M-56 Smart Gun

[striderteen]

Okay, can someone with the official Marine Technical Guide clear up whether the Smart Gun is a laser or a 10mm machine gun? I've seen a lot of material stating both ways.

In either case, it's probably the coolest weapon in all of Aliens, and quite possibly in all of sci-fi.

The new OICW battle rifle the U.S. military is getting can pretty much match the regular pulse rifle, but we don't have a Smart Gun yet.

[Xeno]

It's deffinately not a lazer. 10mm? Thats deffinately Pulse Rifle, dunno about Smart gun (I doubt it)

Err, theres a site and forum. I will give you the thread thats likely to have all the info (most probably)
The site isn't working properly for me.

www.avpnews.com

You try.

PS: OICW rifle isn't as good as the pulse rifle - generally. Though yeh, I agree it's getting there.

[striderteen]

Most sites list the Smart Gun as being a light squad machine gun chambered for the M250 series 10mm X 28 explosive-tipped round, which does fit...it's the same caliber as the Pulse Rifle, but designed to function as a sustained-fire support weapon.

The M-16 series rifles and the M-249 SAW light machine gun fulfull the same roles in the real U.S. military, and they too are the same caliber (5.56mm NATO).

However, a couple of sites state unequivocally that the Smart Gun is a cryocooled laser weapon. Example: http://www.cen.uiuc.edu/~arolson/techreadout/m56.html

"The M56 'Smart Gun' is the US Colonial Marine Corps' standard Heavy Automatic squad support weapon. Designed to provide heavy infantry support up to 1500 metres, the Smart Gun has proven a rugged and reliable state-of-the-art weapon, now employed in a variety of combat theatres and environments.

The M56 is essentially a 5 Kilowatt gas-dynamic laser powered by an array of liquid metallic suspension batteries. The beam itself is emitted by a fast-discharge monopolar generator which produces a high energy pulse of one-one hundredth second duration in the invisible light spectrum. When focused, this pulse instantaneously superheats the target area, creating an explosive effect capable of penetrating light armour.

Beam performance is related to a number of factors, including the target's ablative properties, atmospheric quality and obscuration. Yet field testing has shown that countermeasures (such as smoke or suspended particle clouds) do not significantly degrade the fire from this powerful weapon.

A Smart Gun operator has the option of setting the weapon to fire short or full bursts up to its maximum cyclic rate of 1200 ppm. Because it is a beam weapon, the gun operator experiences no recoil or muzzle climb upon firing. However, early versions of the M56 produced a characteristic muzzle flash, caused as the beam superheated the air directly in front of the barrel. All current service models now incorporate a flash suppressor, although this only partially masks the effect."

Furthermore, that site is quoting from this official source:

"Technical Readout" - ALIENS magazine, Volume 2, Number 1 - July 1992, Dark Horse Comics

[Xeno]

Hey, thats wrong. Dark Horse Comics man, what didja expect? The Pulse Rifle fires 10x28mm explosive tip rounds:

According the the Aliens Colocial Marine Tech Manuel the 10x24mm Caseless Explosive tip round has a muzzle velocity of about 840 m/s, which translates to about 2800 fps, or about the same velocity of the 7.62mm Nato round. And since the Pulse rifle is caseless, the "x24mm" doesn't mean the case length as it usually does. We have no idea of how heavy the bullet is, how long it is, or the shape. From what we have to go on, I would say the Pulse Rifle fires a Rifle round, mainly because of the muzzle velocity. Only pistols chambered in rifle rounds even come close to that velocity.

Thats just the pulse rifle...I will try to find the M56 Smartgun.

UPDATE: Sorry, it seems that the Smartgun also uses 10mm explosive tip bullets aswell. - Ur right, 10mm aswell. The trouble I have with that is that some people claim the thing goes through the victim leaving a single (huge - in some cases) hole.

The M56 Smartgun is a 10mm automatic squad support weapon. It has a cyclicrate of about 1200rpm, and is constructed mainly from molded carbon-fiber and light alloy stampings. The gun systemis mounted onto an operator's harness and slaved to IR tracking system. The M56 is self-aiming, but firing must be controlled by the operator. All firing is either controlled by the forward hand grip or the rear firing handle. A selector at the grip controls the gun's saftey features and rate of fire. The M56 has three fire settings: safe, 4-round burst, or full automatic. Ammunition is stored on a roll of continuous plastic non-disintegrating link belt in

The Smart Gun fires an M250 10mmX28 230-grain caseless round that is kept on a belt in a drum mounted on the side of the gun.

Comparing to Pulse Rifle:

The M41A is a 10mm pulse-action automatic rifle which is the basic rifle of the USCM and the US Army. The M41A is made of precision metal stampings, with the outer casing being titanium aluminide alloy and the internal parts being high-impact plastics. The M41A pulse rifle fires 10mm caseless, explosive tipped, light armor piercing rounds at a velocity of about 840 meters per second

One problem: AP or dum-dum? Explosive bullets and Expand bullets right? Whats with both movie and novels then?? The things slice though bugs, leaving "narrow" holes and sometimes the M56 was said to leave a single massive hole. Entry and Exit are different, it's a bit iffy to me.

[striderteen]

I would suspect the rounds are tipped with a small shaped charge to provide some modicum of explosive penetration. That would explain how they have extreme penetration and yet don't leave a large hole, and is consistent with the term "explosive tipped armor piercing".

The M-56 WOULD make a single large hole; the auto-tracker makes it super-accurate, so an entire burst of rounds will hit the target at nearly the same point, resulting in a big hole.

[Xeno]

But the bullet is supposedly caseless, meaning we basically just get the explosive tip with penetration. Stupid thing with that is whether the thing is explosive or expansive or a combination of both. Anyways, the pulse rifle basically has a small entry but a extremely large exit, explosive tips aren't like that (penetration or no penetration) and acts more like a well exploding bullets instead. Still the thing is caseless...whatever the heck that means...
Same applies to the smartgun. Yes it has improved acuracy etc. but taking recoil, target movement and any other outside things into account, it's unlikely to make a single large hole (entry).

PS. I doubt the thing is AP. 10x28mm is more likely the explanation for it's penetration.

Looking at the film (bug targets): "Normal" holes. Cut's right through, only at close range we actually see gaping holes and pieces coming off.

Novels and the Alien Omnibus (bug targets): Same as movies ("knife through hot butter")

Games (bug targets): Same.

^ Deffinate suggestion that the thing is AP...then why the explosive tip basically telling us it acts like dum-dum rounds? In AvP2 I understand the hand gun has two ammo types (AP and dum-dum) I believe the pulse rifle kinda acts like AP...Man Im confused.

[striderteen]

Actually, it all makes complete sense. Caseless ammunition is not anything incredibly advanced; it exists today in the Heckler & Koch G-11 assault rifle, which fires 4.7mm caseless ammo. Basically, all it means is that the round consists of a bullet and a solid molded propellant, rather than a bullet, a metal casing and gunpowder.

AP means armor-piercing...and yes, all the tech materials say the rounds are armor-piercing explosive. That, too, is nothing special; it's exactly what a shaped charge does.

A small entry wound and an extremely large exit wound is EXACTLY what you'd expect from an anti-armor round designed to defeat body armor. Such rounds are almost invariably delayed-detonation; that is, they explode a few milliseconds after impact. This is in order to allow the bullet to penetrate the armor before it explodes, maximizing damage.

So, what happens in Aliens is exactly what you'd expect; the round punches into the Alien, producing a normal-sized entry wound, and then explodes to create a large exit wound. Why doesn't it blow the Alien apart? Shaped charge, remember -- such charges are a directed blast, in this case forwards.

[Xeno]

Explosive bullets acts more like dum dum rounds then anything...and the thing is "explosive tipped". But you're saying the 10x28mm caseless is a expansive bullet (only at exit) or a delay type also since it is caseless we don't actually know what shape it is, meaning it might not even be AP "shaped".
About how it's a small entry and large exit:
Smartgun "leaves a single massive hole" (I presume they mean both entry and exit wounds) now that shouldn't be right if they use the same bullet types (they probably don't since in Aliens they keep there ammo types seperate - I still think the M56 uses a different type of ammo, or atleast a modificaton of the 10mm)

HK-G11 hehe just an excuse to get a pic in:



Anyways:
Pulse Rifle (joint of a Thompson M1A1 and SPAS-12):



You can see how the SPAS is made to look like a grenade launcher and the M1A1 the main rifle. Ignore how the thing is real and everything and pretend the Thompson can perform like the Pulse. ^ Look at the magazin area for the M1A1. Looking at the magazin clips:



We get a good (it's not accurate but it will do) idea of the ammo, though the thing is suppose to hold 99 rounds you see my problem with it. If it's made to be shaped like a AP (err a Smartgun round) then it wouldn't have enough space in the mag made for 99 rounds. The M56 with the belt and drum I can understand but the pulse rifle? One of them has to be right...ofcourse for the M56 uses a M250 series ammo type for the 10mm...

PS. The original question was whether it was a lazer or 10mm, I have to say it probably is a 10mm.

[striderteen]

No, explosive bullets do NOT act anything like dum-dums. They're really quite the opposite.

Dum-dum bullets are developed by the British military; a patent was filed in 1897 by one Captain Bertie-Clay, of the ammunition works at the town of Dum Dum, India (hence the name). These rounds, under the designation of "Mark IV expanding bullet", were used by Britain during the Boer War, as well as in action in both India and Sudan.

The tip of a dum-dum round is not covered with the usual hard nickel jacketing, which allows the soft lead to mushroom on impact. Such rounds are almost totally worthless against body armor, but are much more destructive than conventional full-metal-jacketed rounds when fired at soft targets. Dum-Dum is often misused to mean any soft–nosed or hollow-pointed hunting bullet; this is incorrect, as the term correctly applies ONLY to expanding rounds with unjacketed tips.

Dum-dum and other expanding rounds were banned for military use by the Hague Convention in 1899, but are popular among police and anti-terrorist forces throughout the world.

An explosive round, in sharp contrast, is esentially a miniaturized cannon shell. Such rounds come in a variety of types, but the most common for something of small-arms caliber would be either HE-FRAG (high explosive fragmentation) or HE-AP (high explosive armor piercing). The published materials indicate that the pulse rifle's round is of the armor-piercing type, and that it is designed to penetrate body armor.

The damage seen on the Aliens -- that is, a small entry wound and a large exit wound -- is consistent with HE-AP ammo, which is normally equipped with a delayed-impact fuse to allow for maximum penetration prior to detonation. The entry wound is caused by a simple, ordinary bullet penetration; the exit wound is caused by the focused detonation of the shaped charge. Such damage is NOT consistent with a dum-dum round, which will cause a large entry wound, extensive internal damage, and no exit wound.

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As for the Smart Gun, you are correct in stating that it uses a different round than the Pulse Rifle. The Pulse Rifle fires the M309 10mm X 24 round, while the Smart Gun fires the M250 10mm X 28 round. The Smart Gun's round is therefore longer and more powerful than that fired by the Pulse Rifle; longer rounds are more powerful, as they contain more propellant. An example of this difference would be NATO vs Russian forces; NATO uses 7.62mm X 51 ammunition, while the Russians favor the 7.62 mm. x 54 round.

The Smart Gun, being a highly accurate auto-tracking machine gun, would logically create a single large hole through the target, simply by hitting it in nearly the same place multiple times. You can see for yourself by firing a large number of BB rounds at the same spot on a target (you'll probably need to fire at point-blank range to achieve the desired accuracy). The single bullet holes overlap, creating a single large hole.

[Xeno]

Oooh, now I get it (sorry bout the expanding thing) and yes I am ashamed to admit that I thought they were hollow points, but I also understand that dum-dums on impact, splits and thus expand the entry wound aswell as damaging the interior. I mean, I thought it should just be called an expanding bullet then. So the bullets for both Pulse and Smart are HE-AP (light armor) and how the M56 can leave a single consistant (? or is it just simply small entry and large exit?) hole is simply due to it being larger than a normal Pulse Rifle round (though it's still beyond me how the bullets can continuely travel through the same area of impact again creating a single hole because of the environment as well as the situation - I mean it's accurate but it can't be able to do that simply because unless the bullets are in a solid, and I mean solid, single line or they can track by themselves, the movement of the target -aswell as other environmental circumstances - surely will cause the M56 to make several wounds)

[striderteen]

No, a dum-dum usually doesn't fragment inside the body. What you're talking about is what is known as frangible ammunition, such as Glaser Safety Bullets (now there's an ironic name for a bullet designed for maximum killing power). They're called that because they don't penetrate metal objects such as target range backstops -- they shatter harmlessly against hard targets, preventing potentially dangerous ricochets. They are therefore safer to use as training rounds.

However, that wasn't the point when they were developed. Frangible ammunition is designed to function almost like a miniature shotgun, shattering on impact with the body and sending a fast-moving blast of bullet fragments through the body, which causes much more damage than a single bullet.

Incidentally, these are the rounds they're arming sky marshals with, because they won't penetrate plane walls and cause depressurization. Unfortunately, all the terrorists have to do is wear body armor or even bulletproof vests.


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Try this. Punch a hole in a piece of paper with a knife. Do it again. And again. And again. After a while, you have one big hole -- the individual stab holes combine into a single hole that's a lot larger than an individual stab.

That's how the Smart Gun punches big holes. By punching a lot of small holes in nearly the same place.

[Xeno]

The Smart Gun creating one large hole only works when the target isn't moving (basically pinned up they won't move), then add that the gunner has to be pretty good maintaining posture due to recoil aswell as standing still and then add the environmetal circumstances not affecting the bullet. I mean in combat circumstances you will never get that, so the Smart Gun doesn't and couldn't make single large holes. It CAN but it CAN'T. Take your paper thing: Throw it in the air then punch the holes in it. Yeah, I know the Smart Gun has excellent accuracy and will follow the target to the ground and calculate it's entire movement even before it hit's the ground, but sparadic movement from the target due to being hit, will basically f that up.

[striderteen]

Take, for an example, a very fast-shooting weapon like a GAU-2 Gatling gun, better known as the Minigun. Ever seen what a Minigun can do to a person? It'll literally saw him in half with a short burst -- heck, it'll cut an armored car in half.

But it's not a physical blade. It just shoots 6000 rounds per minute -- that's a hundred bullets a second, folks. Which means it's going to be punching a LOT of holes in the target. A lot of a holes are going to cause a cut effect -- basically, you're punching a whole line of holes all the way through and across the target, which leaves a ragged "cut" formed by a lot of bullet holes.

Same thing for the Smart Gun. It doesn't have to land all the bullets in the same place; just NEARLY the same place. Being an IR tracker, it's going to be shooting at the center of heat mass...which means, given its high ROF, you're going to be looking at a very tight grouping at the center of heat, or a single large compound hole if the gunner's shooting a lot of bullets.

[Xeno]

Whats the M56 fire rate?
They said one SINGLE hole, that never can be true because there will always be some strays, and well it's very likely you get a bullet wound further from the central heat mass (I will say round on top or bottom, but again it depends)
Also, the smart gun is a single barrel machine gun, with a 100rd ammo drum, the mini has what? 1000yrds?

[striderteen]

Well...the Smart Gun is basically a tricked-out MG42 machine gun on a steadicam operator's harness. The MG42, nicknamed "Hitler's Zipper" due to the unique firing signature, has a rate-of-fire of 1200 rounds per minute and is still used today (yes, it's THAT good).

The Minigun uses belt-fed ammo; the amount of ammunition carried depends on the configuration. The GAU-17/A gun system used on UH-1N, H-3 and H-60 aircraft, for example, consists of a Minigun, remote gun control assembly, MAU-210/A delinking feeder, flexible ammunition feed chutes and a ammunition storage system housing 4000 rounds.