Talk:Heckler & Koch G11

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this page should really be at the Heckler_and_Koch_G11 page

Contents 1 Reason for failure? 2 Rates of fire 3 Popular culture 4 Propellant 5 In Fiction

[edit] Reason for failure?

So there is no reason for production of this gun starting?

If I understand correctly, with the German reunification, the Germans had both less concerns about their immediate national security, and more need for funding for administration, reabilitation etc. Hence, the costly project of mass-producing a radically revolutionnary weapon was posponned sine die. Rama 15:10, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Rates of fire

I can understand the confusion, but I'm guessing the higher rate of fire in burst mode is correct. It would be more useful that way. The sources I'm seeing keep mentioning rate of fire in the 2000 rounds per minute range, but I haven't been able to confirm a difference between full auto and burst. Friday (talk) 22:47, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

A bit further down in the article is "When firing in semi-auto and full auto modes, the rifle only loads and fires one round per transit of the barrel, cutting the rate of fire to a controllable 1/3 of its max rate.", which confirms what I suspected above. So I've put it back the way it was. Friday (talk) 22:55, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

It may also be worth mentioning the extremely long magazine. Watch the videos of the G11 in tests (Youtube has a few HK PR vids), the magazines were extremely long and thin other assault rifle magazines at the time. Plus it's perfectly straight, as the rectangular ammo wouldn't suit a curved magazine very well. It'd be a real pain finding a place to store any extra magazines above the three mounted on the rifle (though the video shows a smaller speed-loading device to quickly load twenty or so rounds into the normal magazine), plus more prone to being bent than a STANAG magazine.

So they purposely reduced the ROF in full auto to 400-600? Can it theoretically fire at 2000 rounds/min on full auto? Malamockq (talk) 04:25, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Popular culture

Makes an appearance in the PC games Fallout 2, Delta-Force "Land Warrior", IGI2. Also in James Bond:Agent Under Fire Gamecube game.

I believe the JSSDF commandos in The End of Evangelion use this rifle. Freelancepolice 01:21, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

The currently policy on noting that a gun is used in a game or movie is to note it in the article for the movie or game. Reasoning was the following: If someone plays the game or watches the movie, he'll look at that article and follow the link to the gun article. As opposed to someone reading the gun article already and wondering "in which game or movie was this?". Otherwise, the list in this article would be quite long (hey, you forgot Jagged Alliance 2 - it is the rarest guns around, only carried by Mike The Mysterious Mercenary). Tierlieb (talk) 09:30, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Propellant

Rate of fire is 2000 rpm on 3-round burst and 400-700 rpm on full-auto. Reason is that G11 has a system for delaying gases. In back of the rifle are three "chambers" for gases. On three-round burst all three chambers are used and fireman will hit the target with first shot and after he has fired all three rounds gases will be released, and this means lack of recoil during the fire sequence. On full auto is imposible to use all three chambers(beacuse there is only three chambers and you can fire all 45 rounds in one burst) so it is used only first and rate of fire is smaller beacuse gases need to leave the chamber after each shot, beacuse of recoil-delaying system. And there's yours 1/3 of its max rate(700 of 2000)

Now I have a question. Is there any special powder used in G11, beacuse 5 times smaller amount of propellant has almost same power as 5.56x45mm bullet?

As I understand it, normally a lot of propellant gas will be spent and wasted discharging empty casings. Because the G11 is caseless, none of the gas escapes in that manner, and it gets a lot more out of the same amount of propellant. I don't know how much of an increase in efficiency that would count for, but it's probably a lot. Also, in D20 Modern Weapons Locker it says that the ammunition itself is rectangular, or I suppose, the shape of the powder. Being that that's a game, I decided to research this a bit more just to make sure, well, yes indeed, it is blocky http://www.hkpro.com/g11.htm Look about halfway down on that page. That could help explain why it gets so much bang for its buck. Also, its barrel is a bit longer than the M16s, so that's probably another tiny nudge towards improved efficiency. All of that combined could easily explain where it gets all that power from. -NorsemanII 03:35, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Where have you seen the "5 times smaller amount of propellant" figure? The G11 bullet is telescoped into the propellant, i.e. the square body of the round is actually all propellant. Similar (kind of) to the way that the propellant charge for a mortar round is wrapped around the tail rather than behind it. To me it seems that there's roughly as much propellant there as you would expect to be in the casing of a traditional round of the same caliber. Riddley 10:18, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Not an expert, but the SoldierTech article (listed in External links section) mentions the following regarding the propellant. It does not mention weight, but it is a non-standard propellant. Perhaps the factor of 5 refers to the entire cartridge, which might well be a few multiples lighter (smaller bullet, no case etc.)

The most challenging of these obstacles was the development of the caseless ammunition itself. Early tests with molded gunpowder led to the development of High Ignition Temperature Propellant (HITP), a less sensitive compound that would reduce the risk of "cook offs" where the internal chamber temperature was high enough to ignite the propellant. The propellant is molded into a rectangular block around the 4.7mm diameter projectile and cartridge primer. The rectangular shape allows the rounds to feed more efficiently from the magazine -- since there is no magazine "dead space," as there would be with conventional round metallic cartridges, there is no room in the magazine for the bullets to shift and potentially mis-feed. In addition to improving feeding, the molded propellant also significantly reduces the weight of each individual cartridge (A G11 rifle, with 45 round magazines and 510 rounds of 4.7mm caseless ammunition, weighs as much as a G3 rifle with 20 round magazines and 100 rounds of 7.62mm ammunition).

Deon Steyn 11:01, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

All other things being equal, a caseless round with the same bullet and the same amount of propellant is going to be lighter than the same round which has a metallic casing. This is great for the people who have to lug 500 of them about. But I still haven't seen any proof that the G11 ammo uses "5 times" less propellant to achieve the same ballisitic performance as a cased round. There are certain basic laws of physics which come into play here - I don't think anyone has developed a propellant which is 5 times more effective than what we have in traditional ammunition. Riddley 18:39, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] In Fiction

I have moved this section to a separate page as per the standard for sections of this nature when they grow to large (see MP5 etc.). Some would argue that these lists of trivia to not belong in Wikipedia (see WP:NOT), but for now it is at least in a separate page which not only cleans up this page and makes it more encyclopaedic, but also enables inclusion into List of firearms in films and List of firearms in video games. Deon Steyn 10:59, 24 July 2006 (UTC)