Boarding gun

[Fritz_Brown]

I considered the mag on top of the barrel, Sigg (a la the G11). But, I figured it messed with the accessory rail, and made the thing too thick in the vertical dimension. It should hold a fifty rounds or so (caseless, remember), as is.

 

[Todg]

Originally posted by veltyen:
The 8 barrel thingie is a colt defender. The reference is http://www.guntech.com/hillberg/
What isn't mentioned on the page is a panic option of simeltaneously firing all remaining loaded barrels.

Not aware of any 'panic' option, and I have handled the weapon. I am also the Guntech.com web master, BTW.

The way the firing sequence works is that each chamber has its own firing ping, and the striker on the hammer rotates 1/8 of a turn each time the trigger is pulled. There is no way to fire more than one barrel at a time - although I suppose that could be done. 8 20 Gauge, 3 inch magnums going off at once is not something I would care to experience.

 

[Todg]

Originally posted by Uncle Bob:

Flechettes are OK if you have a good plastic shot cup. But if you don't like flechettes buckshot works just as well.

Conventional flechettes fired at shotgun velocity are sadly not very effective. Remington and Winchester were both awarded contracts to produce shotgun flechettes during the Vietnam war, as well as several smaller vendors. Studies showed that the wounding potential of flechettes at low to moderate velocity was directly proportional to their fin width. in general, reprts indicate that it took several hits from shotgun flechettes to equal the wounding effect of a single .30 caliber round.

Fechettes did show excellent long range performance, and flechettes fired from shotguns were able to penetrate a standard steel helmet at 500 yards. in contrast, 00 buch often failed to penetrate the same helmet at as little as 50 yards.

The Remington flechette cartridge was officially designated by the Mrine corps as Cartridge, 12 Gauge, Beehive, Remington Model SP-12F-20. It contained 20 cadmium plated flechettes in a standard Remington green plastic hull with a high brass. Muzzle velocity averaged about 2200 fps at the muzzle.

The Winchester load was designated by the Army as XM258 and was earmarked for use by Special Forces. It also contained 20 cadmium plated flechettes. The flechettes were manufactured by Whirlpool and Townsend.

Both of these military loads are easily distinguished from later civilian manufactured flechette shells, usually made from salvaged flechettes taken from artillery canister loads (identifed by their black phosphate finish).

Perhaps the ultimate shotgun load, superior to both the conventional flechette and buckshot, Is AAI's SCMITR flechette, also known as the 'flying razor blade'.

This round exhibited the range and penetration characteristics of conventional flechettes, while being much more lethal. This projectile does not rely on velocity for effectiveness, but rather the cutting action of the design, making effective even out to ranges of 500 yards. 14 SCMITR flechettes will fit into a standard 12 gauge shell, and they can be manufactured cheaply using simple stamping dies.

Unfortunately, the military expressed little interest in this superior flechette technology, and the design has languished.

 

[Todg]

Originally posted by Parmasson:
I like the XM-26 LSS standalone shotgun.
12g 7.5” barrel
5 shell Detachable box magazine

Perfect for the close in, room to room stuff.

Too bad it's a manually operated design, and not meant for high firepower.

 

[veltyen]

Not aware of any 'panic' option, and I have handled the weapon. I am also the Guntech.com web master, BTW.

The reference was from This site.

I have no idea how accurate it is, at least it is talking about the same weapon (8 barrel 20 gauge shotgun, descended from the liberator weapon).

 

[Uncle Bob]

IIRC, the XM26 moidular shotgun is designed to blow the hinges off of doors. In Iraq troops use Mossberg pump shotguns for this, then switch to M4 carbines for room-to-room.

Concur on SCIMTR, no word yet on what the load will be, but 20 conventional flechette will still make twice as many holes as buckshot.

 

[Todg]

Originally posted by veltyen:
The reference was from This site.

I have no idea how accurate it is, at least it is talking about the same weapon (8 barrel 20 gauge shotgun, descended from the liberator weapon).

Well, he's partly right. There was no option to fire more than one barrel, and there was no capability to launch a grenade. In the Colt version, the forward trigger actuated an aerosol mace dispenser located within the barrel cluster, as can be seen in this photo.

I added the idea of replacing this with a spigot grenade in my Traveller version which I called the "Boarding Gun".

http://weapons.travellercentral.com/shotguns/boarding_gun.html

 

[Uncle Bob]

Originally posted by Uncle Bob:
IIRC, the XM26 moidular shotgun is designed to blow the hinges off of doors. In Iraq troops use Mossberg pump shotguns for this, then switch to M4 carbines for room-to-room.

I guess this could be taken wrong. In Iraq the door-breakers are either Mossbergs pumps with 18" barrels or sawed-off pump shotguns with pistol grips and 2 rd magazines (The M1014 semiauto shotgun is seldom seen). Neither is ideal for CQB and the handy M4 carbine is often preferred.

OTOH a lot of experts prefer nine 8mm shot to two or three 5.56 mm at close range.

 

[Todg]

Amongst some pros, even buckshot is falling out of favor. A number of Fedral agencies are using slugs as the primary load for their shotguns. Turns out that at short ranges, buckshot doesn't improve hit probability all that much and at long range, buckshot is pretty much useless.

At very short (CQB) ranges, shotguns are incredibly lethal. Inside a typical room, the target will get hit with a column of shot, possibly the wad and propellant gasses to. Vey messy business.

 

[Anthony]

Just out of curiousity -- how much combat aboard starships is likely to give people enough time to pick up anything other than a sidearm, and won't also give people time enough to put on enough body armor to render shotguns mostly useless? I don't know if level IIIa armor would stop slugs from this shotgun (it won't stop 12ga slugs from a full-length shotgun), but it should negate shot pretty well.

 

[Uncle Bob]

Yeah. Beyond 50 meters it takes at least 000 to be lethal, and at that range the pattern is so sparse you can't guarranty a good hit. Beyond that, forget it (OK, flechettes may be good to 100 meters. Maybe.)

But at 6 meters in a corridor 00 buck puts nine holes in a pattern no bigger than an open hand. Center it on the torso and you will certainly sever at least one major vessel.

BTW, the History Channel had a show on Billy the Kid. They dressed a pig carcus in a shirt and blasted it with a shotgun loaded with dimes. Very unimpressive with most of the dimes bouncing off. Turns out that Bob Olinger was shot with ordinary buckshot, despite the legend.

 

[Uncle Bob]

Originally posted by Anthony:
Just out of curiousity -- how much combat aboard starships is likely to give people enough time to pick up anything other than a sidearm, and won't also give people time enough to put on enough body armor to render shotguns mostly useless? I don't know if level IIIa armor would stop slugs from this shotgun (it won't stop 12ga slugs from a full-length shotgun), but it should negate shot pretty well.

True. A flechette should defeat cloth armor or combat ennvironment suit. One nice thing about the XM25 is the potential HEAP round.

 

[Todg]

Originally posted by Anthony:
Just out of curiousity -- how much combat aboard starships is likely to give people enough time to pick up anything other than a sidearm, and won't also give people time enough to put on enough body armor to render shotguns mostly useless? I don't know if level IIIa armor would stop slugs from this shotgun (it won't stop 12ga slugs from a full-length shotgun), but it should negate shot pretty well.

It will depend on the slug, too. The old BRI sabotted slug (reminiscent of the diabolo style wasp-wasted airgun pellet) is an excellent penetrator, particularly the hardened version.

And given that (in CT at least) a Vacc suit is basically 'cloth' artmor, it seem that a shotgun is going to be pretty useless aboard ship if the bad guys are merely wearing vacc suits.

Handguns, SMGs and shotguns are all very mariginal weapons if the opponent is wearing any sort of armor, without the use of some kind of specialized ammunition.

 

[Todg]

Originally posted by Uncle Bob:
One nice thing about the XM25 is the potential HEAP round.

Which will be fine against personnel and thin skinned vehicles. But the penetration of any HEAT round is directly related to it's diameter, so we shouldn't expect too much. One advantage of going up caliber is to increase the effectiveness of all explosive rounds, HEAT included. This was a big concern with the XM29 SABR OICW. Tests seemed to indicate that the 20mm projectile wasn't big enough for the kind of lethality desired. The jump to 25mm (as used in the OCSW) makes a big difference.

Those 10mm HEAP snub rounds are likely to be pretty useless.

 

[jappel]

I looked at the shots in the original post and my first thought was "Jayne needs one of those."

- John

 

[Uncle Bob]

The 25mm HEAP warhead has demonstrated penetrating 51mm RHA.
So a 10mm HEAP should penetrate 15mm+ Thats a lot of armor, but I think the behind armor effects would be limited.

And the High Explosive Air Burst frags can defeat IBA armor (level IIIA, equiv to Cloth)

But buckshot and slugs are non-starters.
So are pistols and SMG
Flechettes are marginal
Now the snub guns are in their place.

 

[Todg]

I'm not sure why flechettes are marginal. They are fantastic pentrators, with the added benefit of generating extremely low recoil. Throw them fast enough, and design them properly, and they are very lethal.

The big problem with HEAT is a limitation of velocity. You can only drive a heat round so fast or it rapidly loses effectiveness. You can't spin it much either, or the jet gets dispersed so stabilization becomes an issue. HEAT warhead are going to have a very narrow operational envelop.

HE rounds of course don't have any of these problems, but both of these rounds are big, and thrown at any moderate velocity are going to generate recoil. The 25mm round was originallly slated for the OCSW, a gound mounted crew served weapon with a special soft recoil mechanism. Shooting it out of a shoulder fired weapon could be very unpleasant.

The Barret XM-109 is another 25mm weapon, but it is a huge beast - basically the same platform as the M82A1, and masses 15+ kilos. You aren't going to carry and shoot this like a rifle. For comparison, an M240 GPMG masses a mere 11 kilos.

Bob, do you have an mass and velocity figures on the projectile? I'm curious to see what recoil numbers are going to be. ATK is stingy with any info.

 

[parmasson]

If you could replace the shotgun shells with mini rockets it might be good for 0g. However it works it looks cool.
http://world.guns.ru/shotgun/sh10-e.htm

 

[Todg]

The Pancor jackhammer is a perennial favorite of gamers. Too bad they never built any (beyond mockups and perhaps one or two prototypes). A solution to a non-existant problem, it has some interesting features. Compared to the boarding gun, it is grighfully complex and very large.

For a semi or select fire shotgun, I think I'd take the HK CAWS
or even the Atchisson Assault 12, now reborn as the AA-12. There's also the USAS-12 and the Russian Saiga-12 (a semi shotgun based on the AK - how cools is that)

For ship board use, you'd want something compact, which suggests the Ithaca models 10 (A & B), or perhaps the Neostead or the obscure Winter Swatriplex.

 

[parmasson]

Today was the first time I saw it.
More like an energy weapon or mini-missile launcher in its size then?