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A Future for Plastic Cased Ammo?

CaddmannQ

.50 BMG
I see that the military is testing a couple of new weapons using polymer cased ammunition to save on weight and corrosion.

I can't imagine that they will be saving any money....

In my mind this has got to be whole new set of problems for the operator.

One of the proposals from Textron reveals a moving chamber design, where a cartridge is fed from the magazine to a chamber on an elevator.

The chamber is aligned with the barrel and the bolt slams forward.

The chamber drops and a new cartridge pushes the old one out.

A new plastic cartridge pushes the old plastic cartridge, which has just been exploded, out of the hot chamber. I can only imagine that this stuff must be Teflon coated in order to make it eject, instead of glue to the hot Steel.

The entire gun looks to be constructed like a Glock, with plastic housings and metal fittings inside. It looks a lot bulkier than the M4 or M16.

Anyhow the whole thing still requires you to load and unload magazines, which means you must carry magazines. If it's going to be plastic, I think the rounds should just be molded together like strip nails in a nail gun and they should break off as you shoot them.

Why case the bullet in plastic and then put those rounds in a plastic case, and then put a dust cover on that plastic case, and then put it in your nylon pouch?

What If instead of relying on Spring pressure in a magazine to feed the rifle it could pull the bullets into it like a belt-fed gun?

If you want to reduce weight and bulk on the infantryman getting rid of the Box magazine could be a boon. Plastic magazines don't weigh all that much but they do take a physical space, which is always at a premium.
 
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