"The Army May Have Found Its Next Rifle In A Colorado Garage "

I am thinking again about another high-end rifle, this time a 7.62x51 AR-10 type rifle...SCAR17S, PWS MK216, SIG716, etc... Anyway, I was cruising around the ether on this cold, wet winter's day, drooling over rifles and came across this article...quite interesting. Note the article is dated 1 Oct 2018 so quite recent... I think new type of military ammunition is not that far in the future as recently read about a German firm test ammo with plastic casings which would allow troopers to carry 3X-5X more ammo at the same weight. But, this guy really might be on to something and thinking way outside the box... Looks pretty strange, right? Wait until you read about it...
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The Army adopted its battle rifle in 1963 and has spent 55 years looking for a replacement for the M-16 and its variants.

They might have found it in Martin Grier’s Colorado Springs garage. Grier, a self-described inventor who has worked at a local bed and breakfast, built the new “ribbon gun” with a hobbyist’s tools. It looks like a space-age toy drawn by a fifth-grader.

But goofy origins and cartoon-looks aside, this could be the gun of the future. The Army is studying Grier’s gun and has ordered a military-grade prototype.

The specifications are incredible, four 6 mm barrels cut side by side within one steel block. New ammunition blocks fired by electromagnetic actuators that could theoretically give the weapon a firing rate of 250 rounds per second.

And then there’s the feature no soldier would turn down. “It’s called a power shot,” Grier said.

That’s the shotgun feature of this sniper-shot, machine-assault gun that can send four bullets simultaneously whizzing toward an enemy at more than 2,500 mph.

It isn’t science fiction. He’s built the gun and patented the technology behind it. Now his garage-based company, FD munitions, is hoping the Army will buy it.

“A multibore firearm, with several bores within a single barrel, could potentially exhibit many of the advantages of a multibarrel design, while reducing the size, weight and complexity disadvantages,” Grier wrote in his 2016 patent application.

He got the idea in the 1990s after a day of shooting a .22-caliber rifle with his kids.

Modern weapons aren’t that far removed from the ones used by George Washington’s army, Grier says. They use a mechanical firing mechanism that’s prone to failure. And from muskets to the AK-47, they fire one bullet at a time.

“What if a rifle could fire more than one bullet at a time and be tied to the tools of the electronic age?” he wondered.

His first invention changed the ammunition. Rather than a single shell casing, his bullets are encapsulated in blocks.

In a block with four rounds, each round is aligned with a barrel. Grier prefers to call them “bores,” because all of the barrels are in a single piece of metal.

The second invention is behind the bullet. In other rifles, the trigger is connected to a mechanical trigger pin, which fires the gunpowder and sends the bullet flying.

In his weapon, the trigger is an electronic switch that sends a signal to an electromagnetic actuator behind the block of bullets. The four bullets in the block of rounds each has its actuator. That means you fire the rounds individually or simultaneously.

Selecting the “power shot” option fires all four bullets at once.
Getting this to work requires a new kind of machining to get the four rifle bores lined up. In a traditional weapon, this is accomplished with technology that would be familiar to 19th-century blacksmiths — a drill.

With Grier’s gun, the barrels are cut by electricity that runs between a pair of electrodes through a thin wire. The high-tech method offers an incredible degree of precision thanks to computer control.

The first rifle, which weighs about 6½ pounds, slightly less than the M-16, hasn’t been cheap. Grier has poured more than $500,000 of his savings and investment by others into the working prototype.

But by having a functioning weapon, he has drawn a lot of attention.

Grier has been asked to create a prototype to Army specifications for testing. The Army will run the rifle through its paces to determine if his idea is worthy of the battlefield.

Grier said he finds motivation for the weapon in every attack on U.S. troops overseas. While the U.S. owns the skies and has satellites and missiles that are beyond compare, American troops have few advantages in a stand-up rifle fight.

“Our guys have the same junk weapons as our adversaries,” he said.

But Grier’s ribbon gun, which can work even if one of the four barrels fails, will change that, he said.

“I want to give them a Clint Eastwood kind of edge.”

Getting the weapon in the hands of troops could take years. The Army’s requirements are backed by grueling tests.

The last rifle that was seen as a possible replacement for the M-16 family of guns was tested for six years before the program was canceled in 2008.

The Army found that the XM-8, despite its high-tech looks, offered few advantages over the weapons troops have carried since Vietnam.

Grier is convinced that his weapon is so revolutionary that it will overcome Army foot-dragging.

“This is the future,” he said.

And he’s not apologizing for the rifle’s humble origins in a Colorado Springs garage.

“All the best stuff comes out of somebody’s garage,” he said.

The Army May Have Found Its Next Rifle In A Colorado Garage

 

Interesting, but not sure I want to rely on electronics for a battle rifle to operate.

 

Interesting . I remember , I think in the 90s , they were talking about making the M16 round with a square kevlar or carbon fiber casing , so they would be able to carry more ammo .
I'd like to see that weapon operate .

 

There is nothing quite like seeing flintlock era tech on the modern battlefield.

 

To be honest, that was my first thought also (I do believe we Engineers/Techs are all pessimists though LOL!). Obviously, mini-guns and many other weapons (crew served, ship board, aircraft, etc.) used electronics so maybe it is time...mechanical guns can jam, foul, break, etc., fail also so.... and to give the grunts a true tech leap forward it will take thinking out of the box. Dunno but it is worth investigating because in all the sectors of the battlefield we excel to the point there really isn't much of a fair fight, and besides, who wants to fight fair, right?

 

Gonna be one hell of a chain fire.

 

Forget Army foot dragging, worry about Beltway Bandit meddling.

That revolving door Army >high paid BB position still exists despite many laws forbidding it...

The M-4 is asolid weapons system - this thing is going to have to beat it by a wide margin to even be considered. I'm willing to bet the prototype was ordered at the insistence of a CONgress critter....

 

This perhaps?
The Dardick tround, or simply tround (triangular round), is a unique firearms cartridge developed by inventor David Dardick for use in his open-chamber firearms. Named for its convex triangular shape, the tround allowed the firearm's chamber to be open on one side, removing the requirement for reciprocating motion when chambering and ejecting a cartridge.

Dardick's patent 2,865,126, issued in late 1958, is for a new and improved cartridge for the open-chamber gun. Unlike the previous open-chamber cartridge, this version shows the symmetrical tround shape, which would facilitate feeding from a magazine, since the trounds can enter the split in any orientation and end up seating correctly. This reduced the complexity and cost of the open-chamber firearm design, making it feasible for commercial production. The trounds were constructed of either high-strength plastic or aluminum to provide strength.[1] While trounds were only commercially available as cartridges suitable for handguns, prototype military trounds were made in larger calibers.

 

Then again - there is this - telescoped rounds



Defense contractor Textron just unveiled a new rifle at the Modern Day Marine conference. Designed to use so-called "telescoped" ammunition, the new rifle promises a harder-hitting, lighter bullet for America's ground troops to fire. Whether the U.S. military is ready to embrace all the change a new rifle and ammunition would bring remains to be seen.

Traditional bullet cartridges have a bullet seated roughly halfway inside a brass shell casing, with gunpowder inside the casing. By contrast, the new rifle uses a 6.5-millimeter polymer-cased telescoped bullet. Telescoped rounds feature a bullet completely encased in a polymer shell, like a shotgun, with gunpowder surrounding the bullet in the shell.

(New Experimental Army Rifle Uses "Telescoped" Ammunition)

 

HHMMM.

 

This is more like the article I read about . It was an encased round , but oddly, I remember it as being square . If I remember right , it was still a 5.56 round , and there was to be some kind of retrofitting for the round to be used in the M16 . But I never heard anything else about it .
That " Tround" is an interesting concept as well . I can see it working , but I never figured out how they were going to make that square round work .

 

I think all this better mousetrap stuff will come to a screeching halt when some old Marine Gunner asks my favorite question. "What happens when the batteries go dead?"

I only ever got one honest answer from a communications officer. "Absolutely nothing."

 

How many scary gun names can we cram together here...?
( From the Article , not Bandit99 )

I am all for out of the box thinking....but the Infantryman in me , wants something simple and that works every time...If it was me making the call on this "rifle" , I'd say no.
Andy

 

Maybe the Space Force could use it, but it has a long way to go for use on the planetary surface. It has to not only be emp proofed, but most importantly "Joe" proof. Soldiers will beat the hell out of equipment, and combat operations destroy equipment faster than a bored private.