Caseless Ammo
Looks like the Army and the Marines are looking into it again as a weight saving measure.
Remember, I do this to entertain me, not you.
Uncle Pays the Bills
 |
|
Find Local
|
Categories
- ATF (769)
- Death Match (10)
- Eminent Domain (225)
- In the bag (9)
- Notes to Junior (546)
- Poker (74)
- Recipes (142)
- Shotgun Noob (11)
- The Airing of Grievances (19)
- uncategorized (47,725)
May 21st, 2012 at 9:56 am
Sounds like anything but reducing the combat load… Everyone knows they will just increase the ammo amount to match the old weight and complain how the soldiers are overburdened..
May 21st, 2012 at 10:06 am
Its time to make the jump.
May 21st, 2012 at 10:10 am
Nonsense. Obduration is important. As is cycling, extraction and ejection. They would need all new guns, which are just a H&K dream.
May 21st, 2012 at 10:26 am
It seems to work pretty well for 120mm tank rounds. The only thing that comes out of those guns is the cartridge base.
Then again, tank cannon don’t fire at 900 rounds per minute, either.
May 21st, 2012 at 10:47 am
So let’s say they come up with something. When they finally settle on a System, they’ll have to issue some Contracts to make the Ammo and the new weapons, correct? Every Lifer in Congress will DEMAND that their District/State get the Awards. Then they’ll be some sort of “Stimulus/Tax Break” to set up the Factories. Then they’ll be some Lawsuits by the Losers, then there’ll be more Contracts Awarded to appease the various Committee Chairs. Then we have to make sure NATO is on Board, and they’ll have their own Hissy Fits on having to spend Euros on Armaments instead of Propping Up their Welfare States like Greece.
Of course, this will take years to implement, so we’ll have different Ammo Supplies still in the System, and the Reserves and the Guard will be hosed, because during their Annual Quals, the DOD will ship the Sci-Fi Ammo, but the Unit still will be using M16s/M4s.
Of course, some Anti-Gunner like Chuckie will DEMAND that the new Ammo is for “Military Use ONLY,” and the Civilian Market won’t be able to touch it. Part of that Legislation will be the Destruction of the OLD Ammo, to “keep it out of the Hands of those Evil Militias.”
Meanwhile, they’ll be some kind of Design Flaw/Engineering Change, and our Troops will be stuck with a POS that Jams just like in the early days of ‘Nam.
While all this is happening, the Chicoms will come up with something that can be swapped out with the AK’s Ammo, and they’ll just move along.
Finally, the Assholes at the Gun Shows will put up their signs screaming “Gov’t has BANNED 5.56 NATO! Buy NOW while you still can! Gun Show Price THIS WEEKEND ONLY! $50 for 20 Rounds!”
Sigh! How the Heck did we ever win WW2 using 20 pound BARs and 9+ pound Garands, all while using the MASSIVILY HEAVY 30-06 round I’ll never know.
May 21st, 2012 at 11:13 am
“Sigh! How the Heck did we ever win WW2 using 20 pound BARs and 9+ pound Garands, all while using the MASSIVILY HEAVY 30-06 round I’ll never know.”
BeCAUSE they soldiers was MEN in them days!
But you’ve pretty much described the procurement cycle there Les.
May 21st, 2012 at 12:31 pm
Also I’m always curious how these new rounds would hold up to long-term storage.
I know that guy with a Dardick has had major issues with his vintage trounds.
Compare that with all the various surplus brass-cased ammo that’s kicking around in the surplus world.
May 21st, 2012 at 12:49 pm
Les is right – this is just an excuse to write government checks. We have already been there and done that. The Germans already figure out that heat dissipation was the biggest problem (brass takes a lot of heat with it when it’s ejected).
We would know if they were serious – the Army and Marines would be buying hundreds of G11’s for evaluation and improvement recommendations.
May 21st, 2012 at 1:12 pm
Those polymer-cased rounds that were tried a while back seem like a better solution – they don’t need a new action, and the engineering problems seem simpler to solve.
May 21st, 2012 at 3:40 pm
Waste of taxpayers’ money. If caseless technology ever gets to where it might work for the military, then they should try it, but to try to just up and create it as an exercise in spending money is an invitation to disaster.
With a fifteen trillion dollar debt, do we have the money to be chasing this kind of fantasy when we already have proven technology? We don’t have the money! Let’s get Uncle Scam’s debt burden off our backs first.
May 21st, 2012 at 4:08 pm
All BL’s bee-ess just to have a few years of anything new before rail guns get down to soldier size?
If they were going to do this, why didn’t they go for a liquid or gas propellant, and a bullet-only magazine? Or maybe something like MetalStorm.
May 21st, 2012 at 5:22 pm
Nonsense. Obduration is important. As is cycling, extraction and ejection.
Well, if there’s no case, there isn’t any extraction and ejection…
Lack of an ejection cycle should theoretically make the gun far less prone to environmental (dust) jamming, as you could damn near enclose the whole thing.
(Which is a counter-argument to Matt D’s otherwise excellent point – at some point there are gains we can only get by dumping the existing guns, rather than by evolving them.)
Chas: It’s already where it “might work for the military” – the G11 did perfectly adequately in the ACR tests in the late 80s.
There’s question as to whether it’d be worth the immense practical and logistic costs of a changeover, but I think it’s been thoroughly demonstrated at the technical level that caseless can work.
May 21st, 2012 at 6:19 pm
Caseless is not technologically mature, and who knows if it ever will. Caseless ammo strikes me as impractical as the XM-29 OICW wonder-weapon. However, the plastic-cased telescoped round could be a real breakthrough , most importantly in the role of the LMG or SAW.
Even if the new ammo is only used for a M-249 replacement LMG, it would be worth doing. There is no reason belted LMG ammo should have to be the same as the standard rifle. “Commonality” is a B.S. excuse for not proceeding.
“Commonality” in ammunition has not been a realistic factor in American infantry formations since WWII. A U.S. infantry battalion uses a bewildering array of different munitions, and rifle fired ammunition is almost the least used in terms of cost and weight.
May 21st, 2012 at 7:32 pm
Caseless seemed to work pretty good for the Americans fighting off the world’s most powerful military in 1775.
May 21st, 2012 at 11:27 pm
The enemy had the same weapons, Ancient Woodsman. I think the 1851 Colt Navy is a very beautiful thing, but I bought a.380 and Remington Golden Hornets.
May 22nd, 2012 at 4:18 am
According to the information I was given when I was researching the MP5 book 20 years ago, the United States Government already owns all the caseless technology developed for the G11 and we brought the technical data package to this shore when they quit the G11/caseless ammo program or at least that was what I was told.
When West Germany abandoned the G11, all of them except for 8 individual examples were destroyed, but supposedly it was a ‘mature’ technology as they had the ‘bugs’ worked out of it.
My concerns remain over the bore diameter/caliber of the weapon as opposed to the ‘caseless’ technology…
All The Best,
Frank W. James
May 22nd, 2012 at 9:39 am
Frank – I heard rumors that there were more G11’s in German and American SF arms lockers – just rumors.
Like I said – if our military were truly interested in the technology, we would buy a couple hundred G11’s and let some Soldiers and Marines beat on them.
Issues like caliber, rate of fire, and sights could then be worked out.