G11
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The Heckler und Koch G11 is an assault rifle that was developed by the German firearm company Heckler und Koch for the Bundeswehr (German Army).
The weapon uses a 4.73 mm caseless ammunition. The ammunition is also designated as 4.92 mm because in Germany the caliber of a bullet is measured by the size of the base of a bullet, the barrel chamber though is 4.73 mm and the bullet is compressed to that size when fired. The 4.73 mm round is half the weight and 40% the size by volume of a standard NATO 5.56 round used in such assault rifles like the M16. The 4.73 mm round also has similar ballistics to a 5.56 mm round, but the 4.73 mm is much less likely to tumble when hitting or penetrating a target, and thus not as lethal.
The design principle was to fire multi-round bursts with a higher degree of accuracy than possible with conventional assault rifles. The weapon itself has three firing modes: full auto (400-600 rounds per minute), semi-auto, and a three round burst (an impressive 2100 rounds per minute, which is roughly 35 rounds per second!). The loading and feed mechanism is very complicated but exceptionally fast and reliable. Rounds are held vertically from above the barrel. The firing cycle process is roughly:
- 1. A round is dropped into the revolving chamber vertically (a loading piston assists this process).
- 2. The chamber spins 90° until it is lined up with the barrel. A firing pin ignites the primer, which pushes the bullet into the barrel. Then the propellant ignites, accelerating the bullet out of the barrel.
- 3. The chamber then spins another 90° until it is lined up with the feed mechanism and the process repeats.
A conventional assault rifle has about 7 steps in its cycle, but because the G11 uses caseless ammunition there are no extraction and ejection steps. Also, due to the G11 having no loading bolt, there are no locking and unlocking steps either. If a round fails to fire, the rifle can be manually chambered which loads the next round and pushes the failed one out an ejection port on the bottom of the rifle.
The recoil in the three round burst is not felt by the weapon user until after the third round has left the chamber. This is accomplished by having the barrel and feeding mechanism "float" within the rifle casing. When the bullets are fired, the barrel and mechanism recoils back freely several inches and only when it hits the plate at the back of the rifle does the user feel the recoil. During this transit time the rifle loads and fires 3 rounds. When the barrel and mechanism reaches the back, springs push it forward into its normal position. When firing in semi-auto and full auto modes, the rifle only loads and fires one round per transit of the barrel, cutting the rate of fire to a controllable 1/3 of its max rate.
Ammunition cook-off (ignition of the ammunition by heat in the weapon) was a problem with early prototypes; the brass (or steel) case of conventional ammunition plays a major role in absorbing heat and preventing the propellant from igniting prematurely. This problem was supposedly solved with a special binder and coating for the ammunition that increased the spontaneous ignition temperature to 100 °C above that of standard ammunition.
According to various web sites, there was a squad-level automatic weapon and a personal defense weapon planned on the same ammunition family as that used by the G11. Some hints of the former caseless PDW design can be seen in the current Heckler and Koch MP7 personal defense weapon. One of the most important reasons as for the creation of the new weapon and the new munition was the issue of weight: the M16A2 with a total of 270 cartridges weighs about 16 lb (7 kg), while a shooter with the G11K2 rifle would be able to carry 600 rounds of ammunition at the same weight. Another design feature of the rifle was the ability to mount three 45-round magazines on rails on the front of the rifle, making reloading much faster. Additionally, a factory-zeroed scope would give the shooter an advantage over an adversary using a rifle with iron sights.
The gun itself never made it into full production, even though it clearly outperformed several other prototype guns. Reportedly some 1000 or so rifles were delivered to units of the army of West Germany shortly before German reunification occurred in 1990. The reunification imposed new strains on the German army and forced a reassessment of defense needs. It is unclear if this weapon or similar weapons will reappear or become widespread in the near future. The advantages that caseless ammunition could provide are counterbalanced by the added logistics imposed by the non-compatibility of such a system with more traditional munitions. It is a possibility that the G11 will remain a cul-de-sac of sorts, and future military weapons be developed along a different route.