Caseless Ammunition

[kato13]

Ed the Coastie 09-18-2005, 09:28 AM According to a couple of mentions I read somewhere, caseless ammunition is generally considered to be beyond the capabilities of most post-T2K societies. However, I'm thinking of establishing a small enclave somewhere that has the ability to create it in small lots. What I don't know is what exactly goes into caseless ammunition, and what is involved in its manufacture.


Any ideas?

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pmulcahy 09-18-2005, 04:17 PM Bear in mind I may be wrong, but I believe that by composition, caseless ammunition propellant is not much different than standard propellant. The difference is in the packaging and compressing of the propellant -- and the proper compression and still making the ammunition work right is what makes caseless ammunition manufacture so damn difficult. In composition, the propellant may not be greatly different, but in form, it is VERY different. In addition, the "casing" is basically a combustible synthetic material -- something else that would be difficult to manufacture post-Twilight War. Third, the primer is also made of combustible material, and that's something else that would be difficult to manufacture without modern methods. Fourth, you have to embed the bullet and primer in the block of propellant, which is more difficult than it sounds.


My recommendation to you is that if you have such a facility in your game, make it still run by either HK, or by Alliant or AAI in the US (both of which have done a lot of experimentation with caseless ammunition). There was also an Italian submachinegun from the 1980s which used semi-caseless ammunition (the primer was within a copper cup, which was in a small brass ring), but I don't know who made the ammunition for it.

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Ed the Coastie 09-18-2005, 10:17 PM That answers my question. I was hoping that I could justify a small cottage industry somewhere that was capable of manufacturing caseless ammo in small lots...but your factory idea works too. I just need to tweak it a bit.


Thanks a lot.

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ReHerakhte 09-19-2005, 03:52 AM Just to add to Paul's comments, a lot of early work for caseless ammo dealt with such mundane aspects as whether to use a combustible case or whether to just glue the propellent material together. Both concepts have their strengths and weaknesses.


When the West Germans originally proposed the G11 concept, it was actually for a "Salvo Gun", i.e. an infantry rifle that would fire enough rounds in one burst to increase the chances of scoring a hit without causing major penalties to recoil etc. It didn't strictly need to be caseless. Both Mauser and Heckler & Koch did work on this with it seems, Mauser the first to produce caseless ammo. In their submission for the G11, the caseless ammo simply used a glue of some sort to bind the propellent together and the projectile and primer were pressed into the propellent/glue mix while it was still "wet in the mould". The primer was sucked out the barrel in the wake of the projectile by vacuum force as the propellent gases left the barrel IIRC.


Very little information is now available about Mauser's G11 submission because, obviously, they lost the competition, so much so that even though Mauser's submission appeared as a working prototype before H&K's, most firearms journalists/writers give H&K all the credit for the G11 concept.


And while H&K's G11 uses a completely combustible round (also with the primer blown out the barrel IIRC), they used a modified rocket fuel for the propellent simply because the salvo-fire concept required a propellent that wouldn't suffer the "cook off" effect when the weapon had been firing for extended periods. This is expensive to manufacture even with all the right equipment from what I understand!


It also pays to keep in mind that some armoured vehicle guns use combustible cases or semi-cased ammunition (e.g., the British 120mm gun on the Challenger series MBTs) and some engineering tech-head might be able to scale down that knowledge to smallarms cartridges.


And just as importantly, there are alternate methods to ignition other than the standard "crush" primer, e.g. electrical ignition. This is used in a modern civilian rifle by Voere, an Austrian company who have been making firearms since 1951. Their VEC-91 (Voere Electronic Caseless of 1991) rifle fires a 5.7 x 26mm Caseless round of pressed powder with the primer and bullet pressed into the powder. Officially, the ammo is called the 5.7 x 26 UCC, UCC stands for Usel Caseless Cartridge, named after the Austrian inventor Hubert Usel.


Anyways... enough of the sales pitch, the rifle uses a ceramic pin that is electrically charged by two 15 Volt batteries running through a condenser to produce 18Volts-500mA at the sharp end.

The primer is non-metalic and aside from the projectile, everything is burnt up upon ignition and converted to propellent gases. And there were sales of the rifle in the US by the mid-1990s.


One last point to make though (WARNING, it's a bit off a rant!)...

Even though many sources claim it is simply too expensive to change over from cased cartridges to caseless cartridges because there is still too much cased ammo around etc. and thus H&K's G11 never got beyond (possibly) a few thousand being delivered to the West German army because making a brand new rifle design for a brand new cartridge design is too expensive blah blah blah, it misses two important though completely related points.


1. If it was too expensive to change calibres, weapons, cases etc., then we would still be using bolt-action/lever-action, black powder weapons from the 1800s and there never would have been the great debate about the M16 and its "non-military varmint cartridge" replacing the tried-and-true, heavy-hitting 7.62mm M14 rifle. Well, really, the USA would probably still be using .30-06 and the UK .303 and the Germans 7.92mm if it was all too expensive to change calibres etc. if they didn't want to stick with blackpowder!!!

and 2. The G11 concept was developed during the mid-1970s and brought to proof of concept by around 1980. The only reason it was not adopted wholesale by the West Germans (who held off changing over their 7.62mm G3's to a 5.56mm rifle specifically because they thought they would be getting the G11), was because the end of the Cold War was happening. No Cold War, no need for a new weapon, the money was more urgently required for unification of the two Germanys.


Why did the world change from blackpowder? Because it had massive tactical disadvantages. Why did the world change from large calibre rifles to smaller calibre rifles? Because the hype suggested that the higher velocity smaller calibres would be just as lethal. Why did the West Germans shun the 5.56mm in favour of a 4.7mm Caseless rifle? because they believed that the new rifle would give them advantages to help counter the Soviets massive numerical superiority.

As always, a new weapon for a country has less to do with cost of the weapon than the national desires of the user country, hence the Russians pursuing a space programme or the US pushing ahead with the B2 bomber even though both were horrendously expensive and not strictly needed given the state of affairs in the world.


Now if you are using Version 1 timeline, then there is still every reason for the West Germans to want the G11 and to produce enough to re-equip their entire military if they could. And you would definately have seen the light machinegun version in service as well and possibly the caseless pistol.

You could probably argue that the Version 2 timeline still has enough Cold War angst for the Germans to continue production of the G11 as well but the Version 2.2 timeline might not be so good for that.


But enough ranting from me, hope this gives you some more food for thought Ed!


Cheers,

Kevin

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thefusilier 09-19-2005, 05:16 AM In reality were any G11s issue in any number at all to the West German (or unified German) army?


And secondly, not trying to go off topic but about the MBT round being mentioned. Would MBT or artillery rounds be difficult to manufacture in the Twilight world?

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ReHerakhte 09-19-2005, 08:05 AM Most of the references I have read state that some G11's were delivered to West German special forces for field trials although it never states just how many. A few other sources quote a figure of approximately 1000 rifles being acquired before the project was cancelled so as to divert funds to the unification process.


As to whether they would bother to keep them on strength as combat weapons, I think it is unlikely as the purchase of the differing versions of the G36 and the new 4.6mm MP7 PDW and associated 4.6mm UCP pistol seem to be fulfilling any needs the German military has.


Cheers,

Kevin

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pmulcahy 09-22-2005, 03:09 AM Another thing I remember about the early development of the G-11 (and specifically, the 4.7mm caseless round), was cookoff. They were pretty common; the propellant apparently burned hotter than standard propellant, and without the case to dissipate and insulate against some of the heat, the G-11 was quite prone to cookoffs. It took several months of research for Heckler & Koch to lick that problem.

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dawg180 10-02-2005, 01:02 AM I would say if you are following the V1 timeline and Germany is equipped with the G11 that there would be someoone making ammo for the rifles, even if the technical aspects were more difficult. If an entire nation was armed with the rifle there must be several plants that had been making ammunition and the technology would have been more mainstream than experimental. Also, if there are tens of thousands of these rifles needing ammunition someone, somehwere is going to find a way to make new ammunitiion- the demand woudl be so great that it would be profitable to overcome the obvious difficulties.


Heck, here is an adventure idea: have the characters hired by the local german magistrate to try and track down employees and tech people who worked at a caseless ammo plant. The magistrate has a stockpile of 1,200 brand spanking new G11's in the original packaging but only a few hundred rounds for them. If they can find a way to produce ammo...

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TR 10-07-2005, 08:51 AM I would imagine though if the nukes fell those units assigned the G-11's would have ditched them at someon point... as the lack of ammunition would be accute. By 1997 Heckler & Koch had the G-41 and G-36 series of rifles available so one wonders even in the V 1.0 rules if Germany would have fielded the G-11 in large numbers. Certainly after the nukes fell and ammunition in the pipeline for the weapon dried up 5.56 NATO and 7.62 NATO rifles would seem the more logical choice... (heck even a 22 would be better than a G-11 you only have 10 rounds for).


As far as making caseless ammunition in general, I honestly think in order to do this you would need the following criteria, I'll leave it up to the reader to decide how many places could do this.


1.) The community, city, etc would need to be in a military controlled region or strong civilian government region with a protective force in place to safeguard the local population.

2.) The community would need access to machine shops, natural resources in the vicinity for making as much of the ammunition process as humanly possibile. Yes trade is always viable but trade routes always can be ambushed or affected by weather and illness... you need as much of the process in house as possibile.

3.) The community needs to have a organized heiarchy of power for civilian leadership and organized work centers/projects for the civlian population, however the greater emphasis would always go to food/water/medical so ammunition production would be to a smaller group in general.

4.) The community needs to have technicial experts familiar with the process of manufacture of caseless ammunition. It's not enough to have some reloader who's been making their own 30-06 Springfield loads for 20 years to be in charge... you need technicial experts who can oversee the process from beginning, middle to end with quality control processes all the way to ensure the quality of ammunition is 100%.

5.) The community will need electricity. That simple, and that hard. Their going to need power in order to have the production facility working for all their tools and not to mention have shifts working round the clock.


Just my two cents for what it's worth. Is it possibile to produce caseless ammo in Twilight, yes anything is possibile if backed sufficiently with the proper resources and personnel... but assembling this all in one spot is another story when resources for an entire nation, much less one community are spread thin.

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thefusilier 10-07-2005, 08:57 AM TR do you think that would apply for MBT and arty rounds as well. Reason being is I am running a campaign that begins in the gov't controlled south of England and I want to know what kind of heavy ammo can be produced there (based on the Survivors Guide background). Or maybe TiggerCCW might know some more about that area's potential industry (being from the UK and all).


Sorry if this is offtopic, but the caseless ammunition bit got me thinking bigger.

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TR 10-07-2005, 10:29 AM That model could be used for production of anything... but production times on the larger stuff such as Artillery shells, MBT rounds, etc would be longer as the whole process would be much more labor intensive in Twilight and consume more resources than pre-war (obviously)... almost to the point where I would suspect you would want to "truck in" workers to work at the plant, rotating shifts for 24 hour a day operations to make the heavier ordnance to have any chance of turning out any quantitiy of rounds on a routine basis.

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