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> Is the OICW the ultimate 80s weapon?
Wounded Ronin
post Dec 11 2007, 01:27 AM
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I haven't been doing much work on my 80sRun project lately because I've been quite occupied getting re-adjusted to life in the US. However, it's always been on the back of my mind.

SR3 (and SR2, and SR1) all demonstrate the role of caseless weapons in the 80s. In the 80s many people thought that caseless weapons were going do dominate military armament of the future. Like in Alien 2 where the ammunition the giant assault rifles use is referred to as "10mm caseless" but then in a later scene the rifle is clearly shown spitting out casings. See also Twilight 2000 where they go on about how caseless weapons are the shiznit but now cannot be used so often because the end of civilization meant the end of manufacture of caseless ammo.

However, coming off of a recent Soldier of Fortune II binge, I decided to look up the OICW on world.guns.ru to get warm fuzzy feelings of nostalgia, and realized that the OICW is very 80s in many ways. (The OICW looks like a big happy tropical fish so it gives you the warm fuzzies. It's also fragile and expensive like a tropical fish.)

http://world.guns.ru/assault/as40-e.htm

QUOTE

The history of the one of the most ambitious projects in the history of small arms, known as the OICW, or the Objective Individual Combat Weapon, began late in the 1986, when the US Army Infantry School at Ft. Benning published a military paper, named "Small Arms System 2000" (SAS-2000). Despite the current trends towards the caseless and fleschette ammunition and appropriate weapons, researched and developed under the ACR program (see HK G11 and Steyr ACR entries for some details), this paper stated that the conventional small arms already reached its technological peak, and the only way to increase the hit probability in the small arms is to introduce a weapon that will fire explosive and fragmentation warheads, combined with the smart fusing and sighting / aiming technologies. While the most small arms research during the late 1980s in the USA was conducted under the ACR program, the idea first developed in the SAS-2000 was supported by another US military paper, published in 1989 by the US Army TRADOC (Training & Doctrine) center. This paper, called "The Small Arms Master Plan" (SAMP), requested for a family of infantry "Objective" weapons, namely the Objective Individual Combat Weapon (OICW), Objective Personal Defense Weapon (OPDW), and the Objective Crew Served Weapon (OCSW). The SAMP stated that such weapons must utilize the latest developments in computers and visual technologies, as well as in the small arms, and combine both high explosive warheads and traditional bullets fire capabilities in a single weapon, that should be fielded circa 2000. Of cause, the timelines and most of the weight and cost requirements set in this paper looked unrealistic from the start, but the development of the Objective weapons began in the early 1990s.

During the early stages of research and development in the mid-1990 one out of the two teams was selected as a winner for further development contract. This team is lead by the US based Alliant Techsystems corporation (ATK), with the Heckler-Koch (Germany), Brashear and the Omega companies (both of USA) as the other team members. The ATK is responsible for system integration, and also develops the 20mm Air Burst munitions; HK is responsible for both the 5.56mm rifle and the 20mm grenade launcher; Brashear works on the sighting equipment and Omega provides the training means. The resulting weapon was type-classified by the US Army as the XM-29 circa 2002, and is scheduled to enter the service during the year 2008 in limited numbers. It will be then consequently upgraded with the new technologies then available. Present plans for fielding the M-29 are to issue four units per one infantry squad of 9 men. Early in the 2002 the XM-29 test weapons were successfully tested with the newest 20mm HEAB (High Explosive Air Bursting) munitions, which will be a major "kill factor" for the M-29 weapon. At the same time the "kinetic energy" part of the XM-29 was type-classified as the XM-8 light rifle, and, in the near future, could possibly  replace the current Colt M4 carbines as a standalone compact conventional small arms.


Based on that description, it seems like there's a whole lot of 80s thinking gone into the OICW project. Emphasis on electronics as being the most important components? Check, see also the music of the era. Computers make everything better? Check, even in a rifle that is potentially going to be immersed in mud. Bullets AND little grenades from the same weapon? OMG the developers were watching Alien 2!

The question is, are the 80s big enough for two uber weapon systems, both caseless AND OICW?

Heh, and from a game design standpoint, how would someone implement t3h OICW in a game? It seems like in reality it's just a carbine with a ginormous grenade launcher attached that shoots little 20mm grenades which can be set to detonate manually at certain ranges with the help of a laser rangefinder. Perhaps the laser viewfinder you're supposed to be looking through has Predator-style or Terminator-style special effects graphics.

[Predator vision mode change]
VWOMP!
[/Predator vision mode change]
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Posts in this topic
- Wounded Ronin   Is the OICW the ultimate 80s weapon?   Dec 11 2007, 01:27 AM
- - MITJA3000+   I'm kinda off-topic here, but it seems that yo...   Dec 11 2007, 06:54 AM
- - Wounded Ronin   QUOTE (MITJA3000+) I'm kinda off-topic here, b...   Dec 11 2007, 07:32 AM
- - Kagetenshi   First off, the OICW is not the ultimate '80s w...   Dec 11 2007, 09:58 AM
- - Blade   One OICW is in the Infiltration mod for UT99 (mayb...   Dec 11 2007, 11:20 AM
- - Fix-it   # Allows a firearm to have a simpler, more reliabl...   Dec 11 2007, 02:58 PM
- - PBTHHHHT   QUOTE (Fix-it) # Allows the firearm to be better s...   Dec 12 2007, 04:01 PM
- - Fix-it   I copied that from Wikipedia btw. I'm quite aw...   Dec 12 2007, 04:13 PM
- - CircuitBoyBlue   QUOTE (Wounded Ronin) The question is, are the 80s...   Dec 12 2007, 05:21 PM
- - Kagetenshi   My fists eject spent cases every time I punch some...   Dec 12 2007, 06:01 PM
- - Moon-Hawk   QUOTE (Kagetenshi) My fists eject spent cases ever...   Dec 12 2007, 06:39 PM
- - Wounded Ronin   QUOTE (CircuitBoyBlue) QUOTE (Wounded Ronin ...   Dec 13 2007, 06:47 AM

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