USCM Artillery: Armat M41A Pulse Rifle - Explained 

I agree... before Aliens pretty much every scifi film used beam weapons. Aliens showed how bad ass futuristic projectile weapons could be. Robocop too

The movies were loaded with really neat things like the weapons and computer terminals, the ships themselves, the drop ship, the APC, the terraforming colony, etc etc. Prop and set design were fucking fantastic and still remain so against todays movies.

And they still upgraded them beyond gunpowder, magnets fire the bullets in Pulse Rifles. It's just below lasers and particle weapons we are working on today but just above the guns that existed at the time the movies were made, a sort of midway point between the two.

​@@livingcorpse5664 Also...most universes push high-tech laser and energy weapons; but it's a seriously impractical weapon system to ever fully replace projectile weapons. There is no reason to build a Death Star when you can make Tungsten bullets and rods...just fling those at high velocities and you'll do more damage. I think the Sea of Sorrows story has it right. Cool weaponry like plasma guns will most likely show up; but you'll still have a workhorse of projectile weapons at all times (unless you get into clarktech universes like Star Trek) to rely on. In this story they DO have plasma rifles...they're absurdly powerful...but most weapons are still projectile guns since it's cheaper to use them; and this story is over 300 years AFTER the original movie (cropping up on 400 I think) I do have a minor gripe with "caseless" ammo being such a lauded concept. It's actually a horrible weapon design if you're not talking about a rail gun (which the Pulse rifle arguably is, like you say). It's kinda like Mass Effect into Mass Effect 2; they designed these guns that don't need ammo but they overheat easy as heck. So they develop a "reverse magazine" to help handle it. Same issue with "caseless" bullets. There's no brass to absorb the heat from the gunpowder so it goes right into the gun. You'd end up with this very issue from Mass Effect 1-2 tech...so you'd end up putting a heat-sink mag into a caseless gun. So why not use metal anyway since the bullet is safer and more stable to transport :)

@@bitharne Conventional weapons and energy weapons complement each other. We will probably never get rid of physical projectiles but there are situations we are gonna need energy weapons, such as lasers to shoot down hyper sonic missiles as our current missile defense can't stop hypersonic missiles or even need both in defense of an asteroid, not to destroy it but push it away which several space programs are working on. Heck we are making fighter jets that will have missiles and bullets but also a laser to shoot enemy missiles but they said even that has it's limits if it's foggy or rainy. I like when a sci-fi movie or game has both normal and energy weapons. Part of the appeal of Mechagodzilla or Moguera from Godzilla movies or the Metal Gears and Gundams is they are weapons platforms armed to the teeth with various weapons, both that exist and some that could exist, it makes them both fantastical but beleivable.

The maximum number of aliens they had to kill _at the start_ is equal to the number of colonists minus three. Marachek, John J died during facehugger removal procedure, is the first and Newt is the second. There is a third, not named, from whom the other captured facehugger must have been taken. None of these could possibly have contributed to the alien population upon the marines' arrival. The first alien they kill is a gimme, the woman whose chestburster hatches just before they arrive. EDIT: "Someone must have bagged one of Ripley's bad guys here" implies the colonists killed one in the residential section of the colony. "If you liked that, you're gonna love this" implies a second, or if it was close, perhaps the bleed-out from the first. The number of colonists is variously given as fifty seven or one hundred and fifty seven. IIRC sixty, seventy families is Van Leeuwin's comment, so 157 is probably closer to the truth. 60-70 married couples and a small number of kids. After that, the accounting gets messy. Has anyone done a kill count? After their retreat from the station, Hudson notes that "The Sarge and Dietrich aren't dead, man!", implying that they are the only ones who did NOT escape in the APC who are still alive. Ripley describes the significance of this, so increase the total number of Xenomorphs by two again. In the novelisation and a deleted scene, Carter Burke has been implanted but Ripley gives him a grenade to destroy himself before his chestburster hatches. Don't count that one. Hudson is captured and dragged away; we do not actually see him die for sure. The novelisation states that Hicks fires on the aliens abducting him, hoping he kills Hudson at the same time (to spare him the horrible end). Hudson went down fighting like a berserker, and the aliens would have had to rip him apart to stop him. Don't count Hudson, and even if you do, his alien probably wouldn't have grown past chestburster size anyway. Vasquez and Gorman die in a grenade explosion. REQUIRING CLARIFICATION: How many PDTs did they pick up on the scan, and does a PDT go quiet when its colonist is dead? (Perhaps it doesn't, so the body can be found.) Hudson's scan seems to pick up only the presence of the devices and not their telemetry, or otherwise they'd have been able to pick that all the colonists in the processing station were either dead or implanted and awaiting hatching.

+ jsm666 The problem is that you have to count the Death ration of the colonists during the outbreak too. the possibility that atleast a dozen of the colonists were killed is something to consider.

jsm666 there was a Alien comic that explained what happened to the colonists during that time (I don't remember the name) but I think it was told from newts point of view -after the aliens fought the colony I'd say from the comic there was at lest 120 ish Aliens, and probably 20-30 left by the time Ripley blew up the Fusion power station (reactor- I forget what they actually called it in the movie) not including the Queen and the Egg . Why is there a large score line in my text .

Absolutely true. To cover myself completely, I should ideally have said _theoretical maximum possible_, but I was distracted by more important things and had to leave the comment as it lay.

The term 'Little Resistance' was probably just a bad choice of words, but in terms of the raw firepower they had... Actually, yeah - The Xenomorphs indeed Decimated the Marines... While they fought admirably, and definitely did some serious harm to the hive... They were hammered... You see the Xenomorph works by sheer numbers, Each Drone or Warrior KNOWS its life is expendable... The Marines do not have such a mindset... In the search for the colonists, There were four team... They lost Apone, Wierzbowski, Frost, Crowe, Thats one entire team there! Drake was seriously injured... 2 More got caught in the ammunition explosion... Despite the aliens losses, 60-70 Families??? Each Family being Mum, Dad and maybe 2.4 Kids (Lets say 2...) so that 70 x 4 = at least 280 Xenomorphs... And thats only if all teh information from Wayland Yutani was correct!!! Remember the man at teh Meeting said '60, 70 Families maybe...' - He didn't know how many people they had at that colony... There could have been far more!!! And I am sure in a comic book somewhere - definitely referenced on some fan sites... Though most are not Canon... There is a possibility that Burke and Weyland Yutani did NOT just send that one squad of Marines... Its highly likely that the Colony had supplies being shipped in... Or even other commercial vessels redirected there to see why they had lost contact.. So teh true amount of Xenomorphs is probably far higher!!! We may never knwo for sure... But as good as the Marines were, They got their asses handed to them!

It makes it in my number 2 I still prefer the morita assault rifle from starship troopers

Torin Jones I'd have to go with the Lancer from Gears of War. Altgough, it would get you into a lot of trouble at melee range with a xenomorph.

Flathead Gg244 Good one.

The classic assault rifle from Halo: Combat Evolved has always had a soft spot in my heart. I always loved the bull-pup design and 60 round capacity, and the LED counter up front ticking down as I mowed down the Covenant forces was a definite plus too. :)

It is but not fictional Thompson 1A

The smart gun was an MG-42 with a steadicam arm and parts from a dirt bike.

Armoured Productions REALLY!?!

Himithor, yes, a Tommy Gun.

Yes indeed. They used the M1 version made for general issue during WW2. It had the charging handle moved down onto the side of the receiver. The charging handle and the pistol-grip are the two features that can be seen in the movie to identify the weapon.

there's also a spas 12 in there right?

Well after the plane crashed they lost most of their supplies...

@@darrenharris9335 the bird would have never Landed It would have kept on circling in air support also yes the Devil Dogs give up their ammunition is what ruined the movie for me back then they should have let them keep it and killed all the aliens & underneath the fusion reactor with controlled shots and should I have the aliens at other parts of the planet and also on the other alien ship the Marines should have went to all them and killed everything that's the way I think the movie should have went.

@@JDeubel well xeno are too strong and stealthy

Necro reply...but I was watching Terminator the other day and the Uzi the T-100 used has the same sound with a different pitch.

You mean in the T800 view when he bursts the ar18. Yeh mad notes. Pulse noise is from the built in magnetic acceleration above the barrel. Kind of half tail gun half powder.

Everyone was self isolating from space covid and they could not get the staff

Thumpert the Fascist Cotton-tail ,I’m thinking the same when he said that lol

Was probably looking for the term bullpup.

@@Kharnellius It isn't a bullpup and stock placement (Rectracted/Not retracted) doesn't make something bullpup or not. Bullpup is when the magazine is behind the trigger (which is above the pistol grip on most weapons.)

@@CassiusGreen The action being behind the trigger makes it a bullpup. The magazine is typically behind the trigger cause you don't want extra parts just to move it all the way to the action so normally that is an easy way to spot a bullpup, however some bullpups actually have the magazine in front of the trigger in a baffling design decision.

It can be both. But carbine is a term that is often misused.

Only watch the first two films. They are the only good ones and these guns are featured in the second film. Don't watch the third and fourth movies; they are cinematic abominations, and they ruin everything you will love about the first two.

Seems we have similar tastes, I always see your comments in videos I watch, dude. lol and yeah the first two movies are much better than the following films. I'd say only watch the third film and so on if you really want to.

Since Blowmetheus, the ALIEN franchise is dead to me.

I hear that dude. So sad we didn't get Neil blomcants alien film and had to suffer that bullshit from that drunk old asshole ridley Scott. Guy dosnt even know what sort of story he is trying to tell changing his ideas every movie interviews where he talks about how the Alien is past it and trying to make hot trash about fucking androids playing with goo n shit. Sorry man ranting from anger but after reading what yiu said I knew you would understand 👌

The alien franchise was ruined by the very man that started it.

I say we take off n nuke the entire franchise from orbit.... Only way to be sure.

its game over man game over....dude we should crowd fund a proper alien movie. Straight colonial marines vs xeno's. on their homeworld. Rated fucking R, gory as fuck and just a slaughter house

Bad Luck, half the crew died in an incident not involving Aliens of any kind. Also the ship is known for having bad luck, and has lost a lot of people or been damaged in combat against other humans because it over thought things.

From Aliens? It was the currently available ship that could leave ASAP, carry the marines equipement, and be run automatically by a single person. using the "gotta go asap" reason, the Corp wanted an empty ship that could easily be run with a low amouunt of people.. Beccause the plan was to brign back a specimen, with or without the marine's living. So it had to be an option to run with a skeleton crew.

+Zwordsman Makes a lot of sense, thanks.

_Burke's_ plan was to bring back a specimen. I'm pretty sure that if the marines hadn't been surprised and their firepower wiped out, they and Ripley would have had other ideas. In that case, the plan would probably have been to screen and return any surviving (read, non-implanted) colonists. With the truth of Ripley's account confirmed, they probably would have swung into line behind her - and I'm sure most of the surviving colonists would have been quite happy to be killed if infected.

The majority of the ships systems run on automatic via their on-board AI. It can pretty much fly itself. Technically it can support around 90 personnel I believe. There's some good info in these links: alienanthology.wikia.com/wiki/Conestoga_class_Starship avp.wikia.com/wiki/Conestoga_class

It's a long-running argument. I suspect the real problem is that so much of the 70s retro stuff is on the junk heap now that it's easier to give the ships modern cockpits. That being said, Prometheus was an exploration ship and Covenant is a colony settler, so they both need to have the best of the best. Nostromo was a cut-price cargo tug.. Perhaps she's even an intra-solar-system tug converted to FTL drive, in which case she could be far older than the others and would be expected to be more primitive. Remind me again, someone, so I can be on a more firm basis: 1) How long before Alien is Prometheus set? 2) How long has humanity had faster-than-light drive when Prometheus was first launched? 3) Is Prometheus set within a given year? (AFAIK Alien was not.)

I believe Prometheus takes place in 2093. Alien: Covenant takes place in the year 2104 Alien takes place in 2122. Alien: Isolation (the game that follows Ripley's daughter, Amanda) takes place about 15 years after the end of Alien- so around 2137. Aliens takes place 57 years after Alien- so that places it at 2179.

On the Xenopedia site they have a Weyland Corporation time line. Just type in "Weyland Corporation" and scroll down, it may answer a few things. :)

Thank you, it wasn't just me bothered by that

technology can regress, knowledge can get lost or be abandoned due to the thought that less high-tech things might be more practical/easier to maintain. but yeah its a bit hard to justify, but then again, its just a movie, no need to get to riled up about it, just sit back and enjoy id say ^^

That's more than 9x **orbital velocity**

@@ussbased-a7074 so you can shoot the moon. Literally.

Thank you. That’s what I was thinking. I could not proceed from that point.

I think he meant to say meters as that's about the muzzle velocity of an M320

I heard 780 meters per second. Interesting. 780 MPS equates to about 2600 FPS. Quite speedy. Almost the muzzle velocity of a 556 round, out of an AR15.

Rewatch terminator and take notice in the police station scene :D

James Cameron spent a weekend making the squeak bang on various sound devices until he came up with the perfect sound

Haha, thanks.

I kind of liked Miles per second.

Alien Theory lol @ 78 miles per sec the queen would have been obliterated 😂😂

/Outstanding/ video. I absolutely /love/ the technical presentation. I can only pray that you will continue this trend with the Smart gun and the rest of the tech in the Aliens and Predator universes.

good,you caught the magazine not clips debate.

You gotta consider modern military rifles use ammo designed to penetrate and disable but not maim horribly. I guess in the aliens universe the marines stopped giving a shit about human life and just went with a brutal round that would probably blow your arm off instead of just penetrating it.

Not automatically. M16 is less powerful then AK-47, but it is more lethal. Modern weapons are not made to disable. They are made to kill. AK shot creates a nsmall, narrow wound. M16 shots tumble and desintegrate inside your body, at the expense of lesser penetration. Thus it creates far greater wound and trauma that is much more difficult to survive and treat. It quite literally rips thru your organs and causes terrible injuries. It is pretty inhumane. And borderline illegal.

@@kofola9145 That's not true at all. First, all spitzer (usually rifle) rounds tumble upon impact, secondly, only old M193 5.56mm rounds would fragment inside the human body, but those were discontinued and replaced with the more conventional M855. Third, you can see right here on RU-vid that 7.62×39 can do just as much damage as the M193, just search up "7.62x39 gel test". Easy. Fourth and last, the idea that 7.62×39 makes a straight "needle" path came from the fact that at one point during the 20th century, cheap steel-core ammunition was made for AKs which was designed to cut costs, not even to penetrate body armor. This ammunition had "needle" terminal ballistics because cheap steel is not as malleable as lead, which means very little of the potential energy was transferred. The same terminal ballistics can be seen in any armor-piercing round, 7.62mm or otherwise.

Spacedave2000 this big time!!

Mr1987Joe true but I always imagined we'd be using some sort of energy or particle weapons that far in the future. But guns really haven't evolved all that much other than special armour piercing rounds.

Let's rock

Mr1987Joe I once read that the biggest problem with effective directed energy weapons is physics. The energy requirements of lethal weapons are massive and physics limits the maximum amount of energy that can be stored in a power cell of a given size. this also applies to generators and solar cells. Although technology is improving every day there is a limit to what is achievable, and unless we discover a new miracle material, directed energy small arms will never be as effective as ballistic firearms. There's also the issue of energy weapons destroying themselves because the materials that they're made of can't handle the energy requirements. It's been predicted that energy weapons will become commonplace but they will be vehicle mounted or crew served due to minimum size requirements.

mechredd I think we've always had the 'power' issue in regards to energy weapons and that battery storage has not improved much the last 25 years. However rail gun tech... now that might be possible in light weight weapons in 20-30 years... and those are scary ballistic weapons! Punching holes through steal with such small ammo... wild stuff! But we will see! Nano tubes and other tech is being refined everyday!

Hi I'm Jason Blundell i didn't notice until i looked at it a second time. LMAO

Hi I'm Jason Blundell I saw that too

yeah, I noticed the similarities too

I always called Reilly's rangers battle armor USCM armor

I wish FO4 had the old combat armor because they have the TNR shoulder lamp as a mod

I second this.

Only what you see here pal.

“Phased” plasma rifle :-)

da oozie nein milimeeta

"Hey! Just what you see pal."

He closed early 🤣

The future respects the past

Same....and i bought the Replica...Snow Wolf M41A Pulse Rifle! :)

Come on now, he technically did 38

DarkSpiritWolf 38 smulated drops. Two. combat drops (including the one he didn't survive).

Novelisation says three including this one, but yeah; not good.

I don't claim to fully understand the military, but how does a man that inexperienced get made an officer and given a command?

+weldonwin It's in real life too. A Lieutenant is usually the first official officer rank and is pretty much automatically obtained after you attend a university for an amount of years, making you able to take an officer training course. They expect you to have superior intelligence so they can mold you further. They're supposed to get their feet wet by leading training ops mostly, and have a senior NCO hold their hand through the process who has a bearing of the squad.

Thanks! :)

Alien Theory still waiting for that trilobyte/ facehuggers video... or did you already do one? imma feel really dumb if you already covered it...

Alien Theory I mean, there IS the super facehugger video, but nothing about the trilobyte. I stand corrected. my bad.

good stuff do the dog alien

agreed keep up the good work alien theory!

The guy deserves it, i've been following his other channel hithisisderek237 for a few years now and i actually made a comment on how little subs he's got for the amount of work he puts in on one of his QandA. It's so good to see him finding some proper success and I hope he gets many more.

Jason oh yea i totally agree. His content is very good and very interesting to watch

The teaser for Alien: Covenant has rekindled many people's (or maybe just mine) interest in the Alien franchise.

Thanks Jason, I appreciate you saying that. It's been pretty mind-blowing how fast this channel has grown in just one month, compared to my other channel which has been up for years. RU-vid can be really unpredictable.

youtube's a fickle bitch

I was gonna say that too lol.

To quote their uniform armor graffiti, "Eat the apple. #$@& the Corps!"

Yeah, I spotted that too. He's put up a pinned comment correcting that.

lordnevetsz yeah he makes loads of errors. miles per second. No flamer units. Remind me when they say all ammo users remove your mags and give to Frost.........Flame units only??????

Is he fucking crazy??

"Flame units only. . .and no grenades."

What are we supposed to use, harsh language? Lol

Agreed, a weekly vehicle break-down video would certainly be interesting to all of us gear-heads that love Aliens, and a great addition to the channel, IMHO.

Raymond Jameson do you mean the APC and dropship ? also here's a little fun fact the APC was originally one of those vehicles they use to pull passenger planes to and from the terminals

jin pheonix nice, i didn't have to continue cringing and say it myself. plus, bonus fact.

thatrusskid it's all in the bonus stuff that came with special edition of the film loads of cool little facts even the atmosphere processing station when the marines went inside the entire inside is in fact an abandoned power station that they simply decorated in stead of using just studios you should give it a watch if you can oh and here's a little something the pulse rifles they used in the film could actually use live ammo but obviously used blanks for the film

MrZombrex they did have actual sized version the one you see them pull to the colony inn except it could only hold about 4 or 5 people inside due to the engine being so large as it was intended to pull aircraft it weighed about 40 or so tonnes before they stripped it for the film and when you see the interior of the APC with them inside its a small set but yeah when the drop ship crashes and the drive too and from precessing facility are models

+Andy Godbeer I'm working on some more right now and honestly I feel like I'm studying real text books about real things lol!

Leslie Porter Neil blomkamp created an updated version of the Pulse Rifle. It's on his Instagram. instagram.com/p/9CsLm8hxUM/ instagram.com/p/85kYLHC4Oi/

Chris Rardin that thing was purdy!

Thanks Chris. That thang was purdy.

Loader2K1 in Texas we met this guy who used a airsoft body kit he got online and put it on a real Thompson, it fired and worked all good

Was the aforementioned body kit a resemblance to the pulse rifle? If so, that's pretty awesome.

Yeah, they sell airsoft body kits for Thompson SMG airsoft guns as the pulse rifle. All this guy did was it on a real tommy and not the airsoft

lakotasoulja84 or we can pretend that movie doesn't exist because it doesn't

I wondered why the wepons sucked in covenant, maybe cause of the father Ridley Scott

MrFragalax tbh if a shell of that size and speed hit the queen she would have been obliterated it's probably more like 78 meters per second .

Yeah it's meters, he posted a correction!

Mr H Reviews haha awesome THE Mr H, love your predator videos man!!

u think u were late? not sure what im then tho >_< either way i agree it was a good vid, very interresting ^^

The Corps is pronounced as the corb

@@juliushegge4845 oh.

Yes, the Marine Corps pee silently so the enemy can't hear them.

@@morningstar9233 true

The comics imply that it's a classic Cyberpunk setting with corporate oligarchies ruling everything in the "big" systems like Earth and individual corps owning specific colonies to themselves.

The military unit is referred to as the 'United States Colonial Marines', implying that at least the USA is still a functioning nation.

fusilierdinger So does he USA have colonies? Are they like Hawaii or Puerto Rico? Are they states? Do states still exist or has some crazy shit happened where it also controls satilite nations like cold war super power, but is done through partnership with corporations or directly?oThese fine little details, i would offer some serious coin if someone made a novel, comic, or what have one to provide all the fluff. Same with the humans in the Terminator series! We know very little of them, other then theyre human and are led by Conner.

In cyberpunk settings there is often a political government, but it's almost completely controlled by corporations such as Weyland-Yutani. Thus, when the company wants to send United States Marines to its colony, it gets what it wants, and Burke gets to go along with them.

+Helium Road Yup.

Hazztech and a flamethrower taped to that ;D

So, it could technically, have a drum clip! Though, I know it has never been mentioned like...Ever!

And with a bit of HK-G11 stats thrown in for flash.

No it can't. As it is the M1 model Thompson which does not accept Drum magazines, only 20 or 30 round stick magazines.

In reality a still badass weapon.

Jacob Sailer so glad I wasn't alone in noticing that. Former marine, I hate when people think I was a corpse.

wtf the guy above hahah . Corpse @@ , so funny hahaha

The projectile is steel jacketed, FMJ refers to the projectile not the casing.