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Post by callmedelta on May 21, 2023 14:12:09 GMT -5
Fort Vaux, Royal Franerri Army Research, Development, and Testing Bureau (BRDE-ARF), Southern Franerre
“The hell does Pareau think we are, some sort of magicians?” Director Reynard Grandis grumbled. His directions from Pareau were simple enough on the surface. It was now his job to ‘develop a new weapon system, able to be transported by a team of no more than two men, capable of disabling or destroying a tank at sufficient range to ensure the safety of the operators of said system.’ No information on the tanks they needed to be capable of disabling, no information on what range was deemed ‘sufficient.’ That was all to ‘his discretion.’
If Reynard didn’t prefer to watch over the research personally, he would have been able to tell Pareau how stupid it was to give him this task with no more information than could fit on a telegram. At the very least, with the new reform plan, he’d been given a large budget increase to handle the new developments, but money alone couldn’t tell Reynard how thick a Kumo tank was.
At the very least, that was the only headache in the message. Reynard had been given plenty more tasks, but they all seemed much more manageable than the anti-tank measure. The BRDE-ARF was also given the task of ‘developing a modernized conversion of the IM-1915, capable of holding at least five (5) rounds in an interior magazine and reloading via an en-bloc clip and, if possible, convert it to using round comparable with modern Lusatian licensed equipment.’ Lord knows they had plenty of the old rifles to test on, and with the new Lusatian guns to examine, Reynard would imagine that it would be a comparatively easy task.
The second would be to, ‘Solve the deficiencies in the JA-16 and Naroda LMG-27, namely their lack of capacity for sustained firing due to the need for rapid reloading under sustained fire.’ Reynard had briefly seen schematics for both weapons, but a further exploration would be necessary for a definitive solution to be found.
Still, his mind circled back to the first issue. Reynard didn’t even know where to begin. He had never seen a tank in person, and neither hide nor hair of a schematic for one, either. The first task would be to find people who had. There were veterans of the Notch War who would have some first hand experience facing them in combat. Perhaps their knowledge could help the BRDE develop their own specifications for what this new anti-tank…thing would need to do. There was another source, however. The Ashinarans had their own Gaelian tanks. If the schematics could be purchased, or even a team sent over to examine the tanks, perhaps both, it could save Reynard months, maybe even years. There was no harm in asking, at least.
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Post by callmedelta on May 25, 2023 23:07:06 GMT -5
Mostly Good News. Mostly.
“The system we developed for the machine guns is rather simple,” Victor explained, detailing the progress made on the project thus far to Director Grandis. The project leader placed an ammunition strip on the table the gun was resting on in the firing range. “The JA-16 is currently fed via small feed strips that will be exhausted rather rapidly in the middle of a battle.” Victor handed the strip to the Director for him to examine. It held 50 rounds, perhaps. With the weapon’s rate of fire, that wouldn’t last long at all. “The strips themselves can only be made so large before encountering issues in transportation and manufacturing, so that wasn’t a viable route for increasing their capacity. Instead, we went for this.”
Victor hefted a box on the table, a belt of ammunition peeking out the top. “We took inspiration from some Ashinaran machine guns we saw during the Tafatu Liberation. With a belt of ammunition, rather than a strip, you can sustain fire for as long as the barrel holds up. We applied the same logic to the Naroda to modernize her. We’re still working out some kinks for optimal manufacturing, but the project is nearing completion.”
Reynard nodded appreciatively. Two things appeared to be close to coming off his list, at least. Once they got reported back to the Lusatian licensors, they would be ready to begin production soon. “What about the modernizations to the IM-1915?”
“We’ve run into some more issues on that front,” Victor confessed. “The requirements from Pareau said they wanted a five-round internal magazine, but that’s just plainly impossible with the space we have in the gun. We can carve out room for three, but try to carve it out anymore and you break the bottom of the gun. We’ve made a few attempts of trying for an external magazine, but even with a few Lusatian McCarron’s to go off, there’s still just not enough wood in the gun to work with. We’re trying to fit a new square peg into a 60-year-old round hole here, it’s pretty amazing we’ve been able to manage what we have thus far.”
“Speaking of which, are the conversions to 30-06 fairing?” Victor asked.
“Super easy, barely an inconvenience, Director,” Victor said. “Give me a moment.” He walked over to a nearby shelf, rooting around for a few seconds, then returning. He placed two bullets on the table. “Without looking at any manufacturer’s markings on the bottom, tell me which round is the Valenti currently used by the IM-1915 and which is a Lusatian 30-06.”
Reynard picked up both bullets. One had a longer case, by maybe 10 millimeters if he had to estimate, but the width was the same. “This one,” he said, placing the shorter of the two back on the table.
“Correct,” Victor said, “But you’ll notice the two are extremely similar. They’re both 7.62 millimeters in diameter — God knows why the Gaelians call it 30-06 — but the case on the Valenti is 8 millimeters shorter. The extra grain gives 30-06 more power, but the only conversion we need to do is allow for a bit more space in the bolt to actually fit the bullet in. The modernized IMs are even compatible with the original Valenti rounds.” Victor paused for a moment.
“You look like you’re about to tell me some bad news, Victor,” Reynard said.
“On the money, boss. There are two issues-“ Victor held a finger up for each one. “The first is that, while our current models modernized 1915 can still use the Valenti, it’s not ideal. Since the bullets don’t fill the space in the internal magazine properly, it becomes harder to cycle the bolt properly. You may also see some other problems, like accuracy issues or jamming, but we didn’t have the time to rigorously test it before today’s status update was due. The second is more of a theoretical problem for the time being. With 30-06 being a more powerful round, I would imagine extended use in the IM-1915 would cause the guns to wear out faster. Again, that would require some rigorous testing that we haven’t had the time for yet.”
“Is that everything you have for me in this report?” Reynard asked. Victor nodded. “Keep up the good work, then.”
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Post by callmedelta on Jun 4, 2023 23:20:52 GMT -5
Working With What We've Already Got
The technical specifications from Ashinara had come in; it was time for Fort Vaux to get to work. Gaelian tanks had 12mm of steel between their crew and the bullets of whatever men they were expected to kill. With any luck, that 12mm would look like tissue paper by the time Fort Vaux was done cooking up whatever they developed.
There were two weapons in the Franerri arsenal that were chosen for the basis of the oh-so-creatively named 'Man Portable Tank Destroyer' project. The first was the venerable IM-1915 rifle. It was certainly man portable, but it's tank destroying capability left much to be desired. The second was the Franerri Army's field artillery piece, the AAM-75-1912, or simply the Soixante-Quinze. While it definitely wasn't man portable, it had proven capable of disabling Kumo tanks during the Notch War. And so, Fort Vaux split the resources for this project in half, one going towards the rifle team, and the other to the artillery team.
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Post by callmedelta on Jun 19, 2023 10:55:24 GMT -5
Just Point it Down
Director Reynard Grandis stepped out into Ft. Vaux’s firing range, looking at the gun resting in front of him, Victor and three of his lab techs standing nearby and talking amongst themselves. Reynard knew it was meant to be a modification of the 75 mm artillery, but he was still expecting the AT gun to have more changes to it than that. The gun’s elevation had been almost cut out entirely, while the carriage had been completely redone, with a shorter front shield and smaller wheels. Though perhaps his untrained eye prevented him from seeing the bulk of the changes -- Grandis had been an infantryman during his conscription, not an artilleryman. The Director cleared his throat, and the four men turned to face him.
“Is that not just b-e-a-utiful,” Victor said, beaming. “It’s not quite everything the army wants, granted, but it was remarkably easy to create. We didn’t need to make any modification to the gun itself, only two periphery changes. The first, as you can see, was to the carriage. By cutting weight and improving the wheels, it’s much easier to move around. The second is in the round she fires. We made a minor improvement to the HE round, allowing it to maintain a greater accuracy at longer ranges, making a direct hit easier to, well, hit. The team experimented with a solid shot Armor Piercing round, but the HE round is damaging well enough and we can’t quite get the muzzle velocity to where we want it while maintaining accuracy.”
“Regardless,” Victor continued, “It’s operable by a four-man team and is capable of safely engaging a tank out to 500 meters. As you can see, half a kilometer away from us, we have a plate of 40mm thick steel-“
“Hold on, did you say 40mm?” Reynard asked, a bit in shock, “Gaelian tanks only have 13mm thick armor. What made you design a massively overpowered round like this?”
“We didn’t really,” Victor explained, “The preexisting HE round for the artillery already had most of the power behind it, we simply brushed up a few corners, focusing the energy of the explosion forward rather than in every direction, and violà! We can knock out a tank with 40mm thick armor from half a kilometer away. Now,” Victor continued, “That plate of steel is meant to represent a tank, with a wooden spider dummy meant to represent the poor Kumo soldier on the interior of that tank.” The scientist and his assistants sighted the plate of steel and fired downrange with an odd blend of professional cool and giddy excitement. “Now, if you’ll follow me downrange, we can see just exactly how terrible we made that eight-legged freak’s life.”
As Grandis, Victor, and his team made their way downrange, the conversation turned to the other weapon being developed. “This prototype is very excellent,” Grandis said, “But you did say that we ran into some issues with the attempts to upscale the Ilucile?”
Victor sighed with just a tad too much force to be genuine. “And here I was hoping to keep today positive. The major issue with the project is that our prototypes have a nasty tendency to blow up in your hands when firing. The metal isn’t strong enough to handle the internal pressures at any sort of strength to penetrate steel. I know that soldiers tend to appreciate having their arms and hands attached to their bodies, and something tells me the procurement offices would like it if their guns could fire more than one round, so this gun won’t see use for some time, likely.
“And now that they’ve got a working answer for tanks, funding for another one will probably dry up,” Reynard commented, “If we’re having trouble with the rifle concept, perhaps we need something else man portable, like a grenade, but I trust you to keep working on it.”
Victor’s mood picked up as the team approached the plate of steel. There was a massive scorch mark and dent on the metal where the round had impacted, but no true penetration. The true extent of the damage was revealed when the Director looked at the opposite side of the plate. There had once been a wooden dummy there, presumably. Now there was a mess of splinters and spalled metal fragments. “I dare say she is having quite a terrible day now.”
“If this is only what a ‘minor’ amount of engineering to the round did, would you be able to improve it even more to further increase the thickness of armor we can spall like this?” Reynard posited.
“Maybe,” Victor shrugged, “40mm is only the thickness our current round is consistent at. We’ve run tests on varying thicknesses, and we have rare cases of spalling up to 50mm of armor. Maybe we could, maybe we couldn’t. But like you said earlier, this round is already massively overpowered for what we need. If you want to, we could look into it.”
“No, no,” Reynard said, “It was simply a thought, and perhaps an idea to investigate later. For now, I want your team to take the rest of the day off. You did good work.”
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Post by callmedelta on Nov 4, 2023 23:00:52 GMT -5
Fort Douaumont, Royal Franerri Army Research, Development, and Testing Bureau (BRDE-ARF), Western Franerre
With the invasion from Shysil, the BRDE's main research hub of Ft. Vaux had to be abandoned in favor of a much more secure base. With the war, however, the BRDE's work became ever more important. Now with the captured tanks and artillery from Shysil, Fort Douaoumont's tasks would be as follows:
Use the captured Light Tank's gun, as well as Franerre's own experience modifying their existing artillery pieces into an AT role, to develop and anti-tank gun strong enough to pierce the armor of Galran Landships.
Use the captured Light Tanks to attempt the development of a potential Franerri derivative tank.
Restart the development of man portable anti-tank weapons, both anti-tank rifles and anti-tank grenades.
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Post by callmedelta on Nov 13, 2023 0:30:08 GMT -5
To Shoot Down the Sky
In addition to the problem of enemy armor, another problem was a near constant for Franerri troops on the Galran front. That of enemy air superiority. Aside from a sheer lucky shot fired on a low-flying plane, there was no hope of ever shooting down an enemy plane. That had to change. With Franerri time and capacity limited, however, there was little time to be spent on trying to develop a whole new system. Two ideas were proposed by the BRDE-ARF. The first was Quadruple-Naroda Anti-Aircraft Gun (QNAAG). The weapon was simple -- four of the Lusatian Naroda LMGs would be mounted on the front armor plate of an artillery gun, while a rather crude contraption would be used to fire all four guns simultaneously. It was quick, cheap, and relatively easy to produce, though those were perhaps all the positives that could be said for the gun. The second was to copy the machine gun off the existing stock of Franerre's Lusatian made fighters and mount it on the same turret, designated the LAMF Anti-Aircraft Gun (LAMFAAG). Both of these weapons needed a mount, however, and it was soon decided that said mount needed to be mobile, There were two camps of thought in the BRDE-ARF. The first was to create somethin akin to the Ashinaran Tachanka, a lightly-armored metal cart drawn by a team of horses. The second was to seize civilian trucks and mount the turret on the back, reinforcing the truck with light armor plates. These vehicles would be designated depending on the turret, creating the QNAAG-H, QNAAG-T, LAMFAAG-H, and LAMFAAG-T, respectively. Each vehicle and turret would be put through as quick of testing as could be reasonable to call the vehicles functional. These guns were needed now.
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Post by callmedelta on Dec 21, 2023 1:18:56 GMT -5
Thunder Run
The first few supplies had managed to come through into Franerre through the UST and Tafatu. But along with the supplies came news of the Tafatu front, and dire news at that. Ferville and Le Troi were at risk of falling, and if the former fell all of northern Tafatu would likely fall with it, cutting of Franerre's vital railway access. Tafatu needed reinforcements, but Franerre needed to ensure they arrived there quickly and safely. A train could get an army there quickly, but with the city right up on the frontlines, regular train cars were nowhere near safe enough. With the BRDE-ARF already stretched to its limit trying to develop new technologies, they began to seize anyone and everyone they could with relevant experience from the civilian sector and put them towards developing Armored Passenger Cars, Armored Box Cars, and Artillery Cars as well as beginning work on converting some of Franerre's existing rail stock to these new armored models.
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Post by EpicToaster1 on May 29, 2024 21:41:35 GMT -5
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