Squad Automatic Weapon, Mark I model 1907:
Caliber: 7.5 mm x 60 mm
Weight: 19 lb.
Range: 2000 yards effective, 2500 maximum
Rate of Fire: 600 rounds per minute, theoretical
Feed System: Disintegrating-link metal belt/15- or 30-round box Operation: Gas-delayed
blowback, automatic.
With these two weapons the Domination fought the Great War of 1914-1918 and carried the Drakon banner from Constantinople to Xian.
The infantry squad of the Great War was equipped with a mixture of SAW-1's, T-5's, and machine-pistols; subsidiary weapons included rifle grenades, hand grenades (stick and "egg" types), flamethrowers, heavier water-cooled machine guns, and light mortars. After the winding-down of the Pacification Wars in 1925-26, the Technical Section decided to run a detailed tactical analysis of the actual operation of these weapons in the field; the Draka armed forces generally were anxious to avoid "victory disease" and self-criticism was being encouraged.
The T-5 had been very popular with the actual users, and was widely imitated in the postwar period; the American Springfield-7 (1927), the British Lee-Shallon (1921, almost a direct copy), the French MAS, the Russian Tokarev… In fact, by 1939 the only major power not to convert to the full-power semiautomatic format was Germany, where investigators were advocating a subcaliber compromise weapon.
Much to their own surprise, the Small Arms Study Project run by Sven Holbars of the Alexandria Technological Institute determined that the T-5 was far from perfect. The average range of infantry combat had decreased, even in open desert country, and all major combatants had adopted the Draka/ German system of dispersed infiltration infantry tactics. The full-power cartridge was superfluous at ranges within 800 meters, and 90% of all infantry engagements were at that or less. Beyond that range, crew-served weapons were more effective. Furthermore, the venerable 7.5 x 60 mm made a true selective-fire rifle impossible; a weapon light enough to be useful was uncontrollable in full-automatic mode, and the barrel overheated disastrously.
The Project therefore decided to "reinvent the wheel" and design a new weapon from the ground up. Since the rifle was merely a delivery system for the true weapon—the bullet— ammunition was the first priority. The design parameters emphasized the smallest and lightest possible round which would have good wounding characteristics within the 800-meter envelope and would still punch through the average steel helmet at that range. A small-caliber, high-velocity round was found to give the best effective combination of characteristics (a caseless round would have been even better, but this proved extremely difficult). The caliber settled on was 5 mm (about .2 inch), with a bottle-necked 45 mm cartridge case of aluminum alloy.
The gas-delayed blowback action of the T-5 and SAW-1 was used for the new rifle. The design was actually based more on the SAW-1 than on the rifle, as automatic fire and an integral bipod were part of the specifications. The feed device was a matter of controversy; with the 600 rpm cyclic rate envisaged, a box clip was of doubtful use—it tended to become unmanageably bulky and unreliable with capacities over 34-40 rounds. A 75-round disintegrating-link belt, prepacked in a conical drum, was settled on, using aluminum for the belt and the feed lips of the drum, and the new glass-fiber resin for the box itself; the rear face was made semitransparent, so that the soldier could see at a glance how many rounds were left. Performance was as follows:
Holbans T-6 Assault Rifle, Model 1936
Caliber: 5 mm x 45 mm
Weight: 9.7 lb.
Range: 800 yards effective, 1000 maximum
Rate of Fire: 600 rounds per minute, theoretical Feed System: Disintegrating-link metal belt,
75 round drum
Operation: Gas-delayed blowback, automatic; optional 3-round burst.
Careful engineering and extensive use of high-strength alloys reduced the loaded weight to less than 10 lbs.; combined with the low recoil force and soft action, this made the Holbars fully controllable even when fired from the hip on full automatic. A bipod was attached below the gas port, and when not in use folded into a slot on the bottom of the laminated wooden foregrip. The stock was a metal frame, with a robust folding hinge; when collapsed, it lay along the left side of the weapon. There were post-and-aperture sights, but the main system was an optical x4 sight; this was optimized for quick use, and encased in a rubber-padded "shroud." Most troops carried their optical sights permanently clipped to the weapon, although they could be removed with the standard maintenance tools. Folded, the weapon was only 30 inches long, an important point given the increased use of armored personnel carriers. The Holbars was usually carried across the chest on an assault sling.
A companion SAW-2 was developed concurrently; this was very similar, but used a 150-round drum and had a heavier quick-change barrel attached to a carrying handle. This two-weapon combination was used throughout the Eurasian war, and remained standard issue for the Domination's forces until the early 1970s.
With the Holbars, the metallic cartridge selective-fire rifle had reached the endpoint of its development; detail improvements in materials and performance were possible, but a fundamental improvement required a complete redesign. The basic breakthrough was a successful caseless cartridge—in essence, a high-tech version of the old T-1. Research began as early as the 1920s, and continued for forty years in a desultory fashion. Apart from gas sealage (no longer a problem with modern machining) the primary difficulty had to do with ignition and heat-disposal. The metallic cartridge served not only to seal the breech of the weapon but to carry off much of the heat of the combustion. The final answer to the problem was to abandon the dual-base propellants that had been in use since the introduction of smokeless powder, and go over to an actual explosive—previous propellants had really been very fast burners rather than explosives proper. To keep chamber pressures within acceptable limits, the explosive was diluted with a combustible synthetic, which also acted as a matrix to provide mechanical strength for the round. The projectile, the bullet proper, was almost completely enclosed in a rectangular block of propellant, greatly easing the design of magazines and eliminating waste space. Ignition was electrical, and the chemical mix was designed to be very resistant to heat and shock-wave detonation,
At the same time, the traditional stock-action-magazine-barrel design was abandoned, and the pistol grip was placed forward of the action. The buttplate was immediately behind the action (next to the user's face when the weapon was shouldered), which posed few problems since there was now no need to eject spent cartridges.
The resulting T-7 entered field trials in the mid-1960s.
Holbars T-7 Assault Rifle, Model 1971
Caliber: 4.5 mm x 40 mm, prefragmented, other options
Weight: 10 lb.
Range: 800 yards effective, 1000 maximum
Rate of Fire: 2000/600 rounds per minute, theoretical
Feed System: 100-round spiral cassette
Operation: Recoil; optional 3-round burst.
Notes: Most T-7's incorporated a single-shot 35 mm grenade launcher below the main barrel; this was loaded from a slot near the buttplate, and there was a selector switch above the trigger group to change from regular to launcher.
Author's Note
Computers And Technology
The development of computer technology and electronics in general followed a rather different course in the timeline of the Domination. The precocious development of pneumatic power systems and machine-tools made Thomas Babbage's mechanical computer a marginal success in the 1830s, rather than a marginal failure. Mechanical-analog computing was a fact of life by the 1840s, controlled by punch-card memory systems analogous to Jacquard looms. They were expensive and cumbersome, but they gave a distinct impetus to many types of research and to engineering.
Next, the vacuum tube came along rather earlier, by about a generation; the same is true for the transistor. Analog data-manipulation technologies (e.g., for numerically-controlled machine tools)
were therefore more advanced when digital computing techniques were achieved. All-digital systems are therefore much more limited.
In consequence, the research methods followed by both Alliance and Domination were quite different from our history's. The climate of the Protracted Struggle bred an obsession with security that sharply limited the flow of information and ideas even in the democratic nations of the Alliance. It also resulted in a "crash project" attitude towards research in general; the result was very quick progress in fields where the possibilities were known, but less serendipity, less of the shotgun approach. As an analogy, if there had been a Manhattan Project attack on polio in our 1950s, the result would probably have been a magnificently advanced iron lung. The fact of stable, rather than expanding, population also altered the market structure and reduced demand for innovation in the Domination's timeline.
Consequently, computers in the timeline of the Domination developed on a "big brain" basis. Software—what they called compinstruction sets, or instruction sets—was "burned in" to central core units, embedding the program. The central cores were generally sealed, with their own internal memories; an interfacer unit translated data from the external memory storage for the central unit to manipulate. The thought of "open" programming was rarely brought up, even as a theoretical possibility—it gave counterintelligence agencies the willies.
Personal computers—perscomps—evolved up from sensor-effector systems like those used on machine tools, rather than down from big-brain computers. They too had embedded programs, and they were mixed digital/analog rather than digital systems. Large, complex jobs like running a spaceship were handled by a central brain, which acted as a coordinating node for a number of perscomp-type subsystems, each handling something like a weapons mount or fuel-flow monitor. Note, however, that the sophisticated use of digital/ analog systems was an advantage in some fields like voice recognition.
This computer system had built-in limitations. Many of the embedded programs were very capable, and the manufacturing facilities in space permitted the use of quite exotic materials— silicon/sapphire sandwich wafers, and gallium arsenide—but there was less innovation and less pressing need for miniaturization. The existence of heavy-lift missile and orbital launch facilities alone removed a powerful incentive, and nothing like the hacker subculture of our timeline ever emerged. Research was limited to a number of large companies and government institutes, and the number of participants was very small, a few thousand at most. The spillover effect of widespread perscomp use was restricted, because only the largest central-brain units could be used for "software" design or programming of any. sort; new programs were bought as physical components and inserted into the core. Computer applications were many and crucial to most aspects of war and business, but they were vastly less flexible than in our continuum; by the 1990s, capacities were approaching a plateau, a dead-end.
In some respects, this was true of science and technology generally. The precocious development of heavy-lift space capacity biased technological development towards bigger and better applications of known principles; so did the constant rivalry between the powerblocs. The overall result was a technology more powerful than ours, but also rather cruder—as if the technological visionaries of the 1930s had been given unlimited funding, and as a result the course of development had been littered with a series of "roads not taken" because attention was focused on the immediately achievable. By the 1960s, there was a built-in bias (on both sides) towards projects which were obviously possible given massive applications of personnel and funding. The basic mentality was that of engineers rather than scientists, and dam-building, metal-bashing rule-of-thumb engineers at that.
In the end, the world of the Domination achieved what might be called "yesterday's tomorrow."
S. M. Stirling, The Stone Dogs
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