Military Technology in 2187

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Infantry Weapons
Ballistic Weapons in 2187
Ballistic weapons haven’t changed much in the last two-hundred years, besides ergonomics and a few things essential to fighting in the vacuum of space. Modern infantry weapons still operate on a basic case-ammunition fed magazine, though with the optimisation of gunpowder and the changes in armour, average magazines now contain sixty rounds of dense, but thin rounds. Standard UEMC rifle cartridges operate on a 4.7x7mm slug seated in a 39mm cartridge (resulting in 4.7x45mm round when loaded). The slug is usually made from a spent uranium/tungsten composite to maximize penetration against powered armour, while also ensuring that vast amounts of valuable resources aren’t required to make infantry ammunition.

Unfortunately, due to the inherent problem of combustion in space, small changes have been made to the cartridges themselves. Gunpowder is now usually mixed into a gel that is two parts smokeless gunpowder, three parts liquid oxygen, and one part mixer – ensuring the LOX neither explodes prematurely, nor douses the powder to avoid it being rendered inoperable. The case itself hasn’t changed at all, still being made of brass shell as it has been found as the best combination of resource use and cooling logistics. The final issue of fighting in space has been solved by a simple combination of magnetic boots when fighting on the hulls of ships, and marine training when in open space – the former of which will be discussed in the Infantry Armour section.

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Heavy Weapons
Most heavy weapons remain as simple modernizations of their early relatives from the last 250 years. Rocket launchers have had their targeting, agility and IFF abilities upgraded. Flamethrowers have had their tanks more heavily armoured, and stored at a higher pressure to allow for greater range and fuel capacity. Mortars are more capable of firing different munition varieties, such as EMPs and incendiary shells. The only true innovations in heavy weapons relates to anti-material rifles, coming in the form of rail-guns.

The standard design of a rail-gun is simple enough. A sequential belt of magnets propels a large slug of dense, magnetic material along the barrel at such a speed that it is comparable or superior to a ballistic projectile. At present, the technology has only become recently made small enough for infantry to carry. Magazines have a standard load of ten 19.05mm rounds, and enough battery power to propel them. As an inevitable result from rechargeable batteries, the more times a magazine is reloaded, the less battery power is available, until by the sixth or so reload, the magazine’s battery is only capable of firing nine rounds. Fortunately, the decline is linear, so a full sixty reloads are possible before the magazine is rendered useless.

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Experimental Weapons
Will be expanded as new examples are come up with
With the Jutland being posted on forward assignments, particularly assisting science teams, it is carrying prototype equipment.
Issued to the Marine’s Gunnery Sergeant, the XM-104 Plasma Rifle is undergoing initial field trials. Built on the base of the infantry version of the rail-gun, with extensive modification, the XM-104 uses different munitions to fire rounds far more likely to penetrate the thick plating of powered armour. The magazine contains three elements, as opposed to just the battery and slug of the standard rail-gun. The slug itself is far smaller, being just a simple 7.62x15mm spitzer round. However, it is also magnetized in its own right, allowing the second part of the munition, a super-heated fero-plasma, a surface to adhere too. Finally, the last part of the magazine is a battery – approximately double the size of the rail-gun’s, due to an increased power consumption.

When a round is chambered, the slug and cool liquid-plasma is seated in suspension through a cylinder of magnets providing a repulsive force equally around the slug. Two sets of capacitors are charged in unison – one to power the belt of magnets for the weapon’s propulsion, and the other to power the heating element. Once the trigger is pulled, the rifle takes a full half second to super-heat the plasma, then runs the magnetic belt in sequence to launch the projectile at approximately 2,000mp/s. The user must then manually pull back the arming lever to cycle in the next round. It should be noted that the weapon has a tendency to overheat if fired in rapid succession. Should the weapon hit a critical temperature, the operator must hold the arming lever back to vent excess heat. It is highly recommended the user wear gloves to avoid burns.

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Infantry Armour
Individual Combatant Armour in 2187
While weapons may not have changed greatly in the last two hundred years, ways of defending oneself against them certainly have. Commonly seen infantry armour has been divided into two distinct categories, carried by non-combatants, and front-line infantry. Non-combatants, such as ship-board security, howitzer operators, or snipers wear a combination of heavy trauma padding on non-vital body parts and dragon-scale type ablative plating against vitals. The trauma padding is made of a composite material containing carbon-fibre and wool, woven into a honeycomb pattern to maximize its crumple zone. The ablative plating itself is a scaled steel/manufactured diamond powder. This allows it to be both resistant, yet relatively light weight, though it can still be punctured by modern ballistics.

Powered armour is a relatively old technology, having been created approximately a century ago, and optimised since then. The materials making up the plating is the same as the light armour, though significantly thicker than unassisted pieces. Due to its far heavier weight, an internal movement assist skeleton has been added, powered by batteries with massive capacity, and resultantly a heavy weight, too. Average suits weigh in excess of eighty kilogrammes, far more streamlined than the original suits that often weight more than a quarter tonne. The suits are controlled by simple pressure sensors on the inside of the suit’s plating – as the user’s limb presses against the internal soft-suit, the skeleton’s servos move in the same direction, all in all allowing a very fluid and naturalistic movement. While the curvature and thickness of plates makes major points difficult to penetrate, armour around the joints is often thinner, or non-existent, making them potential weak points.

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Experimental Armour
Due to both the weight, and cost of producing individual suits of powered armour for all front-line units, research has been poured into developing the next generation of combat protective equipment.

All marines posted on the UES Jutland are equipped with the next-gen XA-14 Armoured Vest. This consists of essentially two sets of armour, a full body ‘light armour’ kit and the presently experimental shielding underlay. The shielding, consists of a coating of soft electromagnets slaved to a short range LIDAR sensor suite. The LIDAR sends a consistent stream of passive pulses, operating at the speed of light. When a slug is fired at the marine in such a way that it will hit them, either glancing or directly, the LIDAR sends a signal to the electromagnets to make a soft ‘grip’ on the metallic slug, and toss it in another direction. Unfortunately, due to the fact that it is still new, experimental technology, the batteries required to run such a system are still quite limited in the number of rounds they can glance away. Testing against human weapons shows that they are presently capable of deflecting approximately sixty rounds in addition to five hours LIDAR run time before the battery requires charging from a specialized adapter.