Re: [GZG] [OFFICIAL] Infantry weapons

Ken Hall wrote:
> 
> I've never been an infantryman, but I've got an interest in
> riflery so I'll offer my two cents. Short answer: range and
> round matter a lot. For example:
> 
> "Primitive:" Examples drawn from the 20th Century inlcude the
> Mauser K98, Enfield SMLE of various marks, Swiss Schmidt-Rubin
> K.11 (and K.31 carbine), Russian Mosin-Nagant M91/30 (the
> Finnish variants are better made and approach the Swiss rifles
> in quality), Springfield M1917, and a few others. These weapons
> fire a full-power .30 caliber (or thereabouts) cartridge.
> Although not mentioned, the semi-automatic battle rifle (M1
> Garand) probably ought to be added here. Effective range in the
> hands of a trained infantryman is 600+ meters.
[...]

Historically, not every army chose such powerful rounds. Many had
lighter 6.5mm cartridges, such as the Japanese 6.5mm Arisaka round
(also used by the Russians in the Federov automatic, an early
assault rifle). The reasoning behind the powerful weaponry chosen
by most of the Great Powers - a platoon officer directing fire for
a platoon in file, and calling corrections, shooting at targets up
to 1000 yards away - was faulty, almost nobody was able to fight
effectively at such long ranges - at least until the firepower was
concentrated in machine guns. These cartridges work great in
machine guns, the Russians still use the old Tsarist cartridge.

Many armies had serious proposals to reduce the power of their
rifles, but every army stuck with using machine gun compatible
ammo - and major armies using 6.5mm ammo ditched it for powerful
MG stuff. Meanwhile engagement ranges were almost universally
short (in both major Wars) and some armies basically gave up on
teaching marksmanship to concentrate on blasting people with
automatic fire from machineguns and SMGs.

There was an attempt to get NATO standardised on an intermediate
power cartridge inspired by the 6.5mm Arisaka (that Japan had
already rejected) and it died a death. So, I'm rambling like a
fool but the point I'm making is that armies pretty much pick
cartridges for using in machineguns as their highest priority.
Even today there are ideas floating to get US forces to upgun to a
6.5 or 6.8mm bullet bodged into a short enough cartridge to fit
M4s and M249s, but it doesn't fly because a SAW gunner would have
to carry so much more weight in ammo. The 5.56mm NATO cartridge is
a SAW cartridge first and foremost and Pvt Average NATO soldier
will get a rifle/carbine/PDW that uses it.

When the US conducted tests for improved rifles (20 years ago
now?) including such things as the caseless G11 rifle with the
super recoil-delaying burst gizmo, they still were never able to
get much improvement in effectiveness over the M16 with a decent
optic on top. Then they cut six inches off the barrel.

Anyhow, I would suggest that leaving engagement ranged independent
of most small arms technology because that's one of the basic
premises of Stargrunt (except maybe for lasers). We are working on
fiction here and not writing theses on ultramodern combat. The
actual future won't be anything even a little bit like Stargrunt
anyway. If the present day reality isn't as cool as "Aliens" then
reality is wrong.

-- 
David Brewer

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