And they play board games and paint minis of a time long lost and imagined that only rumours and idea exist of a less advanced time where nations and religious factions fight each other instead of alien races and fight over continents instead of galaxies 😅
Dude, it's exactly like the Bolter, the Bolter is designed to fire multiple projectile types. It's uncanny how much they are alike, right down to firing pin mechanisms and the gas release holes on the front of the barrel.
US army XM-29 O.I.C.W. program was our second attempt at creating a bolter. Barrett is currently trying to get a contract with the US army, right now, with a self-propelled semi-automatic 30mm grenade launcher/carbine/sniper? I don't know how to describe it, but it's glorious.
Someone else mentioned Barrett's new project in the comments, too! I looked into it, and it really looks like the bolter. Badass weaponry from Barrett, as always!
@havefuntazarasu5367 unfortunately your kinda right... well that's army regulations as of right now, but rank and file very much have the don't ask don't tell/don't care so long as you work and are good at your job mindset. Speaking from personal and current experience
Convergent Design. If you want a fully automatic compact fuck off rifle that fucks up absolutely anything at close-mid range it's going to end up looking roughly like, being loaded roughly like, and having a magazine size roughly like the Bolter.
People call the Boltgun completely impractical or ridiculous, but frankly something like it is really a plausible next step in projectile weapon evolution. The history of ranged weapons is really just a story about human beings finding newer, more technically sophisticated ways of throwing rocks at people we don’t like. It started with just throwing rocks, somebody then had the idea to put small stones in a bit of fabric which gave us the sling, then somebody else attached sharpened rocks to sticks to get spears, another guy shortened the spear to get arrows, combining them with a curved piece of wood for a bow, that led to the crossbow, which gave way to gunpowder and finally ending at the modern assault rifle. At this point however we’ve seemingly milked traditional ballistic weapons dry, there’s very little we can actually do that would make them more powerful than they already are. You can’t really go up from fully automatic fire and detachable magazines. At this point we need a completely new way of launching projectiles and aside from rocket assistance the only viable alternative is electromagnetic propulsion like railguns and coilguns. So really the Bolter is incredibly believable when it comes to sci fi armaments, it’s literally just a big gun with rocket assisted ammunition. That’s a comparatively simple thing to railguns, lasguns or plasma rifles.
Thanks for the extensive, interesting comment! The level of ridiculous is more so just on the size of the weapon for me, which, if we are to go the turbo-steroid, genetic-modification route and make super soldiers... Wouldn't be crazy anymore. It's only a matter of time before we get Borderlands ATLAS level smart lock mini-rocket guns.
Except its likely not going to live long. There are other better things like if you can get ur battery/energy tech compact and powerful enough everything just holds and shoot steel shards...mini railguns. Its about weight and ammo capacity when it comes to combat this is Always an issue. Its also why you don't see Drum mags widely used...they are weird to carry and Logistically odd.
@@douglasduda9826 Yeah it probably wouldn’t last. Hence why I brought up railguns in the first place. A railgun just throws rocks faster and farther than any kind of gunpowder or rocket ever could. That being said we’re not at that point, at least not yet. So a bolter like weapon would be similar in my opinion to the crossbow. An iterative improvement on a longstanding weapon that would be comparatively short lived in active service.
Well I have some news to excite you, the US's SSRS program going on right now. Semi auto mag fed squad level 30mm rifle with round variety. Both the Barrett and Sig options look JUST like a tacticool modern bolter.
Don't forget: In the backstory for 40K, the Emperor has existed throughout humanity's history, though always in the background. So if we assume that in the 40K universe, all this happened too, what could've happened is the Emperor saw this and got inspired. So maybe he's perfecting the bolter, right now.
@@GrexGuns Apparently, he's taken many roles throughout the ages. Some public, I think, some not. Who could he be now? Not a clue. I had read one thing once that said he's Keanu Reeves. Is that true? No idea. Who could he HAVE been in the past? Also no idea. But apparently, he's out there.
You can still sometimes find Frag-12 shells on sale in strange places. Bolters are inevitable as they are already here. It's just the prohibitively expensive, questionable legality, and theater practicality that hinders their popularity.
I haven't seen any Frag-12 in person yet, but they seem pretty cool, if not dubious. I cant even imagine how much ammunition like that would cost to make
@@GrexGuns Production at scale would solve the issue but why? What role doe a round like that have to justify it? I mean there's so many other tools just as effective as.
@jddunebuggy I don't think they could solve any real problem. They don't carry enough explosive mass or fragments to cause any serious damage unless on direct impact, and I'm sure that's partly why this project failed as well. Rapid engagement of small explosives can be useful, but not at their scale. The brand new Barrett prototype, the SSRS, is a much better take on the idea. 30mm shoulder fired infantry rifle, made in the shape of a compact(shortened) barrett 50 caliber rifle. Thanks for the comments, mate!
Yeah, the Barrett SSRS is a much newer and higher caliber weapon that is really, really close to a bolter! And .50 cal rounds can fit in the chamber of a 12 gauge shotgun, but the actual bullet is much smaller than the bore. The base of the cartridge is just much wider than the actual bullet, which is why it fits. 50 cal bullets are 12.7mm wide, and 12g shotgun slugs are roughly 18.5mm wide, depending on the slug.
I now wanna see someone cosplay a Space Marine, with a legitimate boltgun, and watch them use that boltgun to blow stuff up. And there might be a world where that can happen IRL.
that would be sweet... we just need some big youtube channel that makes guns to do it... collab with a cosplay artist, and that guy who plays the juggernaut from King Artyom's channel.
I really hope someone does. Maybe Brandon Herrerra, or someone like that. His team does seem to be pretty good at engineering! But if anyone could cosplay a space marine, it'd be that mysterious juggernaut guy! Cheers, mate!
@@GrexGuns CONSTANTLY lmao. Plus, like, comparing it to the gyrojet is just sorta… low-hanging fruit? It’s a pretty well known 40k fact. Also you are WELCOME
I think that the main difference is that IRL attemps of creating bolter weapons, use a mix mechanism between how a normal bullet is propell and a mini rocket, however the Bolter has pure rocket like propelled bullets and even some of the most advance (or ancient because is tech from the DAO) can lock in targets and radically modify their trayectory to hit a target.
@@EricFletcher-ty8bq I am just saying that WHk40's bolters are literally mini missile launchers while IRL bolters are just guns with more fancy bullets. XD
There is one handheld automatic grenade launcher in Vietnam museum too... can that thing be counted... And there are the surrent SSRS rifle system made by the one who created Barrett similar to bolter too.
@@GrexGuns standard template construct, they're basically blueprints from the golden age of technology that the mechanicus collects because they don't believe in innovation
Firs time I've heard of the CAWS. And you're right, even Jonathan Ferguson, Keeper of Firearms & Artillery at the Royal Armouries, didn't make any mentioon of this when they were talking about the weapons of Space Marine 2.
TBF Russia is no Soviet Union, try as they might. They lost a bunch of their equipment to their successor state, even more got eaten by corruption and they lost a ton of production capacity etc. Granted, Nato still would have won, but the Soviet Union was actually scary.
@@jabloko992"Still would have won" is an *extremely* optimistic view. Like an absolute optimism and nothing else, at least europe and asia are absolutely getting bodied within few months, or don't even participate in fear of getting absolutely violated. And that leaves you with north and maaaaaaybe central america or even war at two fronts cause no one wants to go to absolutely suicidal war in the south and center. They were somewhat close only in 50's, and it would go extremely poorly for nato and ussr both.
Also they don't even use a quarter of what they have. It isn't even vietnam, more like Afghanistan 2.0, but enemy is fighting directly, thus having high losses too.
@@deauthorsadeptus6920you are either horribly mis-informed or a Russian bot. They haven't only used the majority of their stuff so far, but are running out of it. Either way, I'm not going to have yet another pointless argument with a stranger on the internet: you are wrong. There's ample evidence out there why you are wrong, it's up to you to seek it out and correct your false viewpoint. Or not. I don't care.
Bolter look was dictated by casting metal (lead) miniatures in late 1980s and early 1990s. It was difficault to cast proper looking guns at that scale to not loose details. Hence exagerated guns, hands, faces, which were out of proportions to the rest of the body. That's why bolters look ridicolous and oversized. Since then casting minis went a long way, but Games Workshop decided to stay true to origins of the game and keep oversized bolters, along with soulder pads. If you want to know how they would've look if GWs would design them today, just look at Leagues of Votann armory.
Gyrojet used the same kind of ammunition as CAWS (including the caliber). It's just much older design (some 20 years) and was shot down before the inaccuracy problem was fixed.
And problem was greatly exaggerated (its not very accurate, but you could sure shot someone at 30m). The actual problem was production quality of ammo, tools of the time weren't good enough to cut these tiny holes accurately enough to stabilise the round by spinning it with thrust without one of them being slightly weaker/stronger. Now something bigger would be actually easier to make accurate. And with modern tech, even laser-guided.
This entire thing is incredibly doable and can be made practical. It has always been about money and time and how much of those two people are willing to use to see something succeed. Considering we are not in a war period, now would be the time we can do such testing without a real worry.
About the coincidence about how they both came into existence around the same time, it’s because we just went to the moon and two nerds, one in a basement and one in a military bunker, both thought: “what if we put a rocket on a bullet”
So the bolter doesn't just use solid shots? Hm. Initially I thought it was so lame. I get the appeal of a slow firing weapon that packs a punch, but it being solid shot AND being more powerful than f-ng lasers and plasma? That just didn't make sense to me. Never thought there was more to it
@sr.lontra Same here, to be honest. I only recently figured out they use rocket propelled munitions, which is what spurred me to make the video as I'd heard about the TRICAP before.
They just had tons of companies compete to win contracts with the industrial military complex replacing the equipment at the time. Cold war military budget landed us on the moon :)
Someone show this to _Jonathan Ferguson, the keeper of firearms and artillery at the Royal Armouries Museum in the UK, which houses a collection of thousands of iconic weapons from throughout history._ Yes, that is his full name.
Pause. Go look at the Heckler and Koch XM29. Now THAT was a friggin’ Bolter. It was a shoulder-fired, magazine-fed 20mm grenade…rifle…thing. Ultimately not allowed for its intended purpose because it violated some nonsense called “The Geneva Convention” I think it was?
Heck yeah! I'm aware of that strange bastardized gun, and while I'm sure it would fit somewhere in the emperor's army, i just personally found the TRICAP/CAWS to be more accurate on paper. The crazy half bullpup grenade launcher, half m4 carbine weapon could surely cause a lot of damage, though! Sucks about that whole Geneva thing... Those guys ruined everyone's fun!
The Hyperion Cantos, a sci fiction series of novels… has a weapon like a bolter called a “flesh head gun” … basically a bolter round that breaks up into several smaller explosive pieces … or something like this but better then my description
In Expendables 2 Terry Crews has an AA12 shotgun loading 12guage / 18mm HE grenade rounds, It really captures the firepower and carnage of a bolter. If you combined that with the rocket technology from a Gyrojet you'd have a proper Bolter
The Punisher is closer in terms of scale to a bolter, but I personally find its appearance and ammunition to be too far from what is established in Warhammer lore for the default bolter. If it used rocket-assisted munitions, I would have mentioned it in the video. It is still a really cool weapon, though, and was pretty good in Battlefield 4 on Op Metro! Thanks for reminding us about it.
My best guess on why this wasn't adopted is that, like so many other things, it all came down to money. The manufacturing cost for this kind of ammo would be pushing low orbit. And in the vast majority of circumstances, it would be complete overkill. So the benefits of adopting this thing would be dwarfed by the cost.
Yeah, with the technology of the time this must've been ludicrously expensive to manufacture with questionable effectiveness, for the explosives at least.
Gyrojets were in a lot of Sci-fi in the 80s, including Sci-fi table-top RPGs. Still, I really think that the bolter was influenced by the lawgiver, Judge Dredd's weapon. Judge Dredd came out in 77 and at one point, Games Workshop had a license to use the IP for RPGs and miniatures. You can really see the Dredd influence in the 40k Arbiters.
Thanks! I'm really glad you enjoyed it. But I wasn't aware of that! The HK G11 is pretty sweet. I particularly like the weird light machine gun variant they made.
Warhammer 40k is also known for its plasma weapons. It would be cool if you made a video about it, especially with comparable real prototypes from around the world.
I'd be really interested to give this a shot, though I'm afraid I don't think there would be a lot to compare them to. Granted, I'm not sure, but that kind of directed energy weapon may be a bit over my paygrade! I will look into it for you, though I can't guarantee anything. Thanks for the comment and the recommendation!
Barrett has teamed with MARS Inc and have created the SSRS. Its a 30mm automatic grenade launcher for US Army’s PGS (Precision Grenadier System) Program. Praise the Omnissiah
The Davy Crockett is often called a recoilless rifle because it is shot using a somewhat conventional cannon of the same name, although it is technically smooth bore and not rifled. The CAWS/TRICAP are technically not rifles either, though i think i may refer to them as such in the video. They are smoothbore and fire rockets with their own stabilizers, not needing any rifling to gain their own stabilization. Sorry if I mixed that up in the video!
CAWS (Close Assault Weapon System) is the name of the competition it was designed for. Not strictly the name of the weapon itself. Heckler & Koch had a go at the concept mid eighties but shelved project after testing described it a war crime waiting to happen.
I misread the comment, lmao (just woke up and thought it said the CAWS program wasn't real, somehow) But yeah, you're correct. AAI, HK, S&W, Atchinson, and Pancor all made models for the program in the mid eighties. Atchinson produced what we now know as the AA-12, and Pancor produced that awful, nearly useless bullpup shotgun that was in a lot of late 90s to early 2000s media. Thanks for the comment and pointer!
I believe i failed to mention this on the video, but you are correct. From what I can tell, the CAWS or, at the very least, the TRICAP used two stage ammunition as well so as to not blind or burn the soldier immediately upon firing. Thanks for the pointer!
There is a surprising lack of 12ga rocket ammo. Plenty of room in a shotgun shell, plenty of semiauto shotguns with big detachable mags. You could probably have a 3D printed stump remover DIY bolter rounds.
ALLLEGEDLY the prototype for the TRICAP/rocket smg is in Rock Island somewhere... So maybe one day Ian Mccollum from forgotten weapons can get his hands on it.
Yeah, I've seen the HK CAWS around in a few games, but I don't think it used rocket ammo like the AAI submission. could be wrong, though! Thanks for taking the time to comment.
Xm29 oicw is another that remind me of bolter. This experimental works great, but deemed too destructive for a single soldier to carry by Geneva or something. 556 under 20mm specialty rounds. So it’s like they glue a m16 to bottom of a bolter.
