STEYR ACR

[General Pain]

anyone designed this little gem ?

http://world.guns.ru/assault/as56-e.htm

[General Pain]

this one

http://world.guns.ru/civil/civ018-e.htm

the bushmaster ACR

looks very nice

[pmulcahy11b]

anyone designed this little gem ?

http://world.guns.ru/assault/as56-e.htm

Of course...
http://www.pmulcahy.com/best_stuff_that_never_was/best_asr_that_never_were.htm

[pmulcahy11b]

this one

http://world.guns.ru/civil/civ018-e.htm

the bushmaster ACR

looks very nice

And of course...
http://www.pmulcahy.com/assault_rifles/us_assault_rifles_m-q.htm

Though that entry is based on earlier information and is not that up-to-date anymore. It was then called the MagPul Masada.

[copeab]

anyone designed this little gem ?

http://world.guns.ru/assault/as56-e.htm

Two slightly different versions appeared in Challenge #71 and #72 (from different authors).

[Raellus]

I remember taping something off of CNN (I think) back in '89 about the G11 vs. the Steyr ACR. I couldn't decide which was cooler. The caseless ammo and delayed recoil of the G11 was pretty awesome. At the same time, the flechette round of the ACR was pretty cool too. My money was on the G11, at the time.

I was just a kid but I wouldn't have believed that the U.S. army would still be using the M16 series (M4) as it's primary AR over 20 years later.

[Legbreaker]

I think it's a case of "if it works, don't change it".
Personally though every M16 I ever touched should have been thrown in the bin as unservicable and generally being a rubbish weapon, but then I was a machinegunner - if it isn't belt fed, it's not worth shit!

:D

[StainlessSteelCynic]

The problem I have with the Steyr ACR is the ammunition.
Flechettes are fantastic against personnel when you launch a few hundred of them at once.
As a single projectile, they are a complete waste of time and money. It was another example of how sometimes theory is all well and good in the laboratory but absolutely wrong in practice.
A single, tiny, very high speed projectile is almost certain to overpenetrate and cause minimal damage. Despite all the ideas both theoretical and practical about hydrostatic shock, a single flechette simply does not cause enough damage and at the end of the day, it's blood loss and physical damage to body systems that causes incapacitation or death.
The odds that the flechette would bend into the required fish hook shape and supposedly cause massive trauma are so small as to make it better sense to throw the ACR at the enemy than shoot them with it. That's assuming the flechette didn't actually get stuck in a bone with that sharply pointed nose it sported.
They should have chambered the ACR for 5.56mm, at least then you could still shoot at and kill the enemy with it.

[Tegyrius]

I command this thread to arise from the grave!

Ahem.

The Forgotten Weapons blog has an interesting article on the flechette ammo and associated magazines for the 1964 SPIW program (http://www.forgottenweapons.com/1964-spiw-60-round-magazine/). Gonna need some new mag pouches for that one...

- C.

[bobcat]

They should have chambered the ACR for 5.56mm, at least then you could still shoot at and kill the enemy with it.
its called an AUG

[StainlessSteelCynic]

its called an AUG

I LOL'ed :D

[pmulcahy11b]

its called an AUG

What's worse is that there is a Steyr ACR -- the one they entered in the US Army's ACR competition in the 90s.

[Sith]

Seemed like a good spot to drop this.

US Army video on the ACR. A little over 15 minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdW1cxXiQBU

[Targan]

I'm an unabashed caseless round fan. I almost feel sorry for the various NATO militaries. "Bullpup? Caseless? Aaarrrrgh!" The tech works, it works really well. It's just too radical for men who have spent their entire careers with rifles that waste a third of their length with dead weight buttstocks and eject nice, shiny, now basically redundant brass cases.

[mpipes]

There were thee problems have heard about caseless ammo.
1) Turns out the ejected brass cartridge takes a lot of heat with it. Weapons without the cooling effect of an ejected metal cartridge heat faster. The chamber will heat to a much higher temp for a similar number of rounds fired.
2) Related to 1), because the chamber on a caseless weapon gets a lot hotter, there is an increased danger of "cookoff." Cookoff is when a chambered round fires off due to the heated chamber and barrel.
3) Moisture. While the rounds themselves seemed to hold up to prolonged exposure to water, moisture still apparently got inside the ammo. While the ammo still went "bang" it caused such variation in the generated chamber pressures as to cause a real concern as to whether a bullet could fail to clear the barrel. If you fire a gun with a bullet lodged inside because of a low powder charge or misfire, it is going to ruin your whole day. Just as disquieting, if your chamber pressure varies, so will velocity and ballistic, so if you tried to fire off a magazine of "wet" caseless rounds, none would hit the point of aim and could send bullets flying off rather erratically.

I don't know if all the problems were solved in either the ACR or the G11, but I've heard the Germans were still a bit leery of cookoff and certain firing restrictions were in play for the G11.

Targan. please weigh in. You may have heard something different.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

All these issues were resolved with the ammunition and the firing mechanism used by the final versions of the G11 although with other caseless designs, who knows.
For example, the G11 ammo was coated in a varnish to prevent moisture damage.

Caseless ammo is still very much alive and in use with a small section of the civilian shooting crowd.
The Austrian gunmaker Voere has a caseless ammo hunting rifle, the VEC-91.
http://www.voere.com/en/historie/vec-91.html

The LSAT research programme is looking into plastic cased and caseless ammunition to help reduce the weight of gear carried by future US soldiers.
http://world.guns.ru/machine/usa/lsat-e.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweight_Small_Arms_Technologies


There were thee problems have heard about caseless ammo.
1) Turns out the ejected brass cartridge takes a lot of heat with it. Weapons without the cooling effect of an ejected metal cartridge heat faster. The chamber will heat to a much higher temp for a similar number of rounds fired.
2) Related to 1), because the chamber on a caseless weapon gets a lot hotter, there is an increased danger of "cookoff." Cookoff is when a chambered round fires off due to the heated chamber and barrel.
3) Moisture. While the rounds themselves seemed to hold up to prolonged exposure to water, moisture still apparently got inside the ammo. While the ammo still went "bang" it caused such variation in the generated chamber pressures as to cause a real concern as to whether a bullet could fail to clear the barrel. If you fire a gun with a bullet lodged inside because of a low powder charge or misfire, it is going to ruin your whole day. Just as disquieting, if your chamber pressure varies, so will velocity and ballistic, so if you tried to fire off a magazine of "wet" caseless rounds, none would hit the point of aim and could send bullets flying off rather erratically.

I don't know if all the problems were solved in either the ACR or the G11, but I've heard the Germans were still a bit leery of cookoff and certain firing restrictions were in play for the G11.

Targan. please weigh in. You may have heard something different.