Engineer and the Officers [Ashinara - Franerre]

[callmedelta]

“As you are the host,” Jean-Paul said, “I was going to leave the decision to you. Since you’re offering, however, I think it may be better to compare our weapons individually. I’ll go ahead and start.” Jean-Paul hefted one of the three IM-1915s and grabbed a handful of ammo. Walking towards the range, Jean-Paul went for a target that was around 100m out. “The iron sights are sighted for 100 meters. The maximum range of the IM-1915 is 2000 meters, but at that point it’s best to call an artillery crew if you can.” Jean-Paul chuckled. “There are some rare scoped models available with specialist units, but the vast majority of Franerre’s army will be using either the weapon I’m holding right here or a carbine variant.” Finished with his explanation for the time being, Jean-Paul loaded a round, racked the bolt, and sighted his target. The man’s eyesight wasn’t quite good enough to see where he’d hit, but Jean-Paul was confident it was close to the center.

[aimway921]

Sonya picked up the G-88 rifle and prepared to demonstrate it. "We use a different measurement system. Instead of meters we use yards, but they are roughly similar," she explained, as she checked the sights. Valentin handed her a spitzer cartridge, which she promptly loaded with seemingly just one smooth movement of her hand. "The maximum range on the sights is 1,200 yards, but the effective range is between 100 and 500 yards.

She then took aim at the second target - at the 200 yard mark. Through the binoculars, everyone would see that the bullet hit just a couple inches to the left of the bullseye.

"We have carbine versions of this rifle as well - one that is also a single-shot rifle, and one that has a tubular magazine - however we currently issue those exclusively to the cavalry. Although I believe the Navy has recently put in a request to replace their arsenal of rifles with carbines as well. The tubular magazine, for obvious reasons, can only be safely used with round-nosed bullets, so it's accuracy suffers even more so than the single shot carbine that can use spitzer bullets."

[callmedelta]

"I suppose that would be an advantage the G-88 has," Aymard said. "Both the IM-1915 and the Vaccaro 1920 use the same round for ease of logistics and production, which by necessity needs to be round-nosed. That's one of the reasons why the scopes are sighted so close, the other is, again, for ease of manufacture. If Galra or Kumosenkan declare war, Franerre needs as many men in the field as possible, and so the cheaper rifle makes sense. It also makes exporting the rifle to unindustrialized tribes in the middle of Touli much more viable due to the weapon's low cost. But it is a tradeoff," Jean-Paul admitted. Perhaps he could inquire about how cheap the G-88's sights were to make, but that would have to wait until after the demonstrations.

[aimway921]

"All our rifles use the same round as well - spitzer and roundnose can both be used interchangeably in all but the tube magazine rifle, in which only the roundnose can be used. For that reason, when the spitzer round was adopted, we massively scaled back the production of the roundnose ammunition, just to keep those carbines supplied - other than that, we have almost entirely moved to spitzer ammo," Sonya explained.

"But now let's take a look at the G-11," she said, as she picked up the newer rifle. "5 round internal magazine. Bolt stop integrated into the magazine that let's the soldier know his rifle is empty. Stripper clip feed lips to speed up the reloading process," she said, as she received a 5 round clip from Valentin and proceeded to load it into the rifle, the loading process from the moment she took the stripper clip into her hands and to closing of the bolt, making the rifle ready to shoot taking mere seconds. "Uses the same sights as the G-88, with the same max and effective firing range.

Sonya then took aim at the 100 yard target, and proceeded to unload all 5 rounds accurately into the target in the span of about 10 seconds.

[callmedelta]

That caused Jean-Paul to do a double take. Jean-Paul took a clip, inspecting it. The clip was just a strip of metal, at it’s most basic form. You would have to actively try to make that expensive. You had less space than the tubular magazine of the Vaccaro, but could reload perhaps three times as fast. The stripper clips, as Sonya had called them, would allow for the spritzer bullets, and the Vaccaro may even be the more expensive of the two guns. Aymard had seen many things that were too good to be true here in Ashinara, and the G-11 appeared to just be another to add to the pile. “I’m afraid you may have us outclassed with this.” Jean-Paul sat the stripper clip down on the table to accentuate his point. “The Vaccaro uses a tubular magazine. With a stripper clip you can reload so fast that the greater magazine size is practically irrelevant. How much does it cost to produce these?” Again, there might be a place Franerre could edge out: cost. Though even Jean-Paul was doubtful about that.

[aimway921]

"It's a simple stamped piece of metal - doesn't even have to be steel. On average I'd say a batch of 100 would cost about 450 Hryvnias, which would translate to roughly 2 Koian Jewls. That's just the production cost, of course, should they be sold on the market, the cost would be higher to account for profit. Of course, I believe that in the future as we become better industrialized, we'd be able to reduce that cost even further.

The rifle itself, however, is a different story. While the tubular magazine G-88 Carbine costs us about 20 Jewels per rifle, the G-11 costs around 40 Jewels."

[callmedelta]

The Vaccaro was only slightly cheaper, costing 36 Jewels to produce. He was loathe to admit it, but the Ashinarans had Franerre outclassed in this category. Still, he felt it best to put on a good as show as he could. Starting with a fully loaded Vaccaro, Jean-Paul walked up to the same target Sonya had shit at. To the man’s credit, he emptied out the entire 12-round tube magazine in 40 seconds, though his accuracy wasn’t as good as the Ashinarans. Doing another test reloading every shot individually, it took Jean-Paul 15 seconds to put five rounds down range as accurately as Sonya. The Lieutenant Colonel sat the gun down with the satisfaction that he had done well. He turned back to the Ashinarans. “As you can see, the Vaccaro has quite the rapid rate of fire when fully loaded, and unlike the Ilucile, she has adjustable sights out to 300 m. The accuracy drops off after there with the maximum effective range matching the Ilucile’s at 2000m.”

[aimway921]

"I believe there are valid design philosophies in both rifles that can benefit eachother," Valentin said. "Perhaps in the future we might develop a joint weapon, that would be used by both Ashinara and Franerre."

"But now let's move to the, arguably, most important bit of equipment we got here," Sonya interjected, as she walked up to the SS-12 machinegun. "Valentin, would you be my loader for this demonstration?"

"Yes Ma'am," the engineer answered, as he picked up a rectangular cardboard box and approached the gun from the left, while Sonya took position behind the gun.

"The machine gun uses the same cartridge as the rifles," Sonya began explaining, as Valentin opened the box and took a long clip with 30 rounds on it. Feeding it into the ammo port on the side of the gun, he took out a second strip and was prepared to load it next.

"I would recommend covering your ears, Jean-Paul," Sonya said, as she looked down the sights, racked the bolt, loading the first round into the chamber, and pushed the trigger. The machine gun rattled to life, sending bullets down range at around 500 rounds per minute. As soon as the batch of ammo was expended and the gun spit out the empty clip to the right, Valentin was already inserting a second clip - a feat he managed to do so fast, there was no pause in the shooting. When that ammunition was eaten through, this time Valentin was a little bit slower with the third clip, forcing Sonya to have to rack the bolt again before continuing shooting - thus creating a 3 second pause in the chain of lead flying towards the targets. In that manner, they have expended all of the ammo in the cardboard box, which held a total of 8 clips - or 240 rounds. The whole process took about 65 seconds, including all the lulls due to the need to rack the bolt again as a result of Valentin's lack of training in actually operating the gun properly.

[callmedelta]

Jean-Paul, ears covered, was impressed. Now, he’d been expected to be impressed, given what he’d heard of the Maxim, but it exceeded his expectations. That was twice the firepower of a Gatling gun in half the package. “How much?” Jean-Paul asked. “I can tell you right now: give us a good enough price, and Franerre will import all the Maxims you can give us. We currently use Gatling Guns, and I don’t know if you’ve ever seen them, but a Gatling Gun doesn’t hold a candle to what I’ve seen here.”

[aimway921]

"We can discuss the price when we get back to the office," Valentin responded. I can tell you, however..." He glanced at Sonya, seeking her permission to divulge the military secret he was about spill, and caught her approving nod. "... that we likely shall have to work out some production license deal. Being a small island nation, we don't have that many factories, and thus I don't think we'll be able to manufacture enough for an export. That is why our top engineers are working hard to beat the shortage of quantity with unparalleled quality."

"Now, if you may," he continued to the next section. "Here is the artillery we are currently using. Our main field gun, AG-94. The shield is strong enough to stop rifle rounds, but that's about it. A necessity, as sadly this gun has a lacking range - just a bit over 5,000 yards. This however-" he walked over to a gun with a shorter but much thicker muzzle that was pointed at a much higher angle. "The AM-20 mortar, something we've recently came out with to remedy the shortfall of the AG-94. With 7,000 yards it has both a longer range and a heavier payload, resulting in a higher explosive power. Some of our military theoretics that the future is in the indirect fire artillery, and, well, it's yet to have proven itself, but range tests already show great promise."

"Finally, this is a highly experimental weapon. AM-27, a handheld light mortar. A short range of no more than 500 yards, it's meant to be used more as a direct infantry support. Initial tests show that the additional firepower on the company or maybe even platoon level can be greatly beneficial, but we haven't really worked out the doctrine for using it yet. So far we've only armed a few specialist units with them."

[callmedelta]

"This may sound a bit presumptuous," Jean-Paul said with a smile, "I believe our artillery may be better than yours. I don't have a model here, unfortunately, but I can tell you the '75 has a range of..." he quickly did some mental calculations, "9,300 yards under optimal conditions. She can put out a sustained fire of 3 rounds per minute, or bursts of roughly 20 rounds per minute, but that last number varies wildly depending on the state of the crew. As for Franerre's own mortars, they're mainly used in a defensive role due to their much larger range and difficulty in moving. I couldn't tell you their stats off the top of my head."

"As far as Franerre is concerned," Jean-Paul said, "We recognize the importance of having superior fire on the field of battle. But when compared to a rifle, an artillery gun is much more expensive, and Franerre is not wanting for manpower. If war were to break out between Franerre and Kumosenkan or Galra, it's much more viable for us to use mass amounts of manpower than it is to use a mass amount of artillery shells."

Jean-Paul took a look at the hand mortar for a few moments, before turning back to the Ashinarans. Whether he was dismissing the weapon or not, the Ashinarans couldn't tell. "How much does this cost to produce?" he asked. "If you want to create a decently complex weapon like this and use it on a platoon level, I could be convinced of the benefits, but the cost will always be the key concern."

[aimway921]

"That is most definitely an improvement over our artillery. If we supply you with our superior small arms and you supply us with your superior artillery, we both stand to benefit. I believe the Foreign Affairs ministry will take that in mind when discussing prices."

"The most complex part of this mortar is the ammunition. The mortar tube itself is relatively simple. I believe we can crank them out at about 150 Jewels a piece, but the ammunition would cost around 200 Jewels per case of 10."

[callmedelta]

“20 Jewels per shot?!” Jean-Paul asked, incredulous. “For those weapons to be actually usable by our soldiers, those costs need to be vastly reduced. Franerre may be interested in helping to streamline production, but until that number comes down Franerre isn’t interested in purchasing the mortars. Now, have you anything else to show me?”

[aimway921]

"As I said," Valentin repeated himself. "This weapon is still considered experimental. Such high cost is due to it not having officially entered serial production yet."

"Now, while we don't have it here, as demonstration would not be too spectacular and barely different than one of the previous ones... It's more of an idea, a concept, really, rather than a separate weapon system.

The machine gun gives amazing advantage in firepower, but it's big problem that it's very immobile. So how do we solve it? One particular Colonel in the Royal Army had a bright, and extremely simple idea that sometimes I marvel how did the R&D department didn't think of it ourselves. Simply put a machine gun on a horse-drawn cart. This provides supreme mobile firepower that moves together with the cavalry."

[callmedelta]

The idea made Jean-Paul think. If it were only a Gatling Gun in the equation, the idea would be preposterous. But with that new Maxim, well, Jean-Paul had no idea whether the math behind such a contraption would work out or not. “That’s…an interesting idea,” Jean-Paul said, apprehensive, “I have absolutely no idea whether it would work or not. Do you have a model made? A prototype perhaps?”