Thread 64136651

I have a bunch of retarded questions for you guys.
Why did the bundeswehr make the G3 instead of just using the FAL?
What did Australians in Vietnam think of the M16 in comparison to the FAL?
What about the L2A1 in comparison to the M60?
What is the ideal clothing material and fit for soldiers operating in humid environments?
Why did Rhodesians wear short shorts in a sunny environment, wouldn't that lead to lots of sunburns and exposure?
How come no one else seems to have done the same?
Is 458 socom actually useful for anything or is it entirely a range toy?
Are desert eagles unreliable?
Why have bullets been shrinking in size since the 1700s?
Does a bigger bullet automatically mean more recoil?
Is a bigger bullet pointless if it's not going faster?
Are belt-fed straightwall cartridges possible?
Would larger caliber handguns(and guns in general I guess) be more common if guns over .50 caliber weren't considered destructive devices?
Is the US army's adoption of the 6.8mm round and the experiments with the .338 machine gun an indication of a return to battle rifles and potentially up-scaling the caliber of infantry weapons in general?
Do they think it's workable because so many zoom-zooms are giants that are on SARMs these days?
I googled a lot of this stuff but the only answers that came up for the most part were AI overviews and reddit threads which I don't really want to skim through, plus the people here seemed pretty knowledgeable last time I visited.
I think there's more question I've gotta ask but I don't know what they are right now.

Pls excuse my ignorance and stupidity I'm not really a gun guy(I would like to learn though) and all my knowledge of military history is surface level stuff from skimming the internet that I'm sure is full of misconceptions.

>>64136651 (OP)
I copy and pasted your post into chatgpt and asked to respond like Ian McCollum, breddy good.

>>64136651 (OP)
>Why did the bundeswehr make the G3 instead of just using the FAL?
I think that one was from the Belgians still being pissy about WW2 so they had to make their own

>>64136651 (OP)
>Why did Rhodesians wear short shorts in a sunny environment, wouldn't that lead to lots of sunburns and exposure?
Ask /fa/.

>>64136651 (OP)
>s 458 socom actually useful for anything or is it entirely a range toy?
It's perfectly suitable for defense and hunting but it's not like it does any of those things better than any other round. I can't think of any practical application it's good for.

>Are desert eagles unreliable?
The ones in revolver calibers are very sensitive to ammo choice.

>Why have bullets been shrinking in size since the 1700s?
smokeless powder was invented. high velocity small bullet beats slower big bullet for most things.
>Does a bigger bullet automatically mean more recoil?
It's the dominant term in the recoil equation.
>Is a bigger bullet pointless if it's not going faster?
No, bigger is better all else being equal. The usual niche where you see this is when the goal is to shoot subsonic. Look up the specs on .510 whisper, for example. A bigger bullet also means more room for things like explosive and fuses.
>Are belt-fed straightwall cartridges possible?
Of course.
>Would larger caliber handguns(and guns in general I guess) be more common if guns over .50 caliber weren't considered destructive devices?
Handguns? Yes, absolutely. But not for practical value, more for advertising bragging rights. Gun companies were leap-frogging each other for a long time making the "most powerful handgun round". Little-known wildcat rounds aside you had stuff like the .44 magnum, then .454 Casull became a factory load, then .480 Ruger, then .500 S&W, etc. But .500 S&W hits that .500 DD limit. You bet if the limit didn't exist someone would make larger. But I don't think they'd ever be super popular outside of meme value because at that point they don't have any real practical uses. Guns like that are very large and totally impractical to carry.
For rifles? Probably not so much. Sporting exemptions exist for several cartridges over .50 cal, people still make rifles in those calibers for dangerous game hunting and they are not DD's, yet they are still very niche.

>>64137147
Just to be more clear, these two are really the same question, and you can answer them with math.
>Why have bullets been shrinking in size since the 1700s?
>Does a bigger bullet automatically mean more recoil?
Look up the equations for the energy of a bullet and recoil. If you double the mass of a bullet or you double the velocity the effect on the recoil is the same. However, in the latter case the energy is quadrupled, So, the lighter you can make the bullet then the better ratio of energy:recoil you have.
There are other benefits too: smaller lighter bullets mean you can carry more of them in the same space/weight. Because the recoil forces are lower the gun doesn't have to be as heavy to be comfortable to shoot. Higher velocity penetrates better, a cartridge with a flatter trajectory has a longer point-blank zero.

>>64136651 (OP)
>Why did the bundeswehr make the G3 instead of just using the FAL?
The Belgians were feeling a spot of bother after WW2 and wouldn't sell them a production license.
>What about the L2A1 in comparison to the M60?
The only universal infantry rifle concept that got its light machine gun config actually adopted and used was the AUG. Every nation that tried to use theirs in anger quickly dropped them.
>Why have bullets been shrinking in size since the 1700s?
Because momentum is the product of the mass and velocity of an object, meaning you can push a smaller projectile faster for less recoil, which also results in a very flat trajectory. That makes hitting people in the chest easier.
>Does a bigger bullet automatically mean more recoil?
Yes, if you push it at the same speed as a smaller bullet, the counter force of a heavier projectile will be larger. Actual felt recoil depends on other factors though, such as the mass of the platform, the speed at which your power combusts, the mass of your locking mechanism and its length of travel, the overall geometry of the gun ect.
>Is the US army's adoption of the 6.8mm round and the experiments with the .338 machine gun an indication of a return to battle rifles and potentially up-scaling the caliber of infantry weapons in general?
It seems like a brain fart triggered by Afghanistan. Kinda like how the Stryker was a brain fart triggered by Somalia. The general trend still points towards smaller, faster bullets, unless they're explicitly meant to be fired through sound suppressors.

>>64137147
>The ones in revolver calibers are very sensitive to ammo choice.

If you mean by not sensitive at all, at least in .357, .44 mag, and .50AE as long as it’s not a wadcutter or soft lead it’ll function not properly, the question is how clean is the gun, because that effects reliability more than anything. Usually the trigger bar is first to gum up.

>>64137919
50AE is very reliable, but the .357's and .44's are ammo dependent. It's not the gun, it's the fact that revolver ammo is not designed to cycle gas-operated semis, therefore it's hit-or-miss if a particular load has the right pressure curve to cycle the gun. It's not a defect of the Deagle, the gun is fine, the problem is that some ammo won't cycle it properly. The manual goes into detail about this.

>>64137941
.357 and .44 mag have some pretty big variance of loadings

>>64136651 (OP)
>G3 v FAL
Germany did adopt the FAL but couldn't get a TDP/license to produce it domestically because FN was still holding grudges about being occupied during WW2. The G3 was an alternative, although it ended up being a pretty good one in the end.
>FAL vs M16
The M16 was a lot better for long range patrol due to lighter weight, especially in terms of ammunition. They did trust their FALs more due to better penetration, and it was more of a tested/proven design at the time. Mostly they used it because that is what they were issued.
Contrary to popular belief, it isn't COD where you can just pick a load out of any weapon that may have plausibly existed at the time.
>L2A1
Again, issued vs available. M60 is a belt fed GPMG, L2 is a mag fed LMG. The L2 would have been much lighter and it shares magazines with the riflemen, whereas the M60 would have a lot more sustainable firepower. It ends up being situational.
>Clothing
Vietnam saw a massive transition towards synthetic materials because cotton would rot away. Cotton/nylon blend became the standard for US BDUs, with some like tiger stripe going to polyester. Most other military forces have gone to either full polyester or polyester blend and never looked back.

In either case, this only somewhat extended the service life of clothing. In actual day in/out use even the best uniforms possible get tattered quickly and have to be replaced on a regular basis.
>Short shorts
Mobility and shedding heat. Trade off is exposure to thorny plants.
Rhodesians were famous for the shorts but that was mostly the scouts and paratroopers, their regular soldiers typically wore pants.
>458
Mostly a novelty, but it does carry a fuck ton of bullet mass and is subsonic, so it can work well with a suppressor. Theoretically it could be useful for either roadblocks or silent sniping at close range, but I don't know if anyone has ever used a rifle in that caliber for either application.

>>64138169
>Theoretically it could be useful for either roadblocks or silent sniping at close range,
The problem is that there are other rounds which can do all of these things much better, with fewer problems. .458 is fine when shooting suppressed, but the AR-15 bolt head isn't really big enough to handle that cartridge when loaded to a reasonable spec. Typical supersonic loads are capped around 30,000 psi because much more than that makes the bolt head shit the bed in short order. They can be loaded "engine stopping hot" but only in something like the CMMG Anvil or whatever it is they call it now, which uses an AR-10 size bolt. But if we're talking an AR-10 size weapon then you could skip .458 Socom entirely and get something significantly hotter. It could be a short-range subsonic sniper cartridge but something like .510 whisper would mog it for that application.

>>64138169
>They did trust their FALs more due to better penetration, and it was more of a tested/proven design at the time. Mostly they used it because that is what they were issued.
The US Americans praised their M14s as a defoliant. A full auto carbine variant was very handy at cutting down trees in a LZ, and the additional penetration vs trees was appreciated in counter-sniping, which was mostly vs treetop positions.
>Contrary to popular belief, it isn't COD where you can just pick a load out of any weapon that may have plausibly existed at the time.
Their specops did go fully COD though, putting grenade launchers on Sterling submachine guns and other fun stuff.

>>64136651 (OP)
>Desert Eagle reliability
They are picky with magazines and ammunition, plus they do get dirty faster than most pistols so they do require more attention. They also have to be held properly.
Compared to something like a Glock, even the best Desert Eagle is unreliable, but if properly maintained and used with appropriate ammunition they can be reliable. I have one in .44 that is actually pretty forgiving with ammunition, but only seems to work well with one magazine.
This also varies depending on what version and caliber you are talking about. Mine is pretty old (MK VII) which is both a good and bad thing.
>Why are bullets getting smaller
Velocity, which is the bigger factor in terms of power. Old school calibers aren't as fast, so they had to make up the difference with mass. Then we had an era where they were fast and still had pretty good mass (like WW1/2 calibers such as 30.06 or 8mm Mauser), but impractical in a shoulder fired automatic weapon. Modern doctrine is fast, but small.
>Bigger bullet is more recoil.
Not always, but basically yes. 45 is actually not too bad because it is low velocity so it is more of a push, but fired out of a lightweight pistol still feels less pleasant than 9mm for instance.
>Belt fed straight wall.
It has been done. Typically this requires a rimmed cartridge since straight walled cartridges don't extract as well as tapered ones, but that is doable.
>Over .5" handgun cartridges
Not really. That's going to have limited magazine capacity, a chunky gun and unpleasant recoil. Introducing new calibers is also difficult since there is no economies of scale like well established calibers.
>338 military experiments
They are looking at longer range engagements and the ability to penetrate ceramic armor because Russia/China theoretically use it. It's going nowhere because armor is turning out to be less of an issue, and there are better solutions for long range fighting than making everyone carry a battle rifle.

>>64136651 (OP)
>Zoomers being big
I doubt that, but even if true the ability to carry a heavier caliber doesn't make it practical. It is always going to come at the cost of carrying something else, or being able to move faster/farther with less overall.

I think I covered everything. There's also QTTDOT threads you can lurk and ask questions in.
>>64138192
Yeah there's nothing I can really picture 458 doing that can't be done with a 308 or a .300 BLK which door kickers are more likely to have on hand to begin with.
>>64138262
I guess they did have more of a free hand if they were SF/LRRP. Vietnam was also a completely disorganized shit show where soldiers tended to do all sorts of things they technically weren't supposed to.

Did Aussies have regular access to M16s or XM16s? I'm sure they did on at least some one-off incidental basis, but did they have them in their formal supply chain? That I genuinely don't know.

>>64138169
>Contrary to popular belief, it isn't COD where you can just pick a load out of any weapon that may have plausibly existed at the time.
MACV-SOG literally.

Another big question came to mind, if you were fighting terminators/humanoid robots, what kind of small arms would you like to use?
Assuming you just pull out your own infantry to send other robots against them, what would you arm those robots with?
Is there any weaponry that seems totally impractical now that would be totally viable for posthuman cyborgs and vatgrown supersoldiers? Or would it pretty much be the same thing either way, because such things don't really change the basics all that much? Are both of those things unlikely to happen in favor of just making a big drone swarm? What about putting a brain inside of a tank?
I understand that people say small arms are never the big killers in a real conventional war, but to what degree do they have an effect on the outcome of a war?
I imagine its at least a little or we'd be using muskets still.
Why aren't there sabot rounds for small arms? If there are, why are they so uncommon?
Did the marines replace their saws with the M27 just so they could sneak in a new AR for themselves? Or do they really believe in magazine fed squad support weapons being better than LMGs?
Is there logic in doing that and just using GPMGs if you need more firepower?

>>64139533
>Why aren't there sabot rounds for small arms?
They exist, the military had the SLAP program for example.
Picrel was a failed product on the commercial market from some years ago. It wasn't very accurate, probably because a standard rifle had the wrong twist rate for a radically different size projectile form normal. It was also an answer to a question that nobody really asked. What would the point of a sabot round be for the average person? This sounds like a solution looking for a problem, not the other way around.

>>64139533
>if you were fighting terminators/humanoid robots, what kind of small arms would you like to use?
You're going to have to define the "robots" well if you want a real answer to that. If we're talking Terminators the movies already make clear that they can just shrug off most guns. Hell the T-1000 even survived a hit from a 40mm grenade. Perhaps something like a .50 BMG or a dangerous game rifle would be a threat. If not one might have to step up to something like a 20mm, depending on how fancy these robots are that might not be enough. Another option might be to try and snipe weak spots the same way a poacher might try and brain a deer with a .22. Again, that might or might not work depending on the exact design of the robots.

At least in the near future I think we might see some specialized anti-robot or anti-drone weapons, I'd imagine nets being a major threat to a robot.

But really, I think the bigger threat is non-humanoid robots. Being shaped like humans is good for scary movies but there's really little purpose for a pure combat machine to be shaped like that.

>>64139533
>Fighting robots.
Either some sort of shotgun projectile like a wax slug that breaks up into dust on impact so that it can find and exploit a weak spot or the highest velocity hardest AP possible.
>Supersoldiers
Weight is a factor. If it wasn't, something with either a belt feed or a generous box magazine firing explosive projectiles would be pretty impressive. Like an OICW but forget the 5.56mm assault rifle attached to it.
Stuff like this does exist, but never got adopted on a large scale.
>Sabots
There was some experimentation on this in the 50s-70s but the concept just doesn't scale down to small arms. Accuracy was a constant problem. Conventional rifle ammunition remained more practical.
>M27
They basically mimicked the RPK concept and doing it with the HK416 as a base allowed for somewhat better sustainable firepower. I suspect they were being cheeky and saw it as a way to sneak a 416 into service, but that is pure speculation and nobody can positively confirm that.
GPMGs are heavy, a belt fed SAW is slightly less heavy. Patrolling on foot, especially over serious distance with either one sucks. A beefed up AR is much lighter and you can share magazines with the rest of the team. If the concept sounds familiar with the FAL sharing magazines with L2s and L4 Brens or the M14/M14e2 then you aren't wrong.

>>64139551
Well I thought even sabots in small arms would have better armor penetration, is that untrue?
How important is the accuracy of a rifle meant for warfare over one meant for self-defense/hunting?
I heard that in most cases infantry weapons are meant for suppression and I think something about when the flechette rifle was being trialed during the 50s-70s, that automatic fire and high fire rate was at a point found to be more important in scoring a hit than singular, precise shots in those scenarios, is that true?
>>64139582
>>64139617
For an infantry robot, would it be better to make them with an arthropod kinda body?
What is the ideal shape for a machine like that?
Would a drone like the ones we have today, but with autonomy and arms to open doors be the peak of it?
What is the ideal combat machine shape for something meant to serve as infantry?
As I always heard infantry maintains its place on the battlefield despite being relatively easier to kill in comparison to things like tanks and planes cause you need someone to hold territory.

In the case of fighting robots, I'm assuming they would have vitals the same sort of way most machines do, in that case does trying to be precise make sense the same sort of way you'd try to disable a car by shooting out the engine block?
Can't you do that with any rifle caliber more powerful than an intermediate cartridge, or even an intermediate if uou have enough bullets?

Do beltfeds have other problematic considerations beyond weight?

>>64139669
You can get comparable penetration with conventional tungsten core AP without having the horrible accuracy that was achieved with flechettes or sabots. The concept is always being tinkered with, but so far it only works well enough to be worthwhile on fin stabilized tank projectiles.
Burst firing doesn't help much if the maximum effective range is too short to be acceptable.

It is hard to say what the optimal battle robot is. So far we're seeing swarms of cheap flying drones with explosives come out as the dominant option, but that could always change. If you think you have a winning idea, patent it and market it to Ukraine. They have plenty of foreign tax dollars to throw at anything that might work.

>>64139669
It is hard to predict what/where the vital components on a robot would be, or if the robot is even armored in the first place. Current meta is copter drones that aren't protected at all, just too far away to hit or FPV drones that are coming at you so you barely have half a second to react.

As far as belt fed guns, besides weight there is cost and complexity. More money invested, more stuff to go wrong in the field, and more time spent keeping them working. Some belt fed guns require more care than others (FN MAG stands out as being particularly resilient), but all of them are inherently more complicated. There are cases of maxim guns firing continuously for multiple days though (provided a constant addition of ammunition to the belt and water to the cooling jacket) so there's something that an assault rifle can't do.

>>64139669
>Well I thought even sabots in small arms would have better armor penetration, is that untrue?
There are some benefits to that, hence why I referred you to the SLAP program. Read the Wiki article on it and you'll learn what parts of it worked and which didn't.

>How important is the accuracy of a rifle meant for warfare over one meant for self-defense/hunting?
Not as important. But in that part of my statement I was explaining why it flopped on the commercial market. Read up on SLAP to learn about the military applications.

>I heard that in most cases infantry weapons.....is that true
Yes, true.

> I'm assuming they would have vitals the same sort of way most machines do
Yeah, but the question is just how "vital" is this target, and how might it be defeated? This is why I asked you to be specific about the kind of robot threats you expect to face. The T-800 was pretty much a tank except for the CPU in its skull, which was protected by a substantial thickness of fancypants future armor steel, which was also shaped in such a way as to make it hard to penetrate. Could you snipe a T-800 in the head with a .30 cal AP round? Probably not. With a .50 cal AP? Maybe, depending on just how fancy that future steel is. Modern computers are fucking small and future tech ones will be even smaller. That means they're pretty easy to armor, and also pretty easy to put multiple redundancies in any combat-bot. Pretend you're the engineer designing these things. If the CPU is tiny, are you going to put just one in there or are you going to include a backup...or perhaps several backups?

>>64139925
No reason to think in terms of human physiology. You can hide the CPU anywhere.

The really vulnerable point would be the battery pack, since nothing is going to work as well as lithium, and that's going to explode if hit. The battery would have to be pretty large and well protected, so it would have to be in center of mass. One troll move would be to hide a backup battery somewhere else so the robot can still function for a few minutes after the main battery goes up, so long as the fire doesn't immediately fry everything else.

>>64136651 (OP)
>Why did Rhodesians wear short shorts in a sunny environment, wouldn't that lead to lots of sunburns and exposure?
I think it was kind of an identity thing but Rhodesia/Zimbabwe has a fairly unique climate, kind of like a sweet spot for tactical shorts. Much of the country is on a plateau, so the temperatures are rather mild, but it can get very humid during the rainy season. You want to expose some skin to help evaporation to keep you cool. Then during other months it's temperate and pleasant. It's not a desert or steamy jungle environment. You wouldn't want to wear shorts in the jungle because that's full of hazards. In the desert, you cover up to protect yourself from dehydration.

>>64139971
Is the jungle really bad for shorts?
Are jeans good in them? I saw pictures of navy seals wearing them in vietnam, was that just to flex that the regs didn't apply to them?

>>64139970
>No reason to think in terms of human physiology.
Exactly. Only reason I was talking about the T-800 as an example was because anon specifically asked about Terminators. But yeah, hide redundant CPUs as best you can. There's also no need for just one battery either, there could be several, if one is damaged the rest could still work. Same idea has how a jet airliner can still fly just fine on one engine. I'd expect that any critical system in a combat robot would have multiple layers of redundancy.

>>64141816
There's also no need to be limited to human ideas of "death". Suppose we have some combat robot of whatever shape. One if its limbs takes a hit from a .50 and gets blown off. If we're thinking about a human soldier that leg is just useless meat now. But, in the case of our robot, that let might contain its own CPU and battery, and perhaps other things. Once it gets blown off the CPU detects this, and it now stops acting like a leg and now operates with alternate logic, acting autonomously. It can probably move on its own, if it has sensors on board it can still relay information back. If it has communications devices it can function as a comm relay. If it has weapons it might still be able to fire them. It could deliberately overload its own battery to act as an IED. A severed robot hand might very well start running around on the floor like Thing from the Addams family.

>>64140273
Nah, they did that because standard issue pants and pockets became water logged as fuck.

>>64140273
Jeans are terrible for humidity compared to other cloth.