#Concept

When checking the news feed in Russian and former Soviet countries’ websites, I came across an article written in a Russian website called Voyennoye Obozreniye about a new rifle concept called VAR (Vasilyev Automatic Rifle). At first glance, it was one of those concepts that makes you think “someone plays video games too much”. However, by learning more about it, I found that the designer (Andrey Vasilyev) is quite a knowledgeable man and his concept does have some legit solutions. It was clear for me – I need to present this to our readers!

In today’s episode, we follow Miles to Shot Show 2018 Media Day at the Range and visit Ben with Ellison Dynamic Concepts.

A warning against romanticism in military planning.

When the subject is the future of infantry, the conversation inevitably turns to one thing: Powered, armored exoskeletons. Since the publication of Heinlein’s Starship Troopers in 1959, the concept of an armored suit with enhanced mobility from an internal power source has fascinated military futurists, quickly solidifying as a military fiction staple, and even appearing repeatedly in official “future soldier” concepts from armies and companies around the world.

Russian concept arms designer Alexey Tarasenko’s firearm designs have been published in  Kalashnikov Gun Magazine several times. In this article, we’ll take a look at the designer’s latest concept of an assault rifle that is designed to solve the problem of efficient burst firing by decreasing the felt recoil and its influence on the stability of the weapon system. Kalashnikov Gun Magazine kindly gave us a permission to use the information and images from their article.

At the 2017 Association of the United States Army annual meeting (AUSA 2017), US Army Research, Development, and Engineering Command (RDECOM) presented a concept for the US Army’s future soldier of the 2030 timeframe, which promised everything from powered exoskeletons, to futuristic optics, to individual network capability. I captured the Command’s two future soldier concept demo videos that were running at the conference, embedded below:

Victor Aster is a Belarusian firearms concept designer. He shared with TFB one of his CAD designs of a personal defense weapon (PDW) called Humble-Bee. The idea is to have a compact firearm for law enforcement and military needs which would be very simple, lightweight and easy to use.

A concept for an advanced suit of powered personal armor was unveiled late last month at the Moscow Prototyping Center, sporting hexagonal modular armor panels, full face helmet with mocked up information display, and a bullpup rifle. The suit, revealed to the internet via a YouTube video from Russian government funded RT-subsidiary Ruptly, was more conceptual mockup than prototype, evidenced by its engraved polymer “display” insert, stylized armor, and non-functional gun and mechanism. The Ruptly video is embedded below:

At the 2017 National Defense Industry Association’s (NDIA) annual Armament Systems Forum in April, Mr. Howard Kent of Armor Development Group, and Dr. Jeffery Widder presented a concept for a caseless grenade system which allows the user to aim by changing the muzzle velocity of the round itself. Their grenade design would allow a grenadier to fire on targets at varying ranges while maintaining the same firing angle as well as approximately the same impact angle.

More and more, it seems like we are on the cusp of a break in the small arms “plateau”, and that major changes may be coming both in the technology and use of infantry small arms and ammunition. The biggest harbinger of this coming paradigm shift has been Picatinny’s Lightweight Small Arms Technologies (LSAT) program, now superseded by the Cased Telescoped Small Arms Systems (CTSAS) program. As CTSAS and similar programs make headway, it seems increasingly likely that some sort of next generation lightweight ammunition paradigm will force a shift in infantry small arms, and that the current fleet of metallic-cased ammunition and the weapons designed to fire it will have to be replaced by new designs.

I, for one, am a huge fan of offset sights for rifles with magnified optics. For SPR type platforms where the minimum magnification on optcs can be 9x or larger, the offset sights are a great option for close-in work when needed. Competition shooters have likewise embraced them, especially in action shooting sports where the option to use irons for near targets and not having to take the time to change magnification for longer shorts results in saved precious seconds.

Previously, we discussed the benefits of and challenges facing saboted projectile ammunition, including the advantages of decoupling the diameters of the bore and the projectile, and the problems of accuracy during sabot discarding. One concept that could possibly provide many of the benefits of saboted projectile ammunition without the drawbacks is the idea of having a malleable projectile that is forced through a conical section of bore, squeezing it down to a smaller shape. This increases, to a degree, the swept volume of the barrel, while not requiring any discarding sabot and not producing “wasted” energy that goes into propelling the mass of the sabot out of the barrel.

After World War II, US Army analysts determined that the effectiveness of the infantryman was not as closely related to their marksmanship discipline as had been previously thought. It seemed that instead, the random environmental circumstances and effects, plus the concealment and movement of the target, had much more of an influence on the probability of a hit than the ability of the shooter to fire his weapon with precision. With this knowledge in hand, arms designers in the West set out to improve the chances of the soldier to hit his target, and the most obvious solution was to simply send more lead downrange. The simplest way to do that was, of course, to create ammunition that fired more than one projectile per round.

What if there was a caliber that was suitable for everything from coyote to brown bear, kicked less than your whitetail gun, fit in a micro-length (2.25″/58mm) action, and cost a quarter a round to shoot? That would be a pretty awesome caliber, wouldn’t it? It turns out that this caliber might already exist, if the industry can fulfill its potential: It is the Russian 7.62x39mm caliber used by the infamous AK-47 rifle.