Quote:
Originally Posted by ArmySGT.
Stamped steel.
You need high quality, high ductility sheet metal. So that requires pretty good metallurgy and steel smelting techniques......
This then requires multiple, multi-ton, swage rollers. These progressively squeezing the almost molten steel thinner and thinner before it can cool down to much.
Then this requires highly skilled tool and die makers...... Machines with a minimum knowledge of trigonometry. They make the forms (dies) for shaping parts.
Then this requires multi ton press and press brakes....... These smash the segments of sheet metal into shape. Whether this is a magazine or a receiver.
Can you do this in a cave in Pakistan? Yes, one at a time, hammered, shaped, filed. Production rate though? One a month, every two weeks?
Factory with all the above.... Hundreds per hour.
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Of course the assault rifle or any automatic weapon has one huge disadvantage.
Even if you train your troops to be disciplined in their shooting and conserve ammo.
You still need to give them a couple of hundred rounds a piece to be much use.
Bullets which can be used for shooting the wild life, their officers or just swopped with poorly equipped enemies for romantic favours from their ladies or booze.
It was the bane of the old USSR.
So all too often even quite sophisticated nations have lumbered their armies with yesterday's technology. There were workable commercially available automatic rifles in the 1940s yet pretty much every nation started with a bolt action dinosaur.
It's not hard to imagine a postapocalyptic handing out to it's militia single shot needle rifles.
And even those who give out assault rifles, only handing out 2 clips until the battle actually kicks off.