# Impractical weapons, armour, and equipment



## Pointless Pedant (Apr 4, 2017)

As suggested on the Mike Sparks thread in Lolcows, here is a thread for horribly designed weapons, armour, and equipment, whether in truth or fiction.

To start, here is the Landkreuzer P. 1500 Monster, a World War 2 German design for a self propelled gun bigger than a house.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landkreuzer_P._1500_Monster

The 1500 refers to its mass in tons.


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## Reynard (Apr 4, 2017)

Pointless Pedant said:


> To start, here is the Landkreuzer P. 1500 Monster, a World War 2 German design for a self propelled gun bigger than a house.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landkreuzer_P._1500_Monster
> 
> The 1500 refers to its mass in tons.


Now, huge naval guns and stationary naval defense guns that are bigger than a house aren't uncommon.  An 800mm round is rather ridiculous, though.  The bigger naval cannons were 16in., and that's around 400mm.  I think it's really optimistic for someone to try and pull that large of a gun off as artillery that's mobile by land.

As for my own entry, most experimental weaponry from the past.  There's a ton of it, and I can find some specific examples if anyone wants them, but there's a reason these things are still referred to as experimental.  I know the EM-2 was reported to be a good rifle that barely saw any usage (if not remained experimental, it was cancelled practically right before it was truly adopted) because NATO came in and said "you have to use the same caliber as us" and the rifle didn't convert well, but most things that were experimental and never saw mass production if any production stayed that way for a reason.


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## TiggerNits (Apr 4, 2017)

Fixed wing VTOL is the ultimate in impractical and hilariously bad at everything helicopters and actual CAS platforms can do effortlessly


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## millais (Apr 4, 2017)

F-35 A/B/C


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## WW 635 (Apr 4, 2017)

https://sneed-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/e7/01/8b/e7018b02e1ab0c1cfba8cd21e9c39ea5.jpg


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## ICametoLurk (Apr 4, 2017)

My dream is creating a black powder paper cartridge self-loading rifle that uses an enclosed belt magazine and when the paper cartidges are loaded a tiny slit is made at the back of them.

Practical? Hell no

Cool as fuck? HELL YEAH


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## autism420 (Apr 4, 2017)




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## Reynard (Apr 4, 2017)

The Desert Eagle is a gun that's rather popular and is super impractical.  It's heavy, bulky, impossible to conceal, difficult to quickdraw with, etc.  Sure, it's a high caliber, but it comes at the cost, and the handgun is the weapon you either use to protect yourself while you get to your rifle (in the case of home defense) or your backup (in the case of combat), meaning that you don't want something heavy and bulky for that.  There are plenty of powerful handguns that are much more practical.


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## OtterParty (Apr 4, 2017)

holding up a pedophile to shield yourself from scorn and derision isn't a very effective defense when you and the pedophile come from the same online community of socially maladjusted deviants


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## Varg Did Nothing Wrong (Apr 4, 2017)

This is in Taurus' "Concealed Carry" section of their website.

It's a tip-up-barrel 9 round .22LR pistol. 

Unless you're concealed carrying to defend yourself from a rat, cat or maybe a small dog, I'm not sure what it's really going to be useful for.


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## BILLY MAYS (Apr 5, 2017)




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## Cato (Apr 5, 2017)

The Streetsweeper shotgun.











http://www.grantcunningham.com/2013/12/the-streetsweeper-shotgun-gone-and-unlamentedly-so/

A shotgun that has all the disadvantages of single action revolver, plus terrible design, functionality and construction, ridiculous loading time, gases that propel directly into the face and hands of the user while they shoot it, and an awful stock with a sharp metal edge that presses against the user's face and rides up and into it during recoil.


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## Duke Nukem (Apr 5, 2017)

hood LOLCOW said:


> View attachment 201337



Ah, the all-powerful Sniper Crowbar. If you get hit by this, it's all over.



Cato said:


> The Streetsweeper shotgun.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



That thing is definitely junk. Not to mention that ATF labeled it a Destructive Device due to some bullshit sporting clause, there are better shotguns out there for less money and hassle.

I'm more partial to the Vepr-12 myself, as far as shotguns go, but this is the thread for IMpractical weapons.

As far as impractical guns go, try the Villar Perosa. Chambered in 9mm Glisenti, and fired in pairs, it is substantially less powerful than the otherwise equivalent 9mm Luger/Parabellum, and intended to be used as an aircraft machine gun in World War I with Italian forces. 






https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villar-Perosa_aircraft_submachine_gun


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## Randall Fragg (Apr 5, 2017)

Duke Nukem said:


> Ah, the all-powerful Sniper Crowbar. If you get hit by this, it's all over.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


It's still pretty cool looking in a "people were expected to use this steampunk reject" way. 
In a similar note, here's how they first dropped bombs from airplanes in WW1




Just tossed it right over the side.


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## SuicideIsPainless (Apr 5, 2017)




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## c-no (Apr 5, 2017)

Chauchat



French made machine gun rifle. As far as the gun goes, this brief excerpt from Wikipedia in terms of American use would sum it up.


> I spent the last few weeks [of World War I] back in the hospital, but I’ll tell you one thing the boys later told me: The day _after_ the Armistice they got the word to turn in their Chauchats and draw Browning Automatic Rifles. That BAR was so much better than that damned Chauchat. If we’d only had the BAR six months before, it would have saved so many lives.


If one wanted a better explanation:
After firing a few shots, these things ended up jamming. They weren't prone to jamming like other guns but guaranteed to jam. They also had an open magazine which could introduce debris, especially since this was during WWI which more or less was a way for Europeans to experience warfare in trenches. In terms of aesthetics, the gun itself is ugly. Looks wouldn't matter much for some guns like a steyr aug as long as they are reliable and can get the job done with desired results but this gun wasn't one of them (unless that result was being a shit weapon). The quote above mentions the BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle). That gun alone pretty much replaced the chauchat once American troops got their hands on that gun.


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## Pointless Pedant (Apr 5, 2017)

Why having a metal surfboard for a sword isn't a very good idea:








Varg Did Nothing Wrong said:


> This is in Taurus' "Concealed Carry" section of their website.
> 
> It's a tip-up-barrel 9 round .22LR pistol.
> 
> Unless you're concealed carrying to defend yourself from a rat, cat or maybe a small dog, I'm not sure what it's really going to be useful for.



A .22 pistol can be surprisingly deadly, but you'd be lucky to get a quick stop on an attacker.



Reynard said:


> Now, huge naval guns and stationary naval defense guns that are bigger than a house aren't uncommon.  An 800mm round is rather ridiculous, though.  The bigger naval cannons were 16in., and that's around 400mm.  I think it's really optimistic for someone to try and pull that large of a gun off as artillery that's mobile by land.
> 
> As for my own entry, most experimental weaponry from the past.  There's a ton of it, and I can find some specific examples if anyone wants them, but there's a reason these things are still referred to as experimental.  I know the EM-2 was reported to be a good rifle that barely saw any usage (if not remained experimental, it was cancelled practically right before it was truly adopted) because NATO came in and said "you have to use the same caliber as us" and the rifle didn't convert well, but most things that were experimental and never saw mass production if any production stayed that way for a reason.



How would that thing even move? No train could carry it, and it would destroy any road it drove down.


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## millais (Apr 5, 2017)

c-no said:


> Chauchat
> View attachment 201354
> French made machine gun rifle. As far as the gun goes, this brief excerpt from Wikipedia in terms of American use would sum it up.
> 
> ...


According to Gun Jesus's shooting experience, it's a pretty good automatic rifle as long as it is kept clean.


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## Duke Nukem (Apr 5, 2017)

c-no said:


> Chauchat
> View attachment 201354
> French made machine gun rifle. As far as the gun goes, this brief excerpt from Wikipedia in terms of American use would sum it up.
> 
> ...



I almost posted the Chauchat, but I thought, nah, let's make this one more obscure, so I posted the Villar Perosa. In 8mm Lebel the Chauchat wasn't as terrible, but in 30-06, a caliber it was converted to for US troops' use, it was at its absolute worst. I have a book called The World's Worst Weapons that has quite a few that I could post here, but I'll throw this one out there for shits and giggles:

Sizaire-Berwick Armored Car AKA "Wind Wagon"

https://sneed-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/42/d4/ff/42d4ff661d6b519399ab8c2100e8e1b8.jpg

The Royal Air Force's answer to the British need for armored cars. The crew of two is well protected, but the .303 British machine gun is stuck straight forward, and the engine itself is unprotected and therefore vulnerable to anything and everything the Germans could throw at it.

It's basically a poorly constructed airplane with wheels instead of wings.


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## Reynard (Apr 5, 2017)

Cato said:


> The Streetsweeper shotgun.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Last time I checked it was called the Armsel Protecta/Striker.  Or is this a different gun that looks the same?
Never knew that about that gun, but I know that the shells have to be loaded one at a time, and the twelve-round drum makes that a pain.



Duke Nukem said:


> I almost posted the Chauchat, but I thought, nah, let's make this one more obscure, so I posted the Villar Perosa. In 8mm Lebel the Chauchat wasn't as terrible, but in 30-06, a caliber it was converted to for US troops' use, it was at its absolute worst.


Damnit!  You beat me to it!  I can still add that the .30-06 Chauchats were all destroyed after the war, though.  



Duke Nukem said:


> I have a book called The World's Worst Weapons that has quite a few that I could post here


Sounds right up my alley.  Mind linking me to an amazon page?


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## Cato (Apr 5, 2017)

Reynard said:


> Last time I checked it was called the Armsel Protecta/Striker.  Or is this a different gun that looks the same?



At the beginning of the video I included, McCollum mentions that the Streetsweeper was essentially the cut rate version of the Proteca/Striker.


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## millais (Apr 5, 2017)

The Japanese Type 94 pistol of WWII vintage is infamously prone to accidental discharge due to its flawed design. Firmly pinching the receiver in the middle will drop the sear and set off the firing pin, so these things would go off when people squeezed them into tight holsters or grabbed them the wrong way. The Type 94s were so shitty and dangerous to their users that the 94s were almost exclusively issued to Japanese aircrews and tankers for committing suicide in case of being trapped in a burning tank or plane. There's lots of videos online of people purposely pinching their Type 94s to show off the reliability with which they can trigger the accidental discharge via the design flaw.


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## Pointless Pedant (Apr 5, 2017)

Thought the Street Sweeper was bad? There was a pistol version.


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## Reynard (Apr 5, 2017)

Cato said:


> At the beginning of the video I included, McCollum mentions that the Streetsweeper was essentially the cut rate version of the Proteca/Striker.


Ah!  So it's basically the Chinese knock-off not from China.  Makes sense.  Because I was like "Why didn't I hear this about the Striker?"



millais said:


> The Japanese Type 94 pistol of WWII vintage is infamously prone to accidental discharge due to its flawed design. Firmly pinching the receiver in the middle will drop the sear and set off the firing pin, so these things would go off when people squeezed them into tight holsters or grabbed them the wrong way. The Type 94s were so shitty and dangerous to their users that the 94s were almost exclusively issued to Japanese aircrews and tankers for committing suicide in case of being trapped in a burning tank or plane. There's lots of videos online of people purposely pinching their Type 94s to show off the reliability with which they can trigger the accidental discharge via the design flaw.


The Nambu pistols were pretty much guaranteed to make this thread!  I've heard it also wasn't powerful at all, so add that to the terrible reliability and it's an all-around piece of shit.


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## millais (Apr 5, 2017)

Reynard said:


> The Nambu pistols were pretty much guaranteed to make this thread!  I've heard it also wasn't powerful at all, so add that to the terrible reliability and it's an all-around piece of shit.


The 8mm Nambu cartridge is roughly equivalent to .32 ACP in terms of stopping power, so it was actually a decent round for the era in which it was invented, i.e. the First World War. The problem is that by the 1940s, the Japanese were still using it when everyone else had already moved on to bigger and better things. In fact, most of their small arms design was basically unimproved from the First World War, with the exception of their LMGs, which were some of the best of the Second World War.


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## Reynard (Apr 5, 2017)

millais said:


> The 8mm Nambu cartridge is roughly equivalent to .32 ACP in terms of stopping power, so it was actually a decent round for the era in which it was invented, i.e. the First World War. The problem is that by the 1940s, the Japanese were still using it when everyone else had already moved on to bigger and better things. In fact, most of their small arms design was basically unimproved from the First World War, with the exception of their LMGs, which were some of the best of the Second World War.


Exactly.  When I said that, I was meaning compared to what everyone else was using.  You had the Enfield .38, the .45 ACP, and the 9x19mm, the only one I'm not familiar with being the .38 unless the Enfield .38 was similar to a .38 Special.  If that's the case, I've shot all of these rounds.  Regardless, the latter two especially being much more powerful than the 8mm Nambu.

Here's a more modern weapon failure: the L85A1/SA80.









I need to make a distinction here.  I'm talking about the L85_A1_, not the L85_A2_. I've heard the A2 is pretty good, but I'll get into why in a bit.  This is somewhat similar to a rifle I mentioned earlier, the EM-1/EM-2, except where the EM-2 saw very little production and I don't think saw any combat despite being, to my knowledge, a good weapon, the L85A1 was an unreliable mess that might as well have been as dangerous to the user as it was to the person it was pointed at, and that's implying that it was a consistent danger to those it was pointed at.  The weapon's magazine release was poorly placed, meaning that people would unknowingly drop their magazines and have nothing but a bullet in the chamber when they fired it, it would jam, it would break, it would fall apart, and it weighed about as much as the higher-caliber FN FALs that it was meant to replace when it had the SUSAT scope and a fully loaded magazine.  After the Gulf War in 1991, Britain tried to cover up how terrible they were until eventually they got Heckler & Koch to redesign it.  And what I mean by that isn't that they changed things here and there, they changed practically everything.  And thanks to the power of German engineering, the L85A2 turned out to be a good rifle.  Despite that, people won't touch any form of this rifle after the horror stories of the A1 variant.  Not only did this gun lead to to death of its own legacy, it led to the death of an actually good weapon that fixed everything about it before the improved variant even came into existence.


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## Dr. Boe Jangles Esq. (Apr 5, 2017)

I'm not sure how this thread has gone without mentioning the Gyrojet.
A classic case of an awesome idea executed terribly, the Gyrojet line was a series of firearms that fired not bullets, but tiny rockets.
The idea was that a self propelled round like that didn't require heavy barrels, thus reducing the weight.
Unfortunately, it was inaccurate, unreliable, prone to issues, and took forever to load.
It was not a success.


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## Reynard (Apr 5, 2017)

Dr. Boe Jangles Esq. said:


> I'm not sure how this thread has gone without mentioning the Gyrojet.
> A classic case of an awesome idea executed terribly, the Gyrojet line was a series of firearms that fired not bullets, but tiny rockets.
> The idea was that a self propelled round like that didn't require heavy barrels, thus reducing the weight.
> Unfortunately, it was inaccurate, unreliable, prone to issues, and took forever to load.
> It was not a success.


Kind of reminds me of the futuristic G11 from the early 80s that Heckler & Coch made for the US Army trials for the main assault weapon.  Thing is, the only real issue to my knowledge was the cost.  It's a case of a good idea, good execution, but too far ahead of its time. (Fun fact, in German, G11 is pronounced "gay elf.")
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heckler_&_Koch_G11
Honestly, if someone were to make a subsonic caseless round with less sound than a standard suppressor (which are still decently loud), the lack of leaving casings behind would be great for a covert operations/stealth weapon.  Who knows, maybe technology will bring us there someday.


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## Francis E. Dec Esc. (Apr 5, 2017)

Here's some scans from a book of weird weapons I have:


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## Pointless Pedant (Apr 5, 2017)

Francis E. Dec Esc. said:


> Here's some scans from a book of weird weapons I have:



Apache revolvers weren't bad weapons at all in the context they were used (French gangs of the late 19th century). Their extremely small size makes them easy to conceal until you've sneaked up on the target to rob or murder him. They were never meant for use on the battlefield.


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## Staffy (Apr 5, 2017)

Does this count?


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## Curt Sibling (Apr 5, 2017)

The Cybermen hit rock botttom when they started using plastic BDSM armour.


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## Pointless Pedant (Apr 5, 2017)

Curt Sibling said:


> The Cybermen hit rock botttom when they started using plastic BDSM armour.
> View attachment 201538



I used to watch Doctor Who back when I was a kid and I liked the design of the Cybermen. It was fantasy armour that actually looked like armour.

Who thought this was a good idea?


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## Count groudon (Apr 6, 2017)

Francis E. Dec Esc. said:


> Here's some scans from a book of weird weapons I have:


Holy shit, gunblades were real? And they actually look pretty cool. Here I thought they were only a product of the wild imaginations down at Square enix.


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## Francis E. Dec Esc. (Apr 6, 2017)

Count groudon said:


> Holy shit, gunblades were real? And they actually look pretty cool. Here I thought they were only a product of the wild imaginations down at Square enix.



Squall's gunblade was probably inspired by the Elgin cutlass pistol. The US Navy actually issued it to sailors in the 1830s.


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## Techpriest (Apr 6, 2017)

In terms of real world weaponry, probably the early Cold War (up until the mid 80's) obsession with making nuclear EVERYTHING. Proposed projects included nuclear powered tanks, bombers, ships, submarines, rockets, and cruise missiles. Aside from the ships and submarines, none of the other concepts got beyond either the drawing board, small scale tests, or in the case of rockets  and cruise missiles, were actually feasible but were not implemented due to fallout concerns and cost. There's also the wonderful world of nuclear warhead equipped artillery shells, landmines, depth charges, air to air missiles, and torpedoes, all of which potentially would have seen use if needed. 


If we're going for fictional stuff along with modern stuff, there's a whole rabid base of Pierre Sprey and/or Colonel John Boyd worshiping nuts who want to dump the F-35 for some kind of miracle fighter program that will somehow have none of the problems associated with every other modern fighter design program and be cheaper and better. This F-41 "Mustang II" proposal made me giggle, because it'll supposedly be cheaper to produce than modern F-16's. How it does it is strip everything that makes the F-16 relevant and makes it a fighter incapable of performing the same roles. Passive sensors make you harder to find yes, but generally if you're picking up their emissions you're probably going to be detected soon anyway, and if you want to strike BVR you need to go active with radar systems more often than not unless you have another fighter data linked with you or a data link from another emitter. Part of the reason the F-35 is going to be an absolute murder machine is because it has the capability to network with everything, a radar suite that can perform both some jamming and is harder to jam then most others, and can operate relatively unseen even by systems actively trying to find it - even while it's emitting. His F-41 can't do any of that, and possessing a 'Light, compact radar' and no apparent attempt to actually give it the BVR ability, and a 'light compact radar' probably won't be capable of doing important things such as actually detecting the enemy before he detects you. There's also no mention of any air to ground ability in this thing, nor actual radar reducing stuff.

Also his chart makes me lol.

"Critics might say that the above table makes the F-45 look like some kind of fantastical super-plane, but it most certainly is not," directly follows this.

I've got a good amount more of this sort of stuff if anyone's interested in it in the long run.


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## Rumpled Foreskin (Apr 6, 2017)

https://sneed-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/cd/8f/62/cd8f620585d7e49b435fdca9f3513ddf.jpg 
The only I question I have is: what are the keys for?


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## Pointless Pedant (Apr 6, 2017)

Rumpled Foreskin said:


> https://sneed-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/cd/8f/62/cd8f620585d7e49b435fdca9f3513ddf.jpg
> The only I question I have is: what are the keys for?


Opening the door.


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## The Dude (Apr 6, 2017)

Reynard said:


> Kind of reminds me of the futuristic G11 from the early 80s that Heckler & Coch made for the US Army trials for the main assault weapon.  Thing is, the only real issue to my knowledge was the cost.  It's a case of a good idea, good execution, but too far ahead of its time. (Fun fact, in German, G11 is pronounced "gay elf.")
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heckler_&_Koch_G11
> Honestly, if someone were to make a subsonic caseless round with less sound than a standard suppressor (which are still decently loud), the lack of leaving casings behind would be great for a covert operations/stealth weapon.  Who knows, maybe technology will bring us there someday.




The thing that ultimately killed the G11 was the reunification of Germany. The end of the Cold War killed a lot of weapons programs. The G11 itself was a decent weapon and extremely reliable towards the end of the program. Some West German special operations groups had started field testing it before the program ended and the only real complaint is the same complaint that most small caliber weapons get: poor to mediocre terminal ballistics. The weapon itself and caseless ammunition still has its merits. If HK were to modernize the G11 to accept the accessories common on a modern fighting rifle (optics, lights, lasers, sound suppressors, etc.) and bump the caliber up to, say, 6.5mm-6.8mm (around .27 caliber) with an appropriately increased propellant charge, you'd have an excellent fighting rifle with good range and terminal ballistics. However, I think the next ammunition advancement for military rifles will be telescoped ammunition where the projectile is actually down inside the cartridge casing to make the ammunition more compact, along with a shift away from brass and steel for the casing towards polymers and lighter weight metals to make the ammunition lighter weight. The US military is already experimenting with this kind of ammunition design with the LSAT squad automatic weapon.

As far as pointless weapons go, my vote would have to go to PDWs like the P90 and MP7 due to the poor terminal ballistics of their ammunition. While they tend to have better range and flatter trajectory than a pistol caliber SMG, their rounds aren't very good "fight stoppers" compared to 9mm, .45 ACP, 10mm Auto, or .40 S&W due to their small caliber design and light bullet weights. A local SWAT team in my area was considering going to the P90 from MP5s and deciding against it after researching their effectiveness to stop a fight. It took many more rounds of the smaller projectiles to put a man down, sometimes as much as half a magazine (25 rounds), than a 9mm or .45 sub gun. They instead chose to go with all .45 caliber weapons and bought HK USP 45 pistols and UMP45 SMGs for their entry teams. This was quite a few years ago, 2006 or 2007 I believe, so I'm not sure if they're still using the same weapons.


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## Reynard (Apr 6, 2017)

The Dude said:


> The thing that ultimately killed the G11 was the reunification of Germany. The end of the Cold War killed a lot of weapons programs. The G11 itself was a decent weapon and extremely reliable towards the end of the program. Some West German special operations groups had started field testing it before the program ended and the only real complaint is the same complaint that most small caliber weapons get: poor to mediocre terminal ballistics. The weapon itself and caseless ammunition still has its merits. If HK were to modernize the G11 to accept the accessories common on a modern fighting rifle (optics, lights, lasers, sound suppressors, etc.) and bump the caliber up to, say, 6.5mm-6.8mm (around .27 caliber) with an appropriately increased propellant charge, you'd have an excellent fighting rifle with good range and terminal ballistics. However, I think the next ammunition advancement for military rifles will be telescoped ammunition where the projectile is actually down inside the cartridge casing to make the ammunition more compact, along with a shift away from brass and steel for the casing towards polymers and lighter weight metals to make the ammunition lighter weight. The US military is already experimenting with this kind of ammunition design with the LSAT squad automatic weapon.
> 
> As far as pointless weapons go, my vote would have to go to PDWs like the P90 and MP7 due to the poor terminal ballistics of their ammunition. While they tend to have better range and flatter trajectory than a pistol caliber SMG, their rounds aren't very good "fight stoppers" compared to 9mm, .45 ACP, 10mm Auto, or .40 S&W due to their small caliber design and light bullet weights. A local SWAT team in my area was considering going to the P90 from MP5s and deciding against it after researching their effectiveness to stop a fight. It took many more rounds of the smaller projectiles to put a man down, sometimes as much as half a magazine (25 rounds), than a 9mm or .45 sub gun. They instead chose to go with all .45 caliber weapons and bought HK USP 45 pistols and UMP45 SMGs for their entry teams. This was quite a few years ago, 2006 or 2007 I believe, so I'm not sure if they're still using the same weapons.


Neat to know someone knows more about the G11 that I didn't know.  I had heard it was a good weapon, though.  That's some neat stuff there.  We need to talk guns at some point.

Well, the PDWs are made more for penetrating body armor, though with the amount of 9mm stuff they have out these days, there's stuff that's even better.  The thing is that a PDW would be better against an armored soldier, but not an unarmored one.  They're more limited in their usage, but probably better for military vs military stuff.


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## The Dude (Apr 6, 2017)

Reynard said:


> Neat to know someone knows more about the G11 that I didn't know.  I had heard it was a good weapon, though.  That's some neat stuff there.  We need to talk guns at some point.
> 
> Well, the PDWs are made more for penetrating body armor, though with the amount of 9mm stuff they have out these days, there's stuff that's even better.  The thing is that a PDW would be better against an armored soldier, but not an unarmored one.  They're more limited in their usage, but probably better for military vs military stuff.



Well, ever since the end of the Cold War the chances of Western forces going up against a proper military have dropped dramatically. When the P90 was designed everyone thought we'd be fighting in European streets against the Soviets...until the bombs dropped, any way. But since then we've been going up against unarmored irregular and terrorist forces, so PDWs really don't have much of a place in the modern battlefields.

Edit: PDWs were also designed for troops who weren't on the front lines (cooks, artillery crews, support staff, etc.) to have a light and compact weapon more effective than a pistol without the weight and bulk of a rifle.


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## Pointless Pedant (Apr 7, 2017)

Reynard said:


> Neat to know someone knows more about the G11 that I didn't know.  I had heard it was a good weapon, though.  That's some neat stuff there.  We need to talk guns at some point.
> 
> Well, the PDWs are made more for penetrating body armor, though with the amount of 9mm stuff they have out these days, there's stuff that's even better.  The thing is that a PDW would be better against an armored soldier, but not an unarmored one.  They're more limited in their usage, but probably better for military vs military stuff.



What do you mean? Piercing armour is about bullet mass and velocity. Having more mass and velocity also increases the stopping power of a bullet.


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## Reynard (Apr 7, 2017)

Pointless Pedant said:


> What do you mean? Piercing armour is about bullet mass and velocity. Having more mass and velocity also increases the stopping power of a bullet.


Look at the TT-33 or the PPSh-41.  Their bullet had little stopping power but could penetrate helmets no issue.  PDWS are similar in that they lack stopping power but have good penetration.


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## Mason Verger (Apr 7, 2017)

When your armor can't stop a Chinese guy with a stick..


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## Varg Did Nothing Wrong (Apr 7, 2017)

Reynard said:


> Look at the TT-33 or the PPSh-41.  Their bullet had little stopping power but could penetrate helmets no issue.  PDWS are similar in that they lack stopping power but have good penetration.



If the bullet is designed properly then you can absolutely have a combination of stopping power and penetration of armor.

You hear people talk about the 7.62x39 vs 5.56x45 and say "The AK round has more stopping power because it's heavier!" when every single ballistic test you see, the 7.62 round cavitates less and is more likely to just punch through flesh whereas the 5.56 round is going so fast that when it hits meat it cavitates and creates a large amount of tissue damage at the wound.

I imagine that a properly designed PDW round could act the same way - very fast muzzle velocity which in turn causes cavitation upon hit, maybe some sort of offset penetrator in the bullet itself that will punch through armor if the bullet hits armor, whereas if it hits flesh the bullet will have enough ability to deform and tumble.

Back on topic: I was always fascinated by armies trying to make every soldier some sort of cyberpunk computer on legs with a billion sensors and cameras and shit, with little flip-down heads up displays and visors and whatever. 

I seems like a bunch of countries have tried this in the past and I feel like we're maybe at the cusp of someone actually making it somewhat of a success. Maybe in 10-15 years.

But up until now all the attempts have looked like this:






Look at that dough-faced motherfucker and his massive fucking gun.


----------



## Reynard (Apr 7, 2017)

Varg Did Nothing Wrong said:


> If the bullet is designed properly then you can absolutely have a combination of stopping power and penetration of armor.
> 
> You hear people talk about the 7.62x39 vs 5.56x45 and say "The AK round has more stopping power because it's heavier!" when every single ballistic test you see, the 7.62 round cavitates less and is more likely to just punch through flesh whereas the 5.56 round is going so fast that when it hits meat it cavitates and creates a large amount of tissue damage at the wound.
> 
> ...


Oh, obviously!  I'm just saying that those bullets used in said weapons were an example of one and not the other.  You can totally have a round that has both stopping power and penetration, as the vast amount of 9mm variants on the market today have been doing.

The thing with the 5.56 is that it require a certain barrel length.  In a full-sized M16, it'll do exactly what you said, but in the Colt Commando/CAR-15, I've heard that it was unable to penetrate windows and did little damage, hence the weapon is never used and the M4 took its place.  I think the CAR-15 really tainted some people's views of the round, just like the L85A1 doomed the vastly superior L85A2 though the anecdotes that come wit it.

Hah!  Yeah, he's got that baby face thing going on!


----------



## Pointless Pedant (Apr 7, 2017)

Varg Did Nothing Wrong said:


> If the bullet is designed properly then you can absolutely have a combination of stopping power and penetration of armor.
> 
> You hear people talk about the 7.62x39 vs 5.56x45 and say "The AK round has more stopping power because it's heavier!" when every single ballistic test you see, the 7.62 round cavitates less and is more likely to just punch through flesh whereas the 5.56 round is going so fast that when it hits meat it cavitates and creates a large amount of tissue damage at the wound.
> 
> ...



Exoskeletons are a good idea if good enough batteries are available. Troops already damage their bodies from carrying loads of heavy gear around, never mind if more stuff gets added in future. The reason why they haven't been implemented is problems with power, since the exoskeleton running out of it in the middle of battle would be disastrous.


----------



## Varg Did Nothing Wrong (Apr 7, 2017)

Pointless Pedant said:


> Exoskeletons are a good idea if good enough batteries are available. Troops already damage their bodies from carrying loads of heavy gear around, never mind if more stuff gets added in future. The reason why they haven't been implemented is problems with power, since the exoskeleton running out of it in the middle of battle would be disastrous.



That's unlikely to happen in any near future, barring some miraculous increases in efficiency over current electric motors and ability to store power increasing not by 100% but by like 1500%.


----------



## Pointless Pedant (Apr 7, 2017)

Varg Did Nothing Wrong said:


> That's unlikely to happen in any near future, barring some miraculous increases in efficiency over current electric motors and ability to store power increasing not by 100% but by like 1500%.



Battery technology is a major focus at the moment. Exoskeletons aren't a viable solution at present, but they may be in a few decades' time. It depends what you mean by the near future; if you mean by 2027, probably not, but by 2047 things may be very different.


----------



## Varg Did Nothing Wrong (Apr 7, 2017)

Pointless Pedant said:


> Battery technology is a major focus at the moment. Exoskeletons aren't a viable solution at present, but they may be in a few decades' time. It depends what you mean by the near future; if you mean by 2027, probably not, but by 2047 things may be very different.



I honestly hope that by 2047 we'll be advanced enough to where I can just get my brain scooped out of my dilapidated meat body and transplanted into an android body like Ghost in the Shell.


----------



## Pointless Pedant (Apr 7, 2017)

Varg Did Nothing Wrong said:


> I honestly hope that by 2047 we'll be advanced enough to where I can just get my brain scooped out of my dilapidated meat body and transplanted into an android body like Ghost in the Shell.



There are highly theoretical proposals for "mind uploading" where someone's brain data is uploaded into a robot, which is a similar proposal except without the physical brain, which would get old and die itself just like any other organic matter. Putting a brain in a robot won't stop it from ageing.


----------



## Taily Puff (Apr 7, 2017)

CricketVonChirp said:


> https://sneed-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/e7/01/8b/e7018b02e1ab0c1cfba8cd21e9c39ea5.jpg



To be fair though, if someone rushed at me swinging that, I'd freak the fuck out and probably scream like a little girl.

I'm surprised no one's mentioned the .577 Tyrannosaurus round.






I can appreciate any experiment in overkill, but a weapon that requires most people to physically pick it up in between shots is pretty much useless.  I guess unless you're being charged by an actual T-Rex or something.


----------



## Pointless Pedant (Apr 7, 2017)

Taily Puff said:


> To be fair though, if someone rushed at me swinging that, I'd freak the fuck out and probably scream like a little girl.
> 
> I'm surprised no one's mentioned the .577 Tyrannosaurus round.
> 
> ...



4 bore stopping rifles were somewhat similar and were useful if charged by an elephant on safari. They were never intended for use in battle.


----------



## ICametoLurk (Apr 7, 2017)

Mason Verger said:


> View attachment 202453
> 
> When your armor can't stop a Chinese guy with a stick..


TBF unless it's really padded armor is useless against blunt force trauma.


----------



## Pointless Pedant (Apr 7, 2017)

ICametoLurk said:


> TBF unless it's really padded armor is useless against blunt force trauma.



Try getting punched in the head wearing a steel helmet and then try without.

It's true heavy weapons like war hammers could break bones through armour, but they'd do even more damage without it.


----------



## cumrobbery (Apr 7, 2017)

Chainmail when worn without any padding/secondary armor underneath. Its just as vulnerable against a blunt force weapon as normal clothes. Roman chainmail was actually double layered on the areas that weren't protected by the massive shields that they used.


----------



## Francis E. Dec Esc. (Apr 7, 2017)

In 1864, the Union Army issued a .52 caliber Sharps cavalry carbine that had a grain grinder built into the stock. It was popularly known as the "coffee grinder", but it was actually supposed to process grain into horse fodder.


----------



## Pointless Pedant (Apr 8, 2017)

cumrobbery said:


> Chainmail when worn without any padding/secondary armor underneath. Its just as vulnerable against a blunt force weapon as normal clothes. Roman chainmail was actually double layered on the areas that weren't protected by the massive shields that they used.



Even without a gambeson underneath, maille still stops slashes from sharp weapons and reduces the impact of arrows. It's less effective without the padding, but it isn't useless.

If you want useless armour, check out this fantasy """armour""" studded leather vest.






Stab between the studs and it's just a leather jacket.


----------



## Count groudon (Apr 8, 2017)

Spoiler








Siberian bear hunting armor. Ironically it was created by an artist for an exibit and was never really intended for actual use, it unfortunately still suffers from the same flaws you would expect from something covered head to toe in spikes. While wearing it you would be pretty much a danger to everything around you and even the wearer wouldn't be safe from impaling parts of their bodies on their own armor. The actual spikes themselves are also a pain in the fact that if the wearer fell over or was struck with a reasonably heavy object they would make the impact even more jarring. Hell, just getting the thing on would br a time consuming process since it requires delicate handling and carelessness would most likely result in a hole on the wearers hand. While it does look very cool and I would undoubtedly wear this if I went on an autistic rampage to keep people from restraining me, if you were to wear this while going up against an actual bear the spikes would most likely only piss it off making the ensuing mauling all the more violent.


----------



## Pointless Pedant (Apr 8, 2017)

Count groudon said:


> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> ...



It's pretty sad that someone went to all that effort to make something so completely useless and ugly.


----------



## Count groudon (Apr 8, 2017)

Pointless Pedant said:


> It's pretty sad that someone went to all that effort to make something so completely useless and ugly.


It actually didn't require much effort at all. It's just regular leather clothing with cheap iron nails on top and an extra layer of leather to hold them in place. Afaik the musuem needed some new interesting props for an exibit so they commissioned some local asshat artist to make something cool and outlandish they could use to draw in crowds, and the artist used the cheapest idea he could come up with so he could make a bigger profit. It served its purpose well too, to this day it still draws in plenty of crowds because of how fucking bizarre it looks.


----------



## Pointless Pedant (Apr 8, 2017)

Count groudon said:


> It actually didn't require much effort at all. It's just regular leather clothing with cheap iron nails on top and an extra layer of leather to hold them in place. Afaik the musuem needed some new interesting props for an exibit so they commissioned some local asshat artist to make something cool and outlandish they could use to draw in crowds, and the artist used the cheapest idea he could come up with so he could make a bigger profit. It served its purpose well too, to this day it still draws in plenty of crowds because of how fucking bizarre it looks.



It's not historical, though, so it shouldn't be in an exhibit on Siberia.


----------



## Count groudon (Apr 8, 2017)

Pointless Pedant said:


> It's not historical, though, so it shouldn't be in an exhibit on Siberia.


Despite its crooked history it's still a very popular part of the exibit. Even though it's pretty much common knowledge that it's total bullshit these days, it's still beloved by the people who visit the museum because it is pretty interesting to look at. But yeah, I can't say I'm happy that it was fabricated for the sole purpose of making people pay money to walk over to it and say "what the shit is this thing" but by being such a weird little piece it's managed to cement itself into history anyways.


----------



## millais (Apr 9, 2017)

Francis E. Dec Esc. said:


> In 1864, the Union Army issued a .52 caliber Sharps cavalry carbine that had a grain grinder built into the stock. It was popularly known as the "coffee grinder", but it was actually supposed to process grain into horse fodder.


They made an integral coffee grinder variant of the Trapdoor Springfields as well. Apparently the bean counters in the quartermaster corps found it cheaper to issue a few of those to every company than to keep issuing regular coffee grinders that troops would often lose or barter away on the black market and would constantly have to be replaced. The one thing they could be sure that troops on the frontier wouldn't barter away or lose were their rifles.


----------



## Curt Sibling (Apr 9, 2017)




----------



## Pointless Pedant (Apr 9, 2017)

Curt Sibling said:


> View attachment 203143



A helmet is the first piece of armour a soldier would buy, but not one like that. What's even keeping it on her head? There's no chin strap.


----------



## Reynard (Apr 9, 2017)

Pointless Pedant said:


> It's pretty sad that someone went to all that effort to make something so completely useless and ugly.


I don't know if I'd call it useless.  I'm sure the BDSM community could get something out of it.


Pointless Pedant said:


> A helmet is the first piece of armour a soldier would buy, but not one like that. What's even keeping it on her head? There's no chin strap.


Would it really be the first?  There were pistol bullets that could easily penetrate a helmet back in WWII, so it makes you wonder just how useful a helmet would be.  If you get hit in the head and somehow live, you probably received brain damage already, but maybe I'm wrong.  You'd think that with standard training telling people to aim for the center of mass (the torso), you'd want a bullet proof vest instead.  Just my thoughts, but I may not be too familiar with what modern day helmets are capable of stopping.


----------



## Pointless Pedant (Apr 9, 2017)

Reynard said:


> I don't know if I'd call it useless.  I'm sure the BDSM community could get something out of it.
> 
> Would it really be the first?  There were pistol bullets that could easily penetrate a helmet back in WWII, so it makes you wonder just how useful a helmet would be.  If you get hit in the head and somehow live, you probably received brain damage already, but maybe I'm wrong.  You'd think that with standard training telling people to aim for the center of mass (the torso), you'd want a bullet proof vest instead.  Just my thoughts, but I may not be too familiar with what modern day helmets are capable of stopping.



It's not about bullets, it's about flying shrapnel or falling debris. Artillery and bombs killed far more people than bullets in the world wars.


----------



## Reynard (Apr 9, 2017)

Pointless Pedant said:


> It's not about bullets, it's about flying shrapnel or falling debris. Artillery and bombs killed far more people than bullets in the world wars.


Very good point, actually.  Considering how the Brodie helmet was made specifically for protecting from stuff like that coming from above, I don't know why I didn't realize that there.  My bad.


----------



## Caddchef (Apr 9, 2017)

Randall Fragg said:


> It's still pretty cool looking in a "people were expected to use this steampunk reject" way.
> In a similar note, here's how they first dropped bombs from airplanes in WW1
> 
> 
> ...


You think that's bad? They originally started with bricks (i shit you not), having said that my favourite improvised munition is from a musket fired by the British in Spain, a soldier is on record as being killed by a yard stick (ruler).


----------



## NIGGO KILLA (Apr 9, 2017)

I dont care what those so called "experts" say but gundams will be real 

JUST YOU WAIT


----------



## Kiwi Jeff (Apr 10, 2017)

I think this guy's videos are the epitome of this thread.
https://youtube.com/user/HyperMetal101


Spoiler: Videos


----------



## Ti-99/4A (Apr 10, 2017)

Moon rocks.


----------



## Pointless Pedant (Apr 10, 2017)

NIGGO KILLA said:


> I dont care what those so called "experts" say but gundams will be real
> 
> JUST YOU WAIT
> View attachment 203237



Why do fantasy armour designs always have absurdly massive pauldrons? Having loads of weight on the shoulders isn't good for anything, man or machine.


----------



## DangerousGas (Apr 10, 2017)

Pointless Pedant said:


> Why do fantasy armour designs always have absurdly massive pauldrons? Having loads of weight on the shoulders isn't good for anything, man or machine.


Because they're invariably designed by narrow-shouldered milquetoasts that have the rampant horn for what they see as being hyper-masculine design.


----------



## Goofy Logic (Apr 10, 2017)

Cato said:


> The Streetsweeper shotgun.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Cobray arms made sub-par weapons and relied on edgy naming to try and market them.

They mostly made MAC clones, but they had a 45-70 PISTOL version of the Streetsweeper called the Ladies Home Companion:





And a slam-fire shotgun called the Terminator.





The Streetsweeper design itself was concieved in South Africa to address issues with shotguns being used in riot control.  I believe the Streetsweeper was the second iteration of this design, as there is a third design that is supposed to eject the spent shells.

As for another piece of useless military gear, you might have heard of the Ross Rifle debacle the Canadians had in WW1.  Well, Sam Hughes, the minister of defence and the center of that controversy, also concieved a Shovel That Doubled As A Shield


----------



## c-no (Apr 10, 2017)

Pointless Pedant said:


> Why do fantasy armour designs always have absurdly massive pauldrons? Having loads of weight on the shoulders isn't good for anything, man or machine.


To look intimidating? Fantasy armor itself will always have some sort of impractical look be it bikinis made of chain, overly large pauldrons that can be a euphenism for penis size, and lots of spikes that would be saying "this guy is really evil". Speaking of fantasy armor, I feel fantasy weapons can end up being no better, especially with weapons that look like they were designed for a teenage edgelord.


----------



## Pointless Pedant (Apr 11, 2017)

c-no said:


> To look intimidating? Fantasy armor itself will always have some sort of impractical look be it bikinis made of chain, overly large pauldrons that can be a euphenism for penis size, and lots of spikes that would be saying "this guy is really evil". Speaking of fantasy armor, I feel fantasy weapons can end up being no better, especially with weapons that look like they were designed for a teenage edgelord.



Massive codpieces were popular among the German Landsknechte of the 16th century. Some were big enough to store wine in. People were usually more direct about phallic symbolism in the days when plate armour was common.

The armour in the Lord of the Rings films looks like armour for the most part. They made imitation maille out of cut up bits of PVC pipe, which looked a lot more convincing than the "knitted maille" made out of a painted sweater often seen in films.


----------



## Reynard (Apr 11, 2017)

Goofy Logic said:


> As for another piece of useless military gear, you might have heard of the Ross Rifle debacle the Canadians had in WW1.  Well, Sam Hughes, the minister of defence, also concieved a Shovel That Doubled As A Shield


 The shovel was basically the multi tool of WWI.  It was a tool and a weapon.  But a shield?  You could probably use it to block a club the way you would with a sword or something, but specifically a shield?  That's new.


----------



## Elwood P. Dowd (Apr 11, 2017)

For the Mall Ninja in your life...though this one looks like it would be as dangerous to the person carrying it as it would be to anyone else. Oh, right. For the Mall Ninja in your life.






Powerlevel: 12 year old me would have loved this.

Image shamelessly stolen from /r/fantasy.


----------



## Elwood P. Dowd (Apr 11, 2017)

Eh, double post, sorry, but this amused me.

United M48 Kommando Tactical Survival Hammer






I guess this might actually have some kind of use, even beyond being your go-to tool for post-apocalyptic cinder block breaking, but the video was hilarious.


----------



## Francis E. Dec Esc. (Apr 11, 2017)

Elwood P. Dowd said:


> Eh, double post, sorry, but this amused me.
> 
> United M48 Kommando Tactical Survival Hammer
> 
> ...



That looks like it would be good to kill Rhaegar Targaryen at the Battle of the Trident.


----------



## c-no (Apr 11, 2017)

Elwood P. Dowd said:


> Eh, double post, sorry, but this amused me.
> 
> United M48 Kommando Tactical Survival Hammer
> 
> ...


It would of been more fitting when we had people equipped in plate armor. But having a survival hammer? I don't know what sort of purpose those could hold in surviving in the wilderness.


----------



## Goofy Logic (Apr 11, 2017)

c-no said:


> It would of been more fitting when we had people equipped in plate armor. But having a survival hammer? I don't know what sort of purpose those could hold in surviving in the wilderness.


So you can frame buildings tactically during the zombie apocalypse.


----------



## Reynard (Apr 11, 2017)

One of the more obscure and interesting developments in terms of camouflage was the Desert Night-Vision Camouflage.  In development since '83, it saw its first usage in the First Gulf War back in '91.  Judging by the last image, with it being in he same photograph as the three-color desert pattern seen in the Middle Eastern deployment of the more recent Bush Administration makes me think it may have seen use in Afaghanistan and Iraq around '02/'03.


Spoiler













https://sneed-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/aa/e4/1b/aae41b9569f54e951f7649449c5494cd.jpg



The idea was to create a camouflage that would conceal special forces units from the increased threat of hostiles with night vision as more technology became more commonplace around the world.  The results were the odd two-color grid pattern you see there.  The idea isn't a bad one, I have to admit, but if you're thinking "that will never work as concealment from infrared night vision," you're right.  Trials that compared its effectiveness through the US's AN/PVS-5 night vision goggles to be inferior to the "chocolate chip" six-color pattern used by the military for desert environments at the time.  It was more noticeable than the mass-produced standard issue through night vision at the time, and I can only imagine it's ineffectiveness with today's night vision.  So it didn't work at its intended purpose, _and_ it failed at being a conventional camouflage.
http://yarchive.net/mil/night_camo_clothing.html
The test seems to have been done after its first usage, but its usage past then (if my assumptions from the pictures is correct) is beyond me.  Probably because they simply had it on hand, as suiting up an army is far from easy or cheap.  Though you'd think they'd use the camo patterns that were more effective at day and night.

I actually saw this stuff (the pants) at a local army surplus store near where I was living at the time.  I've considered buying it for the sake of history and it's obscurity.


----------



## Techpriest (Apr 11, 2017)

Reynard said:


> One of the more obscure and interesting developments in terms of camouflage was the Desert Night-Vision Camouflage.  In development since '83, it saw its first usage in the First Gulf War back in '91.  Judging by the last image, with it being in he same photograph as the three-color desert pattern seen in the Middle Eastern deployment of the more recent Bush Administration makes me think it may have seen use in Afaghanistan and Iraq around '02/'03.
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> ...


Fun fact: Force Recon during Iraqi Freedom were using woodland gear for their vests on top of standard Desert camo. Why? Because that's what they had on hand for them at the time. 

In plane related news, there's this hilarious proposal for an F-26.


----------



## Ti-99/4A (Apr 11, 2017)

Techpriest said:


> In plane related news, there's this hilarious proposal for an F-26.


It looks like something Frank Wu would have made for Revolution 60.


----------



## Pointless Pedant (Apr 12, 2017)

Reynard said:


> The shovel was basically the multi tool of WWI.  It was a tool and a weapon.  But a shield?  You could probably use it to block a club the way you would with a sword or something, but specifically a shield?  That's new.



The entrenching tool works a bit like a one handed axe as a close combat weapon. It can quite effectively parry strikes from knives and clubs, but making the head as big as a full shield would make it far too bulky and heavy to carry all the time. Historical battle axe heads weren't very big either.


----------



## Curt Sibling (Apr 12, 2017)

I think being cracked with a hammer of any sort going to ruin the day.


----------



## Pointless Pedant (Apr 12, 2017)

Curt Sibling said:


> I think being cracked with a hammer of any sort going to ruin the day.



On the bare head, definitely, but unless the other person is wearing some kind of armour a blade has a lot more speed and versatility. A knife can quickly stab and slash any part of the body, while a hammer can only perform slower strikes to break bones. War hammers were only briefly popular in the age of full plate armour, since, unlike a blade, they can inflict serious damage through armour by blunt trauma. We don't live in the age of full plate armour any more, so a hammer is an odd choice of melee weapon over a knife these days.


----------



## DangerousGas (Apr 12, 2017)

Curt Sibling said:


> I think being cracked with a hammer of any sort going to ruin the day.


True, but let's be realistic: the kind of sperg that'll buy it because 'tactical' won't have the upper body strength require to endanger anyone beyond possibly dropping it on their toes.


----------



## Curt Sibling (Apr 12, 2017)

Pointless Pedant said:


> On the bare head, definitely, but unless the other person is wearing some kind of armour a blade has a lot more speed and versatility. A knife can quickly stab and slash any part of the body, while a hammer can only perform slower strikes to break bones. War hammers were only briefly popular in the age of full plate armour, since, unlike a blade, they can inflict serious damage through armour by blunt trauma. We don't live in the age of full plate armour any more, so a hammer is an odd choice of melee weapon over a knife these days.



The tactical hammer is a gimmck.

A standard DIY hardware hammer is still a concealable and deadly implement that will kill a man in one blow.


----------



## TiggerNits (Apr 12, 2017)

The AN-94 deserves a mention. 






I'm sure you've seen it in Call of Duty or Battlefield, in real life it was a design the Russians bought with the idea to have it replace the AK-74, but in reality it quickly became known as a highly expensive and overly complex and fragile weapon that got extremely limited use and sent to units with no chance of seeing real combat according to some.

First off, from the front the magazine bends ever so slightly to the right






This is due to some weird ass feeding mechanism (supposedly VERY similar to the G-11's) and it threw off the balance and recoil of the weapon

But also like the G-11, the entire goddamed barrel, gas tube, receiver, and bolt carrier all exist as a single component group moving back and forth across the interior with every shot. It was done to reduce recoil, which it kind of did, but it also made the whole thing extremely prone to equipment failure due to the highly complex design and precision work needed to manufacture. And if there's one word Russian manufacturing never really gets paired with, it's precision.

The Russians would later make the AK-12 as the future gun de jour, which is all around regarded as a much better successor to the AK-47 and 74


----------



## Techpriest (Apr 12, 2017)

Doesn't it also have an insanely high fire rate for its 2 round burst fire that gives it a very tight grouping?


----------



## Pointless Pedant (Apr 12, 2017)

Curt Sibling said:


> The tactical hammer is a gimmck.
> 
> A standard DIY hardware hammer is still a concealable and deadly implement that will kill a man in one blow.



It is, but it still lacks the versatility of a knife as both weapon and tool, which is why all modern troops are issued a survival knife but not a hammer. Even if we're only talking about use as a weapon, which isn't even the main use of either, a knife can kill by cutting any major artery, while a hammer has the single option of a hefty strike to the head. A knife, even a big one, also moves much faster due to the point of balance being closer to the handle, so it's a lot easier to land a strike on an aware opponent.

A hammer is a fair weapon, especially taking someone by surprise,  but it's easy to see why it wasn't used often except in the days of full plate armour.


----------



## TiggerNits (Apr 12, 2017)

Techpriest said:


> Doesn't it also have an insanely high fire rate for its 2 round burst fire that gives it a very tight grouping?




Not from what I've seen, but the ones I have seen have been remanufactures so maybe


----------



## Techpriest (Apr 12, 2017)

TiggerNits said:


> Not from what I've seen, but the ones I have seen have been remanufactures so maybe


This is basically hearsay, but that's what I heard as the reason for the wierd ass recoil design and the other features that caused it to be rejected.


----------



## Foltest (Apr 12, 2017)

Techpriest said:


> Doesn't it also have an insanely high fire rate for its 2 round burst fire that gives it a very tight grouping?


It does. When it uses the 2 round burst fire, it would reach 1800 rounds per min. Its normal RoF is 600. It also gave it more armour piercing power.


----------



## Count groudon (Apr 12, 2017)

Elwood P. Dowd said:


> For the Mall Ninja in your life...though this one looks like it would be as dangerous to the person carrying it as it would be to anyone else. Oh, right. For the Mall Ninja in your life.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I'm just trying to figure out how the fuck you'd be able to effectively hurt someone with that thing. Do you just sort of press your knuckles up against them and drag them around?


----------



## Francis E. Dec Esc. (Apr 13, 2017)

Here's one of the worst pieces of field gear issued to the US Army: the M1928 Haversack:






They were issued in the early days of WWII and the troops hated them. To take anything out of it, say, a fresh pair of socks, you had to take the whole thing off, undo the straps holding everything together, get your socks out, and repack it from scratch.


----------



## Foltest (Apr 13, 2017)

https://sneed-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/7c/7c/7a/7c7c7ad4b45384af41a1210660d95d12.jpg 
They used this setup inside tanks in World War 1. It was designed to protected the user from sharpnel if the tank would be hit, but how effective it was is up to debate. It was not comfortable to use at all.


----------



## Reynard (Apr 13, 2017)

TiggerNits said:


> The AN-94 deserves a mention.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I don't know how I forgot about this one.  Its unique two round burst that was supposed to have both bullets hit the same area.  Not a bad idea, but it required extensive training and on top of being a failed gun, it's key feature was impossible for an average soldier. 

Interesting that you said it's fragile, though.  I remember it always jamming when I used it in the Stalker games.  Kudos to them for the realism.


----------



## TiggerNits (Apr 13, 2017)

Reynard said:


> I don't know how I forgot about this one.  Its unique two round burst that was supposed to have both bullets hit the same area.  Not a bad idea, but it required extensive training and on top of being a failed gun, it's key feature was impossible for an average soldier.
> 
> Interesting that you said it's fragile, though.  I remember it always jamming when I used it in the Stalker games.  Kudos to them for the realism.




To the rifle's credit, it was easily the best gun in Bad Company 2


----------



## Sanshain (Apr 13, 2017)

Reynard said:


> Interesting that you said it's fragile, though.  I remember it always jamming when I used it in the Stalker games.  Kudos to them for the realism.



The STALKER games are generally pretty realistic with their firearms. The AN-94 doesn't actually have the correct fire rate, though. It's nowhere near the 1800 RPM it should be in burst mode.


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## Reynard (Apr 13, 2017)

Forever Sunrise said:


> The STALKER games are generally pretty realistic with their firearms. The AN-94 doesn't actually have the correct fire rate, though. It's nowhere near the 1800 RPM it should be in burst mode.


Yeah, which is why a mentioned it (and because my autism for that series is heavy).  The guns are pretty accurate to their real life stuff to my knowledge.  Aside from the ejector being on the wrong side of the gun.

I guess I should be glad that my opinions on weapons sort of come from that game.  I couldn't look the AN-94 in the face after that experience of it constantly jamming when it had just a little scratch.


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## Pointless Pedant (Apr 13, 2017)

Count groudon said:


> I'm just trying to figure out how the fuck you'd be able to effectively hurt someone with that thing. Do you just sort of press your knuckles up against them and drag them around?



It looks like an appalling attempt at making a trench knife. Of course mall ninja morons would try to make their own rather than using tried and tested designs proven on the field of battle.


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## Count groudon (Apr 13, 2017)

Foltest said:


> https://sneed-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/7c/7c/7a/7c7c7ad4b45384af41a1210660d95d12.jpg
> They used this setup inside tanks in World War 1. It was designed to protected the user from sharpnel if the tank would be hit, but how effective it was is up to debate. It was not comfortable to use at all.


While I'm generally a fan of armor that covers the wearer's face because it looks badass, this just looks like a particularly uncomfortable dollar store Halloween mask.



Pointless Pedant said:


> It looks like an appalling attempt at making a trench knife. Of course mall ninja morons would try to make their own rather than using tried and tested designs proven on the field of battle.


It's like someone looked at a trench knife and thought "gee this sure is swell, but it'd be way better if we took away any sort of practicality this might've had and made it look like something the protagonist of a generic anime would carry around."


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## TiggerNits (Apr 13, 2017)

Next up, we have an airplane

The Sukhoi 15 "Flagon" was a Soviet interceptor that was kinda good at shooting down airliners and killed Yuri Gagarin.






The concept for the Flagon was it would take off, using 2 sizable jet engines, fly to the target area 100% on autopilot as instructions were given by ground teams, then at the last moment the pilot would take over, use the high-gain radar to try and get through the incoming bomber's ECM defenses and launch some semi-active radar guided missiles and hope for the best. 

The Flagon existed around the same timeframe as the MiG-25, which did the exact same job, but better and the MiG-23, which had look-down-shoot-down capability, that the Su-15 did not and could actually turn with a low altitude strike fighter, which the flagon could not.






The Su-15 would distinguish itself by shooting a Korean airliner (but not shooting it down) and forcing it to land on an iced over lake and killing 2 civilians'

It also "Shot down" an Israeli plane carrying arms to Iran, by running in to it by failing to be able to manuver away from it after it had tried to make visual confirmation






It would then shoot down weather balloons the USSR accused of being used to spy on them (They were actually Soviet balloons)

Next, it successfully shot down yet another Korean airliner, this time killing all 200+ people on board.






Then, finally one killed the first man in space during a parade fly by, as the pilot of the Su-15 was going too fast and could not maneuver around Mr. Gagarin's MiG-15, and killed a national hero.






The Su -15 was never exported to Warsaw nations, the Soviets claimed due to the high powered anti-ECM radar, but in reality it was because they were crash prone, hard to fly, extremely maintenance heavy and hilarious incapable of doing what it was built for. The Soviets thought they'd be better off making sure no one got a chance to get a closer look at them in use and keep an air of mysterious threat to them. But when Victor Belenko defected with his MiG-25 in 1976, any hope of the Russian interceptor force being feared had been vanquished, as their crown jewel turned out to be a paper tiger at best. So there was little hope for it's admittedly inferior and more numerous younger brother.


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## Pointless Pedant (Apr 13, 2017)

Count groudon said:


> While I'm generally a fan of armor that covers the wearer's face because it looks badass, this just looks like a particularly uncomfortable dollar store Halloween mask.
> 
> 
> It's like someone looked at a trench knife and thought "gee this sure is swell, but it'd be way better if we took away any sort of practicality this might've had and made it look like something the protagonist of a generic anime would carry around."



It doesn't look like a Japanese cartoon sword. For that it would need to be as big as the man carrying it.

Cartoon writers don't understand that the only reason the nodachi was usable is because the blade wasn't very thick or wide. Even a 2 hand sword only ever weighed about 3kg at most.


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## TiggerNits (May 8, 2017)

Time to feature dumb shit we Americans have built







Wait, gotta flip it






There we go. See the Sheridan was built in the late 60s to do two things. Be dropped from planes and be floated across rivers. Problem is, tanks, even light ones, are heavy. The mtal needed to protect the crew from small arms does add up and heavy things aren't so great at flying or floating.

So to combat this weight issue someone decided to just use aluminum instead, which did reduce the weight substantially. Unfortunately it made the tank about as bulletproof as Sonny Corleone's Lincoln (if you don't get this joke then please get off the internet, go watch The Godfather and come back. I'll wait)

Also, when aluminum burns, like say, when it's with with explosive shells, artillery or even napalm, the fumes are extremely toxic. So being trapped inside of a tank made of it while the enemy shoots at you is about as shitty of an assignment as you could get in an actual shooting war. This was amde worse by the cannon firing a 152mm caseless round that left a lot of flammable residue after a few shots, which could burn hot enough to warp the barrel and force the next round to blow the barrel apart or even worse, vent the highly toxic fumes back at the crew. So in our hopes to overcome these issues, the United States Dept of Defense decided to give it a guided rocket that fires out of the main cannon, the MGM-51 Shillelagh






We ordered a lot of these (88,000), and at about $4000 a pop, even in 1972 money, they were downright affordable for a DoD guided anything. Problem was, we would never, ever use them. These got brought in to Desert Storm, but never once got fired at anything other than paper targets. To their credit, the 15lbs of explosive charges in them could really fuck up a paper target. So what they ended up being was a really good practical training tool for Explosive Ordnance Disposal units to disarm and explode before heading to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Now, remember how this thing was made to be dropped out of planes? Well, they actually did this. The original idea is they'd push it out on a pallet with 4 parachutes attached at the corners and the crew, ammo and fuel inside. Luckily, an adult overheard this plan and made them stop even considering trying this with live humans in the tank. Instead, the new idea was that they'd just drag chute the fuckers, empty out of a low flying C-130 instead, with the ammo and fuel on seperate pallets and have a helicopter land with the crew. This proved to be safer for the crew, and equally as dangerous for the equipment (see picture at top)






That said, when it worked, it did look cool as fuck.


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## Goofy Logic (May 8, 2017)

TiggerNits said:


> So to combat this weight issue someone decided to just use aluminum instead,


The Sheridan was not the only vehicle with Aluminum armor.  Aluminum was becoming a commonplace metal in the 1950s (about the time a decent refining process was perfected), and manufacturers were tinkering with using it in their products.  At the same time, the US military had fully accepted the tactical advantages the Air Force had, and was rapidly gearing up with equipment to be used with that.

As a result, a lot of vehicles commissioned during the Vietnam War had the requirement that they must be capible of air deployment, so manufacturers had to find ways to reduce the overall weight so a cargo plane could carry them.

On top of the aluminum armor, the steering gearboxes for the tracked vehicles were made from magnesium.  While it reduced weight and absorbed gear noise, Any chemist or machinist knows that magnesium is quite flammable when given enough heat.

The 'aluminum craze' also led to fun stuff like armalite's stubborn insistence on developing an all-aluminum gun.  It actually took some outside interference for them to compromise and produce the M16.


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## Curt Sibling (May 8, 2017)

Although incredibly impressive, and enormously destructive, the Dora rail-mounted artillery was a typical example of
the Germanic fixation with massive power being the solution to tactical challenges. A giant drain on resources and
men, these colossal wastes of time never succeeded in their mission to crush the soviet defences at Leningrad...

Fortunately, the sausage-guzzlers seemed foolishly obsessed with these diabolical projects, instead of going to total war
mode and mass-building the war-winning machines they already had...Which was a lucky situation for the Allies...


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## Irwin M. Felcher (May 8, 2017)

Fucking scythes. I hate 'em.


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## Pointless Pedant (May 8, 2017)

Curt Sibling said:


> View attachment 216817
> Although incredibly impressive, and enormously destructive, the Dora rail-mounted artillery was a typical example of
> the Germanic fixation with massive power being the solution to tactical challenges. A giant drain on resources and
> men, these colossal wastes of time never succeeded in their mission to crush the soviet defences at Leningrad...
> ...



Even when Germany did finally go to total war production in 1944, their production was still far less than the United States alone, never mind the Allies as a whole, and if they'd built more materiel they'd have had serious problems finding the fuel for it.



Irwin M. Felcher said:


> Fucking scythes. I hate 'em.



Do you realise they're supposed to be farm tools, and they're actually quite good at that?


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## Irwin M. Felcher (May 8, 2017)

Pointless Pedant said:


> Do you realise they're supposed to be farm tools, and they're actually quite good at that?


Yeah, but they're stupid weapons. Just use a damn sword, ya posers.


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## Pointless Pedant (May 8, 2017)

Irwin M. Felcher said:


> Yeah, but they're stupid weapons. Just use a damn sword, ya posers.



The only people who used scythes to fight were peasants who didn't have proper weapons. Swords were usually a backup or sidearm unless used with a shield, but most peasants didn't have a shield either.


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## Curt Sibling (May 9, 2017)

Pointless Pedant said:


> Even when Germany did finally go to total war production in 1944, their production was still far less than the United States alone, never mind the Allies as a whole, and if they'd built more materiel they'd have had serious problems finding the fuel for it.



The point you make about US war production is totally obvious, and you omit to mention the colossal output of the USSR's weaponry. Russia replaced 5000 tank lossess in a fortnight.
What's more, the krauts never actually went into full total war in the same way the UK did. They still had thousands of able bodied men working as sevants/butlers in 1944.
Not to mention all the troops and resources tied up in the utterly pointless genocide. In 1940, Germany had an excellent chance of winning the war, but totally squandered it.

Anyway. This is a debate for another thread.


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## millais (May 9, 2017)

Curt Sibling said:


> View attachment 216817
> Although incredibly impressive, and enormously destructive, the Dora rail-mounted artillery was a typical example of
> the Germanic fixation with massive power being the solution to tactical challenges. A giant drain on resources and
> men, these colossal wastes of time never succeeded in their mission to crush the soviet defences at Leningrad...
> ...


The Gustav railway gun (of the same production series as the Dora) saw a lot of good use in the Crimean campaign when it came time to reduce the coastal fortress defenses of Sevastopol. The coastal fortresses dominated all the approaches with their big naval guns making ground assaults prohibitively costly, so it ended up being more economical to bring in the Gustav to knock the fortresses out of action from beyond the reach of the naval guns. In one famous incident during the siege of Sevastopol, the Gustav even blew up an offshore Soviet ammunition bunker that was 30 meters below the surface of the Black Sea and protected by 10 meters of hardened concrete roof on top of that.


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## Curt Sibling (May 9, 2017)

millais said:


> The Gustav railway gun (of the same production series as the Dora) saw a lot of good use in the Crimean campaign when it came time to reduce the coastal fortress defenses of Sevastopol. The coastal fortresses dominated all the approaches with their big naval guns making ground assaults prohibitively costly, so it ended up being more economical to bring in the Gustav to knock the fortresses out of action from beyond the reach of the naval guns. In one famous incident during the siege of Sevastopol, the Gustav even blew up an offshore Soviet ammunition bunker that was 30 meters below the surface of the Black Sea and protected by 10 meters of hardened concrete roof on top of that.



Indeed. It did have it's moments, but ultimately, it was a giant gun that didn't help the campaign in the East as much as a long-range heavy bomber would have.


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## Pointless Pedant (May 9, 2017)

Curt Sibling said:


> In 1940, Germany had an excellent chance of winning the war, but totally squandered it.



They didn't, though. They were so short of transports for the planned invasion of Britain that they had to take barges from the Rhine, and they still didn't have enough. Germany's navy simply wasn't big enough to challenge the UK's, and they couldn't have built one big enough very easily given that they were starting with very little when Hitler took power in 1933.


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## Curt Sibling (May 9, 2017)

Pointless Pedant said:


> They didn't, though. They were so short of transports for the planned invasion of Britain that they had to take barges from the Rhine, and they still didn't have enough. Germany's navy simply wasn't big enough to challenge the UK's, and they couldn't have built one big enough very easily given that they were starting with very little when Hitler took power in 1933.



I know all this. Your pedantry is really pointless indeed. 

It's a wide series of scenarios which aren't within the scope of this thread. They could (potentially) have made us bow outwithout setting one Jackboot on UK soil.
Taking over Malta, bold invasions of the Middle East, Iran and Turkey, cutting off the Suez Canal and threatening the USSR's southern flanks were all possibilities.

Bottom line is this: Hitler succeed up to a point with the brilliant policy of attacking weaknesses, then at the critical moment, he threw it all away, 
attacking Russia's might head on, leaving the UK unbeaten. This flew in the face of all logic and previous strategy. Then to compound madness he
also declared war on the USA...For that host of utter follies, he lost the war. But he could focused on Egypt which may have given him an easy win...

But that outline is for deep thoughts, not here.


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## Club Sandwich (May 9, 2017)

Dr. Boe Jangles Esq. said:


> I'm not sure how this thread has gone without mentioning the Gyrojet.
> A classic case of an awesome idea executed terribly, the Gyrojet line was a series of firearms that fired not bullets, but tiny rockets.
> The idea was that a self propelled round like that didn't require heavy barrels, thus reducing the weight.
> Unfortunately, it was inaccurate, unreliable, prone to issues, and took forever to load.
> It was not a success.


i own an MBA Model C, and the only thing it has going for it is the complete lack of recoil and the odd sound it makes when firing. it is otherwise completely worthless as a serious weapon because to equal a slightly warm .45 ACP, your target would need to be about 100 meters away... which makes the wildly inaccurate nature of the 12mm rockets a crap shoot. the 13mm rockets were actually decent accurate, but the adaptation of the tooling for the nozzles from 13mm to 12mm nabbed it the reputation for complete inaccuracy beyond a few meters.



The Dude said:


> As far as pointless weapons go, my vote would have to go to PDWs like the P90 and MP7 due to the poor terminal ballistics of their ammunition.


speaking professionally, the 4.6mm and 5.7mm were designed for rear echelon troops in place of a traditional carbine that still maintained armor penetration capabilities against NIJ IIIA body armor. carbines, especially in 5.56mm NATO have woeful penetration of this armor at most ranges due to a combination of lack of velocity and lack of mass. likewise M193 and M855 require about 2700 fps to reliably fragment in flesh, which is the cause of most lethality in the 5.56mm NATO round. both the 4.6mm and the 5.7mm work around this limitation by being optimized for very short barrels and high velocities to induce cavitation and very large temporary wound channels in soft tissues, often tearing them obscenely. combined with armor penetration and a high rate of fire with light weight ammunition and controllable recoil in the weapons it was designed for, and you have a very lethal combination. unfortunately the weapon is just too specialized and expensive (logistically) to endorse. the few buyers keep them as special purpose weapons where size and armor penetration is absolutely required as you will be very dead on the business end of a burst.

it's complete shit at dropping people in one hit though, often a body will need to be "sprinkled" with a burst or two prior to dropping (dead and still having enough brain activity to pull a trigger). this is first hand experience.

Fun Fact: Sunnyvale, CA motorcycle officers use H&K MP7A1's. 



TiggerNits said:


> The AN-94 deserves a mention.


much like the AEK-971 and the A-545, it's a complicated rifle internally and rather delicate due to the use of a pulley and counter-weight system to balance the recoil and manually trip a second hammer to operate the burst mechanism. the canted magazine is required due to the positioning of components in the receiver. while it isn't exactly "fragile" it is prone to failure should the pulley be interfered with, and the open AK receiver can get all sorts of debris inside.



Techpriest said:


> Doesn't it also have an insanely high fire rate for its 2 round burst fire that gives it a very tight grouping?


yes, 1800 rpm, which is two shots fired in less than one tenth of a second. the idea was that the second bullet would leave the barrel prior to any significant recoil forces dragging aim away from a target - increasing the likelihood of shots on target, and for enemies who are wearing armor, a higher chance of either penetrating/damaging that armor or knocking a target over from sheer energy delivery.



Irwin M. Felcher said:


> Fucking scythes. I hate 'em.


best weapon in Dark Souls 1 in all ways for most builds.


----------



## Tempest (May 10, 2017)

Bachem Ba 349 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bachem_Ba_349








> was a World War II German point-defence rocket-powered interceptor, which was to be used in a very similar way to a manned surface-to-air missile. After a vertical take-off, which eliminated the need for airfields, most of the flight to the Allied bombers was to be controlled by an autopilot. The primary role of the relatively untrained pilot was to aim the aircraft at its target bomber and fire its armament of rockets. The pilot and the fuselage containing the rocket-motor would then land using separate parachutes, while the nose section was disposable. The only manned vertical take-off flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the death of the test pilot, Lothar Sieber.


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## Pointless Pedant (May 10, 2017)

Club Sandwich said:


> best weapon in Dark Souls 1 in all ways for most builds.



Recovery time and speed of strike matters much less in a world where people heave weapons around in slow motion like they're made of solid lead. It might be a little different if the characters were as fast as real knights and could deliver a spear thrust in a fraction of a second.


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## Club Sandwich (May 10, 2017)

Pointless Pedant said:


> It might be a little different if the characters were as fast as real knights and could deliver a spear thrust in a fraction of a second.


unfortunately that's never going to happen, games like For Honor would have the Japanese faction teleporting everywhere and cutting armored knights in two with a simple vertical slice.


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## Pointless Pedant (May 10, 2017)

Club Sandwich said:


> unfortunately that's never going to happen, games like For Honor would have the Japanese faction teleporting everywhere and cutting armored knights in two with a simple vertical slice.



I don't know how the Vikings are supposed to compete in that game given their armour and weapons are from centuries earlier and much less powerful. Maille, a helmet, and a shield against full plate armour isn't fair.


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## Ti-99/4A (May 10, 2017)

*Project Habakkuk* or *Habbakuk* (spelling varies; see below) was a plan by the British during the Second World War to construct an aircraft carrier out of pykrete (a mixture of wood pulp and ice) for use against German U-boats in the mid-Atlantic, which were beyond the flight range of land-based planes at that time. The idea came from Geoffrey Pyke, who worked for Combined Operations Headquarters. After promising scale tests and the creation of a prototype on a lake in Alberta, Canada the project was shelved due to rising costs, added requirements, and the availability of longer-range aircraft and escort carriers which closed the Mid-Atlantic gap the project was intended to address.



 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk


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## Pointless Pedant (May 10, 2017)

sikotik said:


> *Project Habakkuk* or *Habbakuk* (spelling varies; see below) was a plan by the British during the Second World War to construct an aircraft carrier out of pykrete (a mixture of wood pulp and ice) for use against German U-boats in the mid-Atlantic, which were beyond the flight range of land-based planes at that time. The idea came from Geoffrey Pyke, who worked for Combined Operations Headquarters. After promising scale tests and the creation of a prototype on a lake in Alberta, Canada the project was shelved due to rising costs, added requirements, and the availability of longer-range aircraft and escort carriers which closed the Mid-Atlantic gap the project was intended to address.
> 
> View attachment 217751
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk



Mythbusters did a video where they built a pykrete boat. It worked, until it started to melt. The main problem was that building the refrigeration facilities to freeze the pykrete is harder than just building a steel ship.


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## Varg Did Nothing Wrong (Feb 20, 2018)

Pointless Pedant said:


> I don't know how the Vikings are supposed to compete in that game given their armour and weapons are from centuries earlier and much less powerful. Maille, a helmet, and a shield against full plate armour isn't fair.



Higher mobility and better visibility and situational awareness, I suppose. 

In a one-on-one fight I imagine a less-armored foe could be quite a nuisance for a fully-armored knight, particularly if he's in a full helm. Long as you took advantage of his limited vision and attacked him from the sides or below where he couldn't see your weapon coming as easily, tripped him up, etc.


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## Count groudon (Feb 25, 2018)

Varg Did Nothing Wrong said:


> Higher mobility and better visibility and situational awareness, I suppose.
> 
> In a one-on-one fight I imagine a less-armored foe could be quite a nuisance for a fully-armored knight, particularly if he's in a full helm. Long as you took advantage of his limited vision and attacked him from the sides or below where he couldn't see your weapon coming as easily, tripped him up, etc.


Weren't knights ridiculously susceptible heavier weapons that could knock them around though? I imagine a decently heavy sword would be pretty effective at taking down someone is heavy clunky armor if the guy using it was pretty nimble. 

I remember reading a book years ago that pretty much said that after a while most militaries were able to craft weapons that were especially designed to take advantage of the flaws in a knights armor. Like the estoc which was a rapier designed for stabbing into the openings behind the joints in heavy armor to inflict damage that made it extremely difficult for the knight to be able to move around or attack due to the already solid weight of their plate armor. And the halberd was specifically designed with a hook on its back so that infantry men could grab knights riding by on horses and pull them to the ground. It's kinda neat reading about the ideas people came up with to take down one of the biggest nuisances of medieval warfare.


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## Pointless Pedant (Mar 8, 2018)

Count groudon said:


> Weren't knights ridiculously susceptible heavier weapons that could knock them around though? I imagine a decently heavy sword would be pretty effective at taking down someone is heavy clunky armor if the guy using it was pretty nimble.
> 
> I remember reading a book years ago that pretty much said that after a while most militaries were able to craft weapons that were especially designed to take advantage of the flaws in a knights armor. Like the estoc which was a rapier designed for stabbing into the openings behind the joints in heavy armor to inflict damage that made it extremely difficult for the knight to be able to move around or attack due to the already solid weight of their plate armor. And the halberd was specifically designed with a hook on its back so that infantry men could grab knights riding by on horses and pull them to the ground. It's kinda neat reading about the ideas people came up with to take down one of the biggest nuisances of medieval warfare.



They were susceptible in the sense that getting smashed with a pollaxe would knock anyone over from the blunt impact, but the impact would be far more devastating to someone not wearing armour. A helmet would often make the difference between being knocked out and having your skull caved in.

The heaviest swords were the huge 2 hand swords, coming it at just over 3kg, but the mass of even those was concentrated more towards the hilt for balance reasons. The only way to deliver a massive blunt impact was to give a murder stroke with the hilt, holding the blade. Swords were more usually half-sworded and used for stabbing into gaps in armour. Maces, war hammers, and pollaxes concentrated mass more towards the striking end for a bigger blunt impact, but they were slower and more exhausting to strike with. You can't "nimbly" swing something heavy enough to knock somebody flat, so even these bludgeons tended not to be that heavy compared to, say, a sledgehammer. A modern ball-peen hammer is about the same weight as many historical war hammers.

A full plate harness weighed about 30kg, the same as a modern soldier's gear. Knights were slightly slower than unarmoured people, but they weren't sluggish.

Armour got more and more common for everyone to wear, including common soldiers, until muskets became common. 15th century English archers and spearmen wore helmets, maille shirts, brigandines, and sometimes arm and leg armour as well. Most militaries were able to craft weapons which could easily beat armour, and they were called guns. Armour protected against pre-gunpowder weapons very, very well. Marshal Boucicaut, commander of the defeated French at Agincourt, survived barrages of arrows and was taken prisoner. This would have been rather unlikely without armour.

It's important to move away from the fantasy image of knights in armour so heavy they could hardly move slowly heaving around gigantic, overweight weapons. Games like Dark Souls show movements far more sluggish and cumbersome than those in real combat. Keeping weight down was quite a high priority in history, and there was a practical cap on how heavy weapons and armour could be, which was about the same as a modern soldier's gear. This isn't a coincidence, it's the maximum weight a combat-effective soldier can carry.



Varg Did Nothing Wrong said:


> Higher mobility and better visibility and situational awareness, I suppose.
> 
> In a one-on-one fight I imagine a less-armored foe could be quite a nuisance for a fully-armored knight, particularly if he's in a full helm. Long as you took advantage of his limited vision and attacked him from the sides or below where he couldn't see your weapon coming as easily, tripped him up, etc.



The problem is that you have to hit him in specific places, whereas he can hit you in most places. He can protect specific weaknesses a lot easier than you can protect most of your body. A Viking nobleman would have been reasonably protected with a helmet, shield, and maille shirt, but his lower legs would be open to cuts where a plate armoured knight's legs wouldn't. The Viking would have to worry about leg cuts, while the knight could get cut on the legs without being harmed at all. Common Vikings usually just had shields and spears.


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## Varg Did Nothing Wrong (Mar 8, 2018)

Pointless Pedant said:


> The problem is that you have to hit him in specific places, whereas he can hit you in most places. He can protect specific weaknesses a lot easier than you can protect most of your body. A Viking nobleman would have been reasonably protected with a helmet, shield, and maille shirt, but his lower legs would be open to cuts where a plate armoured knight's legs wouldn't. The Viking would have to worry about leg cuts, while the knight could get cut on the legs without being harmed at all. Common Vikings usually just had shields and spears.



A Viking who is less encumbered and less protected would have to be stupid to play by the same rules as the knight in this situation. If it were me, I would maintain distance and poke at him with the spear. You only have to overbalance him, if you get him on the ground he's finished regardless of what he tries to do.



Pointless Pedant said:


> A full plate harness weighed about 30kg, the same as a modern soldier's gear. Knights were slightly slower than unarmoured people, but they weren't sluggish.



>30 kg in armor alone
>only slightly slower

I really urge you to try strapping some barbell plates onto your torso and various limbs, and put on a period-correct helmet and padded gambeson and helm padding, and see how nimble and quick you are.


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## Pointless Pedant (Mar 8, 2018)

Varg Did Nothing Wrong said:


> A Viking who is less encumbered and less protected would have to be stupid to play by the same rules as the knight in this situation. If it were me, I would maintain distance and poke at him with the spear. You only have to overbalance him, if you get him on the ground he's finished regardless of what he tries to do.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Armour's weight distribution was spread a lot more evenly over the body than strapped on barbell plates, and knights in full plate just wore arming doublets underneath, not thick padded gambesons. Thick gambesons were worn under maille in earlier periods.






These guys are a bit slower, especially since they're just demonstrating, but they're not hopelessly encumbered. Remember that a noble Viking will be wearing a maille shirt and helmet, so he has a certain amount of weight on him as well. While the spearman has to thrust into a gap in the armour, the fallen knight just needs to chop at the unarmoured legs of the guy standing over him. He doesn't even need to get up off the ground to do this. Also remember that stabbing someone in the nuts is not going to be instantly fatal, and he can still give a cut to the legs after taking that stab with enough adrenaline. Not getting killed is more important than killing the other guy as quickly as possible. Some duels ended up with both participants dead.

It would be possible for the Viking to win (as in kill the knight *and* not die or be maimed himself) if he had good footwork to avoid leg cuts, but it wouldn't be easy at all.


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## Varg Did Nothing Wrong (Mar 8, 2018)

Pointless Pedant said:


> A full plate harness weighed about 30kg, the same as a modern soldier's gear. Knights were slightly slower than unarmoured people, but they weren't sluggish.





Pointless Pedant said:


> Armour's weight distribution was spread a lot more evenly over the body than strapped on barbell plates, and knights in full plate just wore arming doublets underneath, not thick padded gambesons. Thick gambesons were worn under maille in earlier periods.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



IMHO you have to be a poor fighter if you can't keep a guy with a sword away from you when you are armed with a spear AND are less encumbered.


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## Pointless Pedant (Mar 8, 2018)

Varg Did Nothing Wrong said:


> IMHO you have to be a poor fighter if you can't keep a guy with a sword away from you when you are armed with a spear AND are less encumbered.



Yes, but the knight would probably have a polearm as well if you were going on as equal grounds as possible. 15th century knights fighting on foot usually had a poleaxe and sword, just as the Viking had a spear and sword. The exception would be if the knight had a huge great sword as a primary weapon, which has significant reach anyway.


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## Piss Clam (Mar 8, 2018)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Atomic_Demolition_Munition

Where would you go after you placed it.

*The two-man team would place the weapon package in the target location, set the timer, and swim out into the ocean, where they would be retrieved by a submarine or a high-speed surface water craft.
*
Ya no, the full force of the Russian A and B units are rushing forward. Good luck getting away.


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## Pointless Pedant (Mar 8, 2018)

Piss Clam said:


> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Atomic_Demolition_Munition
> 
> Where would you go after you placed it.
> 
> ...



Talking of horrendous cold war plans, there was a US plan to dodge a nuclear strike by slowing the Earth's rotation with rockets.

Seriously.


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## Francis E. Dec Esc. (Mar 8, 2018)

In 1981, the Pentagon spent $6,000,000 to find out if burning a picture of a Soviet missile destroys it in real life.


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## Dirt McGirt (Mar 8, 2018)

Francis E. Dec Esc. said:


> In 1981, the Pentagon spent $6,000,000 to find out if burning a picture of a Soviet missile destroys it in real life.


Did it work?


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## Francis E. Dec Esc. (Mar 8, 2018)

Dirt McGirt said:


> Did it work?



No.


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## King Kong... with wings? (Mar 8, 2018)

Nobody mentioned this surprisingly


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## AnOminous (Mar 8, 2018)

Pointless Pedant said:


> They were susceptible in the sense that getting smashed with a pollaxe would knock anyone over from the blunt impact, but the impact would be far more devastating to someone not wearing armour. A helmet would often make the difference between being knocked out and having your skull caved in.



The utility of polearms is often underestimated these days because they're not really "sexy" weapons like swords.  They had a lot to do with being easily improvised from items that existed on farms and that peasants would have access to, and the ability to use them in formations to keep an enemy too far away to use their sexy swords and other such weapons.  They would also discourage cavalry charges directly at the formation, and if someone were foolish enough to charge anyway, punish them for it.  And of course, the hooked polearms like the glaive-guisarme could dismount a horseman.

They weren't particularly fantastic for directly dealing damage, but if you could hold the baddies off indefinitely, you had time to whack at them.

They also had the advantage of being fairly effective even with relatively untrained troops, i.e. you could put them in the hands of a bunch of peasants you didn't really care about, although there were also professional troops who used these as well.  Compare to swordsmen, who were often highly skilled and trained and of noble birth.  If you lost a bunch of skilled swordsmen, your forces would be crippled for years while you trained new ones from the ground up.

Polearms are sort of on the exact opposite end of the subject of this thread, i.e. ridiculously practical and completely un-sexy.



King Kong... with wings? said:


> Nobody mentioned this surprisingly



What is that even for?  Hunting triceratopses?  It looks like it would turn a rhinoceros into hamburger.


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## HG 400 (Mar 8, 2018)

Assault weapons in general are impractical for civilian use.


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## Pointless Pedant (Mar 8, 2018)

AnOminous said:


> The utility of polearms is often underestimated these days because they're not really "sexy" weapons like swords.  They had a lot to do with being easily improvised from items that existed on farms and that peasants would have access to, and the ability to use them in formations to keep an enemy too far away to use their sexy swords and other such weapons.  They would also discourage cavalry charges directly at the formation, and if someone were foolish enough to charge anyway, punish them for it.  And of course, the hooked polearms like the glaive-guisarme could dismount a horseman.
> 
> They weren't particularly fantastic for directly dealing damage, but if you could hold the baddies off indefinitely, you had time to whack at them.
> 
> ...



Polearms were used by all classes, though, including nobility. Knights and winged hussars had lances, and dismounted 15th century knights usually had a pollaxe as the main weapon, with a sword in reserve. Samurai who fought in close combat used spears, with swords in reserve. And so on.



Spoiler












Cavalry charging into pikemen would hit with long lances, leading to a sort of arms race between lancers and pikemen to outreach each other. Polish lances and the pikes opposing them got ridiculously long in the 17th century.

Swords were used as primary weapons on battlefields by 2 groups of people: people like Romans with massive shields to protect them from spears while they got in close, and cavalry who weren't going to be charging into pike blocks anyway (for example, Napoleonic cavalry, although there were some lances used there too). Other than that, the sword was a backup in case the polearm broke, or the enemy got so close it wasn't useful anymore. It's true that a load of peasants with polearms could stop noble enemies, but nobles would often be using similar equipment themselves.


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## :thinking: (Mar 8, 2018)

Dynastia said:


> Assault weapons in general are impractical for civilian use.


I disagree.


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## AnOminous (Mar 8, 2018)

Pointless Pedant said:


> Polearms were used by all classes, though, including nobility. Knights and winged hussars had lances, and dismounted 15th century knights usually had a pollaxe as the main weapon, with a sword in reserve. Samurai who fought in close combat used spears, with swords in reserve. And so on.



I mentioned that indirectly, in terms of professional soldiers also using them.  This is largely because a dismounted knight would often be dealing with people with this kind of weapon.  Samurai are definitely also famous for using multiple weapons, and you can piss off weebs by pointing out that their beloved katana was ultimately mostly abandoned for just not being all that good a weapon and that samurai were actually more likely to use polearms, bows and other kinds of weapons.


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## RomanesEuntDomus (Mar 9, 2018)

Varg Did Nothing Wrong said:


> A Viking who is less encumbered and less protected would have to be stupid to play by the same rules as the knight in this situation. If it were me, I would maintain distance and poke at him with the spear. You only have to overbalance him, if you get him on the ground he's finished regardless of what he tries to do.


Why should the knight play by the Vikings rules and not just trample him into the ground with his horse?
A knight is primarily a mounted warrior, after all.

If they both fight on foot, throwing the knight to the ground won't be like overturning a turtle.


Varg Did Nothing Wrong said:


> IMHO you have to be a poor fighter if you can't keep a guy with a sword away from you when you are armed with a spear AND are less encumbered.


If the Viking wants to actually kill the knight, he'd have to attack and when he attacks, he's vulnerable for a counter attack.

In the end, the thing to keep in mind is that the kind of armament and armor that the vikings were so fond of didn't prevail on the battlefield for a reason.
It's not like trends in fashion where someone decided bolting together little pieces of metal was so much more fashionable than tiny interlocked rings. It's an evolution from one state to the other and every step in between is an optimum of mobility, weight, protection and affordability at its time.
With new technology, new weapons and new tactics, the requirements for armor changed as well.

The 14th century is especially interesting in that regard, since you can see how French and English armor become a lot more elaborate very quickly with closed plate armor for legs and arms while German knights were still wearing mail chausses for decades. The reason is pretty obvious: England and France were engaging in the 100 years war, whereas in Germany, you'd primarily find little feuds or small scale conflicts here and there.

The question whether a Viking could win against a Knight seems kind of moot, since, historically, he already did win, if not by knockout then surely on points.


Pointless Pedant said:


> It would be possible for the Viking to win (as in kill the knight *and* not die or be maimed himself) if he had good footwork to avoid leg cuts, but it wouldn't be easy at all.


The viking would have to be constantly on guard and needs a lot of luck throughout the entire fight to hit the right spot with enough force without being hit himself.
The knight only has to be lucky once and hit his opponent with a glancing blow and he will win.



AnOminous said:


> They would also discourage cavalry charges directly at the formation, and if someone were foolish enough to charge anyway, punish them for it. And of course, the hooked polearms like the glaive-guisarme could dismount a horseman.


According to Arne Koets, there was a technique where mounted troops would join the tips of their lances to one massive bundle during a charge and use that to effectively push aside the polearm formation of their enemies the moment they make contact.
This, of course, was something that had to be trained and the timing was crucial. Trying to open the hostile formation of spears too early or too late and you end up smashing into a forest of pointy steel that'll ruin your day.

This explains why heavy cavalry stayed relevant on the battlefield for so long, since if a few metres of wood with a steel tip on top could make you invulnerable to cavalry attacks, that kind of attack would have went extinct a lot sooner.
Then again, you can't underestimate the speed of a cavalry charge either. If the formation is distracted for just a moment, even heavy cavalry can flank them within seconds.

Still, the best life insurance against a cavalry attack is a forest of pointy steel on sticks and it does make your enemy think twice whether he wants to attack you or not.


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## Pointless Pedant (Mar 9, 2018)

AnOminous said:


> I mentioned that indirectly, in terms of professional soldiers also using them.  This is largely because a dismounted knight would often be dealing with people with this kind of weapon.  Samurai are definitely also famous for using multiple weapons, and you can piss off weebs by pointing out that their beloved katana was ultimately mostly abandoned for just not being all that good a weapon and that samurai were actually more likely to use polearms, bows and other kinds of weapons.



The sword was used in civilian life and duels, since it's easy to wear as opposed to carrying a spear around everywhere. It was never a primary battlefield weapon in Japan, except for the huge "nodachi" which were as long as some pole weapons anyway. The sword was often worn in reserve by spearmen, archers, and musketeers on the battlefield; it was used if the spear broke, or if archers or musketeers got into close combat. This was fairly similar to how swords were worn as backup weapons by archers and pikemen in Europe.



Spoiler











You can see that, while bows and lances are the primary weapons, most people also have a sword in reserve.


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## 8777BB5 (Mar 9, 2018)

Behold! President Reagan's brilliant plan for getting nuclear missiles anywhere in the United States. The plan was to hide Peacemaker nuclear missiles in cleverly disguised railroad cars and have them ready at hidden bases. Should war happen, these trains would be activated and sent to strategic points so that they could fight back. For those wondering the obvious, the trains these missile cars would be part of would be fitted with flatcars of panel track (A fullsize version of track you would use to build a model railroad) so if the track was blown out it could easily be bypassed. These missile trains would also having living quarters for the crew as well as relief supplies. Sadly the fall of the Soviet Union caused Reagan's successor George H.W. Bush to cancel the project.


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## Red Hood (Mar 11, 2018)

Here's a weapon that doesn't suffer from poor build quality or questionable design flaws- it's just a bit too light for the round it fires to be comfortable for more than a round or two. Overall impractical unless you live in bear country. 





The Smith and Wesson model 329 turns their full-size 629 into a somewhat concealable, lightweight package, using a scandium instead of stainless steel frame. What's so odd about that? It fires the vaunted .44 Magnum round. While the .44 Mag has been surpassed in power as a handgun cartridge, it still packs a hell of a punch. A .38 Special in the same type of alloy frame can be fatiguing to shoot over an extended period, so it stands to reason that the .44 Mag- which can be an exhausting gun to fire even in a full-sized, all steel revolver- would probably not prove a hugely popular choice. 





The Ross rifle (a WWI-era, straight-pull bolt action) is interesting because of its impracticality as a general infantry weapon but finding favor in a more specialized application. When first issued to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police they reported 113 defects in the design. It performed poorly as soon as any grime got into its action, which was made worse by the battlefield conditions and cheaply made ammunition. It was withdrawn from general service with Canadian troops, but snipers liked its long-distance accuracy, and were more in-tune with their rifles, and it managed to find a second purpose in the hands of Allied marksmen.


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## RomanesEuntDomus (Mar 11, 2018)

It's time for some WW1 french engineering: Meet the Chauchat.






Heralded as the "most ineffective machine gun ever produced", this gun was plagued by several poor design choices.

Originally planned to be an LMG akin to the BAR, meant to be used for suppressing fire against trenches while the shooter is moving, the whole construction relied on a rather wonky gas-assisted long recoil system, that gave it a very low rate of fire with jarring recoil (lowering accuracy) and said mechanism was very prone to jam, once the metal expanded due to prolonged firing.
Similarly, the open side of the magazine was meant to allow the shooter to check his ammo with a quick glance - unfortunately this also meant that in the trenches of WW1, dirt could very easily enter the magazine and this lead to jamming, too.
The magazine was supposed to carry 20 rounds, but fully loaded, it had a strong tendency to make the gun jam.
Since the last few steps of production where done by hand, it was pretty unlikely that parts from one Chauchat would be interchangeable with another, even if they were produced _on the same day_.

It was later adopted by the Americans, who built their own version in .30-06 rather than the french 8mm Lebel.
Due to a conversion error from metric to imperial, they ended up making the chamber too short for the .30-06 rounds, which could (you guessed it) make the gun jam or outright tear the spent cartridge in two, rendering the weapon completely unuseable.
It seems the .30-06 Version barely saw any use in WW1, since pretty much everyone just threw it away after they used it in combat for the first time.

And just as a cherry on top:
The sights were not aligned correctly with the barrel, the bipod was way too flimsy to be useful and firing the gun from a cheek weld carried the risk of cutting open the shooters cheek, since there was a sharp ridge in the way.


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## Francis E. Dec Esc. (Mar 11, 2018)

The FP-45 Liberator pistol seemed like a good idea: a cheap ($2.10), mass produced, single-shot .45 ACP pistol that could be air dropped to resistance forces in occupied Europe so they could kill German sentries and take the Kar98K or MP-40 they were carrying. They turned out to be wildly impractical for a few reasons: 

- The welded sheet metal handgrip sometimes split open at the back due to recoil, causing injuries.
- After shooting several rounds, the stamped metal breach would be bent into a disc shape so badly that the firing pin couldn't hit the primer
- The Air Force didn't want to have to waste time air dropping pistols when they could be bombing factories and towns. 
- The barrel was a smoothbore, reducing accuracy to several feet. 
- There was no extractor, meaning the user had to literally poke the spent cartridge out with a stick.

About 1,000,000 Liberators were made during WWII. 450,000 were given to the OSS in Europe, who didn't bother distributing them, preferring to give guerillas actual weapons like Stens and Enfields. Most of these were dumped into the North Sea or melted down for scrap. The only significant use of the Liberator was by the Philippine police.


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## ZeCommissar (Mar 12, 2018)

Any vehicle from 40k can make this thread in some way lol


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## RomanesEuntDomus (Mar 12, 2018)

ZeCommissar said:


> Any vehicle from 40k can make this thread in some way lol


You just reminded me of this little gem:


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## King Kong... with wings? (Mar 13, 2018)

AnOminous said:


> What is that even for? Hunting triceratopses? It looks like it would turn a rhinoceros into hamburger.


your guess is as good as mine it's a heavy beast of a gun


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## TiggerNits (Mar 13, 2018)

The F-104 Star Fighter

This thing was, is and always will be a horrible piece of shit. It was a failure in every single way it could have been except commercially, because Lockheed had hired so serious hucksters to push this thing to NATO allies and the fallout was, in hindsight, a really good look at what was to come for almost everything that would be pushed on to NATO from the American defense industry






This thing was a lawn dart, the glide ratio was about the same as a telephone pole's and it had to be going QUICK to generate enough lift to actually fly, and it bled energy (ie speed/alt) in any turn it took, meaning it would lose speed at an alarming rate in a dogfight and have to dive and go full burn to get away and try to re-engage. Given the size of the engine compared to the plane itself, the F-104 could theoretically excel int his arena.






The F-104 was the epitome of the Shoot and Scoot/Zoom and Boom mentality that stopped working once on board radar, heat seeking missiles and competent jet tactics became a thing in the early 60s. Built with the frame of mind that made the F4U and P-38 all-stars in WW2, that you engage while diving at the enemy, from behind or a 30 degree off set from behind (makes the target bigger and easier to hit with minimal lead needing to be given by the aggressor) the F-104 was designed to go very, very fast, dive even faster, and pop off a few rounds from it's 20mm gatling gun or it's 2 early Sidewinder missiles that had a bad habit of tracking things like the sun, or really hot pavement instead of jet exhaust because it turned out jets moved fast and the missile's tracker didn't, so it would just hit what it could see. It had a giant engine and a slim frame making it perfect for that role. AT least in theory. In practice, it turns out that someone forgot that giant jet engines burn fuel REALLY quick when you're going full burn.

Another issue was their all-aluminum body and frame construction, which did make them lighter and faster, but much more susceptible to experience metal fatigue and suddenly break apart at mach 1 or just making a gradual turn after take off. 






So to combat this, they added drop tanks to the wing tips at the expense of the sidewinders. Not a huge loss, due to the awful nature of those early sidewinders, They eventually decided to add more hardpoints to the plane on the centerline and under the wings. It also had a decent (for the era) onboard radar so it eventually got the AIM-7 semi-active radar guided missiles. They also tried to use the aircraft for Close Air Support (CAS) missions, having it carry a napalm canister in that role. It was miserable at this, too. It moved so quickly at low altitude to avoid stalls that it was very difficult for pilots of the day to drop munitions with any kind of reliable accuracy. The US only combat deployed them in the early stages of the Vietnam conflict, where they never shot down any enemy MiGs, but few were lost, as well. 






Only five were downed in combat, two by SAMs/AAA, one got shot down by the chinese airforce after the pilot got lost and strayed in to it and didn't realize the chinese airforce was telling him to fuck off, then two trying to find his wreckage ran in to each other the same day. Afterward the entire US inventory of F-104s got taken out of the Air Force and put in to the hands of the air national guard after the Joint Chiefs finally realized the 1,100+ aircraft they had purchased were never going to be anything other than a lackluster interceptor and not the multirole super fighter they had been sold on by Lockheed.

Another fun fact by the way, the F-104 also got an upgrade in the early 60s to carry a nuclear Air-to-Air missile on the centerline pylon, and it was the only US jet fast enough to fire it and hopefully escape the blast radius, but that depended heavily on wind conditions and the speed the weapon was fired at. Early Cold War anti-bomber tactics were nuts, ya'll.












Lockheed even hired a hollywood production company to make a serial film, that was shown in US, Italian, English and West German theatres about how great the plane was. MST3K even did a riff on it. The UK's press got wise to how awful the plane was, and how their homemade Electric Lightening was superior in a great many ways, including cost, and it started a debacle after the government showed signs of being bought off to purchase the planes and canceled the deal. It led to a great british comedy album shitting all over the aircraft and lockheed.






So we made over 2500 of these planes and sold them to Japan, Italy, Canada, Norway, West Germany and Spain, which led to each country's Air Force in to wondering what the fuck their procurement departments were smoking, and the easiest way to find out how to say "Flying Coffin" in like, 7 langauges. Though the Canadians had the best nickname for it with "Aluminum Deathtube" which sounds like a really bitchin punk band. The safety record of the aircraft was absolutely awful. The worst the USAF has ever dealt with, infact, with 30.6 aircraft lost per 100,000 operational hours. The next worse is only at 16.2. Think about that

The Germans and Italians used them for the longest span as a dedicated fighter, and both lost almost a quarter of their inventory to accidents and breakage. The German Airforce and Navy so despised the aircraft that when the wall fell, they quickly deactivated all their starfighter squadrons and replaced them with MiGs. The Italians, being Italians, kept them for another 8 years, and even used them during Desert Storm and offering to send some to Afghanistan to support the US after 9/11. Admittedly, the Italian F-104s were re-manufactures from Italy proper, and were believed to be inherently superior to the originals, boasting a removal of the gun, additional pylons and a stronger frame.


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## RomanesEuntDomus (Mar 13, 2018)

TiggerNits said:


> The F-104 Star Fighter
> 
> This thing was, is and always will be a horrible piece of shit. It was a failure in every single way it could have been except commercially, because Lockheed had hired so serious hucksters to push this thing to NATO allies and the fallout was, in hindsight, a really good look at what was to come for almost everything that would be pushed on to NATO from the American defense industry
> 
> ...


Oh god, the F-104... I'll admit it looks sexy as fuck, especially with those wingtip droptanks, but it was just so poorly handled all around.

In the role of a very light and fast interceptor, this thing would have been decent (and a lot of german pilots praised it for this role), but thehigher ups also wanted to use it as a multi-role Fighter Bomber and the Bundeswehr (or rather Josef Strauß, the Minister of Defense at the time) was looking for a fighter that could be equipped with nuclear weapons. 
So Lockheed just glued some more hardpoints under the wings, which fucked up pretty much everything from its maneuverability to the handling during regular flight and the stress during curves could tear that thing asunder. (Though the German version did get some notable improvements here and there, such as a reinforced fuselage and wings).
In 1965 alone, there were 27 accidents with 17 fatalities.

You already mentioned a couple of mind-blowing flaws, but there's 2 things that I need to add:

1) The engineers at Lockheed feared that the pilot might strike the T-shaped wings at the back of the plane when using the ejection seat, so the first version came with an ejection seat (called C1) that propelled you _downwards_. The C2 propelled you upwards, but it could only be used at a minimum speed of roughly 70mph. Below that speed, chances of survival were abyssmally low.
Due to its poor design, the seat could get entangled in the parachute during pilot-seat-seperation.
They switched to a british ejection seat that could reliably eject the pilot even from a parked plane with a decent chance of survival.

2) The take-off speed of this plane was 250mph. At 260mph, the air resistance was strong enough to make the landing gear jam. That meant that after takeoff, _the pilot had roughly 2 seconds to stow the landing gear before it would get stuck_. If it did get stuck, he'd have to go around the airport, put the plane into landing configuration and try to stow the gear again once the speed dropped low enough, if successful, the pilot could throttle up and continue as planned. It was also possible that the gear could become stuck completely or get otherwise damaged. Enjoy landing a plane with the glide characterisitcs of a phone booth, broken landing gear and a minimum landing speed of 170mph...

Extra Fun Fact Time: the most accomplished combat pilot of all time, Erich Hartmann (352 verified aerial victories, was never shot down) was send to America to see how well the F-104 performed and whether it was suitable for the Bundeswehr or not. The pilots and ground crew that he talked to during official meetings were praising that thing like crazy, however in the evenings, Hartmann would hang out in the same bars that the pilots and crew would frequent and here he heard about the atrocious state of the F-104 and all the problems that it had.
He came back and advised against buying the F-104 but Günther Rall (275 Aerial victories, was shot down a couple of times) said -I shit you not!- that Hartmann _lacked experience _and thus recommended to ignore his advise.
This was an important factor when Hartmann later left the Bundeswehr in 1970.


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## Dangerhair (Mar 14, 2018)

Goofy Logic said:


> As for another piece of useless military gear, you might have heard of the Ross Rifle debacle the Canadians had in WW1.  Well, Sam Hughes, the minister of defence and the center of that controversy, also concieved a Shovel That Doubled As A Shield



In defence of the Ross, it was actually a quite a decent rifle- it was extremely accurate, it was lighter than the Enfield despite being longer, and had a unique straight-pull bolt mechanism that made the action faster too.

It had two major quirks that made it unsuitable as a service rifle in WWI though:

1. It was notoriously delicate and complicated to service, and if it wasn't put back together properly or if any of the parts got dirty or bent, it was prone to jamming or _simply blowing the bolt into the soldier's face when fired. 
_
2. Did I mention dirt and jamming? The Ross would only accept perfectly clean ammunition. If it was dirty at all, the Ross could be relied upon to jam. In trench warfare, this is not ideal.

The Canadian Army conceded that they needed a replacement in 1915 and started ordering Enfields. However, the Ross was re-purposed as a dedicated sniper rifle. Canadian, British and Commonwealth snipers praised the weapon when they were supplied with better ammunition and Warner & Swasey  telescopic sights.


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## Goofy Logic (Mar 14, 2018)

Dangerhair said:


> In defence of the Ross, it was actually a quite a decent rifle- it was extremely accurate, it was lighter than the Enfield despite being longer, and had a unique straight-pull bolt mechanism that made the action faster too.
> 
> It had two major quirks that made it unsuitable as a service rifle in WWI though:
> 
> ...


I own one.  Their trigger is perhaps the best one out of the milsurps I have handled.

Sam Hughes was partial to having a "Grassroots" army with Canadian designed and made equipment.  I don't know much about why, but I believe either before or during the start of world war 1, the British had a scrap with Canada and refused to license them their Lee-Enfield rifles, leaving the Canadians with no modern battle rifles.

Ross's rifle always was a sporting rifle, and he was hoping to expand into government forces with it.  The RCMP tried out the Mark 2, but rejected it with a laundry list of issues that needed to be worked on.  When the Army was gearing up for WW1, they needed guns, and Ross came along at about the right time.  They quickly modified the rifle for .303 and sent them out with little field testing.


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## Raging Capybara (Mar 14, 2018)

General Butt Naked was a Liberian commander who fought totally naked, he believed this gave him protection against bullets.

Probably the best armor ever conceived by humankind.


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## TiggerNits (Mar 14, 2018)

RomanesEuntDomus said:


> Oh god, the F-104... I'll admit it looks sexy as fuck, especially with those wingtip droptanks, but it was just so poorly handled all around.
> 
> In the role of a very light and fast interceptor, this thing would have been decent (and a lot of german pilots praised it for this role), but thehigher ups also wanted to use it as a multi-role Fighter Bomber and the Bundeswehr (or rather Josef Strauß, the Minister of Defense at the time) was looking for a fighter that could be equipped with nuclear weapons.
> So Lockheed just glued some more hardpoints under the wings, which fucked up pretty much everything from its maneuverability to the handling during regular flight and the stress during curves could tear that thing asunder. (Though the German version did get some notable improvements here and there, such as a reinforced fuselage and wings).
> ...




In a lot of ways, the F-104 (and in a way, the F-5) and its numerous failures to perform as advertised is directly responsible for the F-16 and F/A-18 programs being so successful. General Dynamics and McDonald Douglas looked at the debacle caused by the F-104 and realized that having a marketing team working harder than the engineering and QC teams was a recipe for disaster, so instead of doing what Lockheed had done in selling the aircraft directly to diplomats and heads of state, they went to the heads of Air Forces and Armies to actually ask what they wanted their next gen of multi-role fighters to be. Almost everyone wanted something more maneuverable at sub-mach than an F-4, with a lower rate of fuel consumption than a Mig-21 and with better bomber qualifications than the aging A-4. 

Both accomplished this in different ways. GD's F16 was the better interceptor and fast mover, with a giant engine and low weight like the F-104, but larger fuel tanks, and the ability to carry far more ordnance it was in a great many ways what the F-104 was sold as. McD's Hornet was the option for countries that already had sufficient aerial intercept abilities and just wanted a highly fuel efficient and astonishingly low maintenance fighter that had the right amount of engines for extended usage in combat (ie more than one) and the ability to drop almost any weapon NATO had available with astonishing accuracy thanks to the aircraft's ability to maintain stability at any speed. Both were excellent choices and complete upgrades for any country looking to get rid of the century series and other 2-3 gen fighters and owed all their success to their management's ability to see where Lockheed fucked up.


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## DrunkJoe (Mar 16, 2018)

I saw a 10,000 dollar barrel for a custom built shotgun at a gun show.   Over under hand forged damascus.  I wish I took a picture, it was beautiful but when your making such an expensive gun becomes so un practical.  Me personally Im not shelling out that much money to have a custom gun I would never want to shoot.


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