate of fire is too low. If it weren't for forcefields making low-velocity high-caliber necessary, you'd be better off with a submachine gun in close quarters, I think.

Really, it's hard to make a weapon that can be fired accurately out of doors at all without giving it a longer range than ~100 meters. Unless your troops never fight outside a building, they will run into situations with lines of sight like that, and it's absurd for them to be unable to hit a target at that distance. I mean, hell, a bow and arrow could hit somebody at 100 meters.

[Thanas]

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.

I did not say a German who did this would be correct to do so; I just said they would thumb their noses at you for doing what is now cutting edge because they did it when it was bleeding edge. That doesn't mean that they aren't just making fancy, over-priced knockoffs.

But since the main technologies here were present in the G11, I think they might have a right to a bit of nose-thumbing.

H&K would also sue their asses off and tie this up in court for a fair time.

Also, same impracticability issues. There is a reason the Bundeswehr went for the G36 instead of the others.

And fancy, over-priced knock-offs is a bit stupid, considering that in every test the HK-416 has outperformed similar rifles and thus was adapted by the seals.

[Ritterin Sophia]

And fancy, over-priced knock-offs is a bit stupid, considering that in every test the HK-416 has outperformed similar rifles and thus was adapted by the seals.

You actually picked the worst new system H&K put out as an example to contradict me, that and the MG43.

I'm not sure if you're aware of this but the difference between the M4 and an HK416 is an over-priced upper receiver. It's still an M4 carbine. And it wasn't the SEALs who adopted it, it was Delta-Force and the Asymmetric Warfare Group, impressive, but all of SOCOM is adopting the FN SCAR. And in actuality you're wrong, in the 2007 Dust Test the SCARs experienced seven less (226) jams than the HK416s in competition (not enough to matter in an actual fight, but they did perform better), though the fancy upper receiver did reduce the M4 system's jam rate down to less than a quarter from 882. Don't get me wrong, H&K are great at refining weapon systems and concepts, but with the exception of subguns it is not a great developer of them.

[Thanas]

I think it is a bit unfair to take a modification of an existing system and compare it to a new gun. That said, how did the G 36 compare to the SCAR?