From:	Andy Butcher <Fiend@*********.CO.UK>
Subject:	Re: caseless ammo
Date:	Wed, 7 Jun 1995 15:52:22 +0100

Trey wrote:

>Caseless ammo supposedly has the chemical solvent or whatever to entirely burn
>away or dissolves when fired, thus leaving no physical traces (with the except-
>ion of chemical traces in the firearm) that it ever existed.
>I don't think that this is possible.

It's not that there's no physical evidence that it existed, it's just that
the propellant leaves an utterly miniscule amount of residue in the firing
chamber. There's still going to be a whole lot of oxidised propellant
around, though, mainly in the form of gas and/or very small particles. The
advantage is that the action of a caseless weapon can be sealed (no need for
an ejection port as there aren't any cases, etc). This means that the gun is
very reliable, and doesn't need nearly as much maintenance as an equivalent
cased weapon. It also has fewer moving parts, and thus less to go wrong.

>One, the U.S. army has the equivalent of caseless ammo in its main gun rounds
>except that the very end (where the firing pin strikes the round and ignites
>the powder) continues to exist. The entire round either goes down range,
>ignites in the barrel and becomes smoke or the back plate of the round (about
>half a pound in weight) gets ejected from the barrel.
>This is (and my second point...) because the firing pin must hit a metal primer
>which in turn ignites the powder. There must be SOME metal involved in the
>process, thus there is no true caseless ammo.

I can't remember the details exactly - I read about it a long time ago now -
but the Heckler & Koch (spelling?) G11 assault rifle is a truly caseless
weapon. The action is sealed, and in fact the rifle can't be field stripped
- cleaning and maintenance are performed regularly by a gunsmith. I honestly
can't remeber the chemistry, but while there is still a 'firing pin' it
doesn't hit anything metal. I seem to remember it 'ripping' into the round
somehow, but I'm not sure.
I do remember that there were two real advantages to the G11. First off the
rate of fire was horrific - in burst mode the third bullet is fired before
the the first leaves the barrel, so you only feel one 'kick' when firing,
and secondly the ammo weighed a mere fraction of the equivalent cased rifle.
I also remember reading that the gun was the first significant development
in small arms since about 1930 - just about every other gun around today is
directly based on technology that was developed more than 50 years ago.

Andy Butcher | "Whether you think you will succeed
PC Gamer Magazine | or not, you are right."
Fiend@*********.co.uk | Henry Ford