Heckler & Koch G11

Triton

Triton

Donald McKelvy
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The Heckler & Koch G11 is a non-production prototype assault rifle developed during the 1970s and 1980s by Gesellschaft für Hülsenlose Gewehrsysteme (GSHG) (German for "Corporation for Caseless Rifle Systems"), a conglomeration of companies headed by firearm manufacturer Heckler & Koch (mechanical engineering and weapon design), Dynamit Nobel (propellant composition and projectile design), and Hensoldt Wetzlar (target identification and optic systems). The rifle is noted for its use of caseless ammunition.

It was primarily a project of West Germany, though it was also of significance to the other NATO countries as well. In particular, versions of the G11 were included in the U.S. Advanced Combat Rifle program.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heckler_%26_Koch_G11
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Combat_Rifle
http://www.hkpro.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=23:the-g11-caseless-military-rifle&catid=11:rare-prototypes&Itemid=5
http://www.nazarian.no/wep.asp?id=186&group_id=5&country_id=81&lang=0
http://world.guns.ru/assault/as42-e.htm
http://www.remtek.com/arms/hk/mil/g11/g11.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdErfyYeJeU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6JWCEmCgD8
 

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Truly the next generation of weapon. Now lets see if AIA can take the concept and actually produce the next generation of light assault rifle for the US Army. Also use the 6.8mm calibre. :)

-----JT-----
 
If you're talking about the US Lightweight Small Arms Technology (LSAT) program, that's AAI, not AIA. They seem to be looking at 6.5mm rather than 6.8mm as a possible intermediate caliber offering, but nothing is cast in stone, obviously. The primary developmental rounds are both 5.56mm, but that's mainly so that they can concentrate on developing just the cartridge/propellant aspect and not the bullet as well.

Personally, I suspect that if LSAT does bear fruit, it will be with the polymer case-telescoped offering instead of the caseless one. Caseless is clearly superior (lighter, more compact rounds, etc.) but the case telescoped route seems to be much lower risk.

The latest LSAT brief from the NDIA Small Arms conference is promising, but then aren't they all? Here's a link...

http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2009infantrysmallarms/wednesdaysessioniv8536.pdf
 
Is it just me or does this box with a knife blade on it just look. . .odd? :-\
 
"Is it just me or does this box with a knife blade on it just look. . .odd? "

Always keep in mind, that it is a german development. So you always have to be
aware of subtle militaristic ideas. If this design becomes the rule, pre-military
education of kids would become much easier. You don't need dummy weapons
any longer, just suitable cardboxes for a realistic weapons training. Children
playing with weapons aren't political correct, of course, but who would mind
them playing with, say, cartons of cigarettes. And then one day, they all will get
G11s and conquer europe and beyond ! ;D

CAUTION! My posts may contain some sort of irony. So, before reading ask
your parents, teachers and other people responsible for your education for
permission !
 
TomS said:
If you're talking about the US Lightweight Small Arms Technology (LSAT) program, that's AAI, not AIA. They seem to be looking at 6.5mm rather than 6.8mm as a possible intermediate caliber offering, but nothing is cast in stone, obviously. The primary developmental rounds are both 5.56mm, but that's mainly so that they can concentrate on developing just the cartridge/propellant aspect and not the bullet as well.

Personally, I suspect that if LSAT does bear fruit, it will be with the polymer case-telescoped offering instead of the caseless one. Caseless is clearly superior (lighter, more compact rounds, etc.) but the case telescoped route seems to be much lower risk.

The latest LSAT brief from the NDIA Small Arms conference is promising, but then aren't they all? Here's a link...

http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2009infantrysmallarms/wednesdaysessioniv8536.pdf
Click to expand...

Woops, you're right, AAI...thanks for the correction. I went into the pdf presentation that you linked and the project looks promising. Although I know it is only a prototype, I am not very impressed with the design of the weapon. Since they are starting from scratch, I was hoping to see something more radical, even the G11 had a more interesting design and the feed mechanism was unique with the three magazines being held above the barrel. I would also hope they may incorporate some of the lessons from the Kriss Super V weapon and drastically reduce the weapon's recoil.

I guess we will have to see what the final outcome of this project is.

-----JT-----
 
If all you want is to get rid of those pesky ejection problems, I would submit that something like the Benelli CB-M2 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benelli_CB_M2) using the 9mm AUPO round (http://cartridgecollectors.org/cmo/cmo07apr.htm) would give you the most bang for the buck (pun intended). In this ammunition, the case is integral to the projectile and is fired along with it. Simpler and easier to make than a "true" caseless.

I had the interesting chance to actually handle one of the few pre-production G11's a couple of months ago. It's light weight, well-balanced and far from as awkward as its 2-by-4 looks would suggest.

As I understand it, the G11 and its ammunition was 90% production ready when the two Germanies were merged. And suddenly, what with having to reequip the entire former-East-German armed forces, the re-united Germany's military simply didn't have the funds needed to bring the project to a finish, let alone by a few hundred thousands of the things.

Personally, I've always been wary of caseless ammunition. Yes, it's lighter; yes, you don't need to eject anything (unless a round misfires); but it brings with them all sorts of problems (sealing the chamber, heat build-up, cook-off risk, environmental resistance, etc.). I guess I'm just not convinced that the concept is worth the effort. Until such time that the energy supply problems inherent in rail-/coilguns and directed energy weapons have been solved for small-arms-size weapons, I believe that the most cost-effective small-arms improvements can be achieved using something like the LSAT's polymer case-telescoped ammunition or, for something a bit more radical, a small-arms version of Metal Storm.

Regards & all,

Thomas L. Nielsen
Denmark
 
TomS said:
They seem to be looking at 6.5mm rather than 6.8mm as a possible intermediate caliber offering, but nothing is cast in stone, obviously.
Click to expand...

Perhaps to help them forget that the 6.8mm round that's currently being played with is only 0.007" away from being the .280 SAA MkIz they rejected so long ago? :D The EM2's designers must be rolling in their graves. Or saying "I told you so". Or both... :p

Of course there was once an era where every army in the world was armed with caseless firearms. But I don't see us going back there any time soon, LOL. I remember hearing that the G11 had made (or was about to make) its way into service with the (unified) German Special Forces, but I guess I heard wrong.

IIRC the other unique feature of this weapon was an extremely rapid metered three-shot burst that was supposed to be all-out-the-barrel by the time the mechanism had recoiled enough to slap the firer's shoulder, thus giving a fairly tight dispersion of the burst. Does anyone know whether the G11 delivered as advertised?
 
pathology_doc said:
I remember hearing that the G11 had made (or was about to make) its way into service with the (unified) German Special Forces, but I guess I heard wrong.
Click to expand...

Not necessarily. I've been told the same thing by "usually well-informed sources", namely that a small number actually got as far as troop testing. This would have been before the unification, however. I suspect that a few might have "lingered" in the Special Forces community for some time, though, since getting an SF trooper to let go of his new fancy gun is marginally more difficult than getting the average limpet to let go of its rock ;D

pathology_doc said:
IIRC the other unique feature of this weapon was an extremely rapid metered three-shot burst that was supposed to be all-out-the-barrel by the time the mechanism had recoiled enough to slap the firer's shoulder, thus giving a fairly tight dispersion of the burst. Does anyone know whether the G11 delivered as advertised?
Click to expand...

The burst feature delivered as advertised, to the best of my knowledge. As mentioned in my previous post, the primary reason (I stress: as I understand it) that the G11 never made it to full-blown production was economics, not technology.

Regards & all,

Thomas L. Nielsen
Denmark
 
Thanks for that. I realised that the video that I posted had already been posted, so I deleted it.
 
in German Wiki Article about G11 they mention spinoff models

PDW a Pistol based on G11 technology with 20 to 40 shot ammo

LG11 a Machine Gun with revolver cannon that use G11 Ammo in block with 300 bullets

got someone more info about LG11 ?
 
Michel Van said:
in German Wiki Article about G11 they mention spinoff models

PDW a Pistol based on G11 technology with 20 to 40 shot ammo

LG11 a Machine Gun with revolver cannon that use G11 Ammo in block with 300 bullets

got someone more info about LG11 ?
Click to expand...

I think this is probably almost everything known about the LMG11 light machine gun.

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Thanks TomS
Dam, i already got picture of that LMG11, but misunderstood them as Prototype of G11
 
Hi Michel,

Michel Van said:
here some picture of PDW pistol
Click to expand...

From the "MP" marking in the picture, I would suspect H&K considered it a "Maschinenpistole", which despite its similarity to the English "machine pistol" is the term describing a conventional submachinegun, like the Bundeswehr's Uzi or the Police' H&K MP 5.

Not to say that's the most appropriate classification, just that's what it says on the gun :)

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)
 
Hi Lauge,

Lauge said:
The burst feature delivered as advertised, to the best of my knowledge.
Click to expand...

From my googling attempts a while back, I came away with the impression that the burst mode worked as intended with regard to firing the burst before recoil affected the shooter, but the intended systematic dispersion pattern couldn't be delivered. Not to say it wouldn't have been effective anyway, but it seems it fell a bit short of expectations.

Interestingly, another thread on this board just linked this Operations Research paper ("Operational Requirements for an Infantry Hand Weapon" by Norman Hitchman) from 1952:


The paper analyses the effectiveness of a hypothetical pattern firing weapon that fires a 4-shot diamond pattern of 20 inches spacing at 300 yards distance, more than doubling the effectiveness of the conventional semi-automatic single shot rifle used as the baseline (basically, a M1 Garand).

It seems that the G11 decades later tried to deliver a weapon very similar to this hypothetical pattern firing weapon.

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)
 
TomS said:
quellish said:
TomS said:
quellish said:
Predecessor:
Click to expand...

I don't think P11 is really related to G11.
Click to expand...

The G11 evolved from the P11 technology.
Click to expand...

In what way? The firing mechanism is totally unrelated. Possibly the propellant?
Click to expand...
Also the program that got us the G11 first got started in 1968.

The Program that got us tge P11 started in the 1970s.

So the G11 predates tge P11 by 2 years at best.

If anything the P11 is based on the G11.
 
Firefinder said:
Also the program that got us the G11 first got started in 1968.

The Program that got us tge P11 started in the 1970s.

So the G11 predates tge P11 by 2 years at best.

If anything the P11 is based on the G11.
Click to expand...

Development of the P11 began in the late 1960s. By 1969 a patent was filed:

Espacenet - Original document

worldwide.espacenet.com worldwide.espacenet.com

(a US patent was later filed in 1982, https://worldwide.espacenet.com/pub...T=D&ND=3&date=20110802&DB=EPODOC&locale=en_EP)

The P11 was not in *production* until the mid 1970s.

Development of the HK G11 (probably) began in 1970-1972. The caseless ammunition was derived from the earlier work on the P11. An early G11 patent was filed in 1975:

Espacenet - Bibliographic data

worldwide.espacenet.com worldwide.espacenet.com
 
quellish said:
If anything the P11 is based on the G11.
Click to expand...
May I ask how electric fired underwater pistol for combat scuba divers P11 is based on caseless assault rifle G11 - except that both came from HK?
 
The G11 internals are in desperate need of a second coming of John Moses Browning to simplify the works. And probably a fancy ceramic chamber to deal with the heat problem.

A good 30% of the heat of a firearm stays in the brass that is then ejected out of the weapon, while a caseless weapon dumps all that heat into the breech.
 
Apparently one of the AAI rifle for the ACR program used a caseless bullet with a conventional design and had a fucking massive heat sink to get around the heat issues.

Apparently it work very well, but the Ammo recipe AAI had a lower cook off point then HK G11 which cased some issues. Like auto-ignition to the point that everything caught fire.


The Army Apparently wanted to combine AAI Rifle with G11 ammo but HK didn't go for it cause they wanted the G11 to be the rifle.

Pity could have has a Caseless.
 
Firefinder said:
Apparently one of the AAI rifle for the ACR program used a caseless bullet with a conventional design and had a fucking massive heat sink to get around the heat issues.

Apparently it work very well, but the Ammo recipe AAI had a lower cook off point then HK G11 which cased some issues. Like auto-ignition to the point that everything caught fire.


The Army Apparently wanted to combine AAI Rifle with G11 ammo but HK didn't go for it cause they wanted the G11 to be the rifle.

Pity could have has a Caseless.
Click to expand...
Then the G11 ammo propellant got used in the LSAT LMGs later on.
 
The H&K G11, I always saw it as a weapon with a more sci-fi look than a real weapon.
 
Scott Kenny said:
Then the G11 ammo propellant got used in the LSAT LMGs later on.
Click to expand...
Which was 17 years later so the patent has expired and was free game since HK never renew it cause no one bought the G11.

Even then the Program had to redo the mixture to the point that it was new independent deal cause the stuff that it used while fine in the Late 1980s early 90s...

Is the cause of service injuries related these days so no one really wanted to mess with it.
 
Hi Scott,

Scott Kenny said:
The G11 internals are in desperate need of a second coming of John Moses Browning to simplify the works. And probably a fancy ceramic chamber to deal with the heat problem.

A good 30% of the heat of a firearm stays in the brass that is then ejected out of the weapon, while a caseless weapon dumps all that heat into the breech.
Click to expand...

While qualitatively, I'm sure you're right, it's worth noting that it's only a fraction of the total energy that is thus dissipated, and the ammunition developed for the G11 developed frationally less energy than for example 5.56 mm NATO.

So, quantitatively, it might well be that the smaller rounds meant the energy transferred into the barrel was no greater then in conventional assault rifles.

(Additionally, on a tactial level, the higher hit probabilities expected from the weapon would also mean that you could achieve the same combat results with a lower number of shots fired.)

Not to say the G11's unique design was equivalent to more conventional designs when it came to dissipating heat, but I'd suggest that the absence of a metallic cartridge by itself wasn't really a game changer for this particular aspect of the design.

I'm not sure the heat problem really was an issue with the final cartridge design either. Not that I'd know much about the G11, but considering that the German administration of the era was quite risk-adverse, and yet came within a hair's breadth of adopting the G11 as the standard service weapon, I'd indirectly conclude that there can't have been much, if any, remaining concern it would come to cook-offs in service.

Just consider the mountain the German administration later made out of the molehill of the supposedly overheating G36, which was a much more benign mode of failure. In the 1990s, the lessons of the Starfighter affair still were present in the minds of the political class, participation in an defense acquisition that could expose a large number of conscripts to even only theoretical danger would have been really bad for anyone's career.

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)
 
HoHun said:
While qualitatively, I'm sure you're right, it's worth noting that it's only a fraction of the total energy that is thus dissipated, and the ammunition developed for the G11 developed frationally less energy than for example 5.56 mm NATO.

So, quantitatively, it might well be that the smaller rounds meant the energy transferred into the barrel was no greater then in conventional assault rifles.

(Additionally, on a tactial level, the higher hit probabilities expected from the weapon would also mean that you could achieve the same combat results with a lower number of shots fired.)

Not to say the G11's unique design was equivalent to more conventional designs when it came to dissipating heat, but I'd suggest that the absence of a metallic cartridge by itself wasn't really a game changer for this particular aspect of the design.

I'm not sure the heat problem really was an issue with the final cartridge design either. Not that I'd know much about the G11, but considering that the German administration of the era was quite risk-adverse, and yet came within a hair's breadth of adopting the G11 as the standard service weapon, I'd indirectly conclude that there can't have been much, if any, remaining concern it would come to cook-offs in service.
Click to expand...
IIRC, the German Army was only issuing the basic G11 with 3 sticks of 50 rounds, all on the assumption that the conscript would not survive long enough to need to resupply. Each stick has 19 hyperbursts in it.
 
Hi Scott,

Scott Kenny said:
IIRC, the German Army was only issuing the basic G11 with 3 sticks of 50 rounds, all on the assumption that the conscript would not survive long enough to need to resupply. Each stick has 19 hyperbursts in it.
Click to expand...

That's indeed the kind of self-denigrating story the cold-war Bundeswehr soldiers liked to tell. Another popular one was, "We're just supposed to confuse the Soviets until the real army arrives", with "real army" of course referring to the US Army. However, I believe the G11 was judged service-ready only in 1990, after the German re-unification, when it was clear that WW3 had become a rather unlikely event, and the conscript army would have to handle the G11 day-in, day-out in peacetime when health and safety considerations were dominant.

With regard to the magazine story, I suspect the background is that the G11 was supposed to hold three magazines on the weapon itself, while resupply would be provided not in magazines, but rather in plastic-wrapped blocks of something like 15 rounds each. (I thought it was half a magazine worth in each block, but 15 is what Wikipedia says.)

The "conscripts wouldn't survive long enough" line sounds too much like the cold war "The life expectancy of a Panzergrenadier in wartime is three minutes" line I remember from back then. I'd really have to see a source before I'd consider that something more than scuttlebutt, though it's totally credible that such a statement would indeed have made the rounds back then.

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)
 
HoHun said:
With regard to the magazine story, I suspect the background is that the G11 was supposed to hold three magazines on the weapon itself, while resupply would be provided not in magazines, but rather in plastic-wrapped blocks of something like 15 rounds each. (I thought it was half a magazine worth in each block, but 15 is what Wikipedia says.)
Click to expand...
I mean, the standard load for the US army at the time was 7 magazines of 30ea. One in the weapon, 3 in each pouch (along with 2 grenades per pouch, one of the advantages of the ALICE gear over the newer MOLLE gear).

The issue I have is: with those 50rd magazines and no spares, the PanzerGrenadiers had the equivalent of 3 magazines with the G3 rifle. Reloading a stick is not something you do when people are shooting at you! But the 50rd sticks were quite long (IIRC 300mm long just in ammo, plus however much space the spring needs) and would be very difficult to store on the body, plus fragile if the grunt dives for cover with enthusiasm. No good place to store extras on the body, not like the old MP38 stick mag pouches (which were steel and so less likely to be damaged as well.)
 
Hi Scott,

Scott Kenny said:
The issue I have is: with those 50rd magazines and no spares, the PanzerGrenadiers had the equivalent of 3 magazines with the G3 rifle. Reloading a stick is not something you do when people are shooting at you! But the 50rd sticks were quite long (IIRC 300mm long just in ammo, plus however much space the spring needs) and would be very difficult to store on the body, plus fragile if the grunt dives for cover with enthusiasm.
Click to expand...

I haven't seen detailed pictures of the 15-round sticks, but I imagine it might have been possible to load their rounds into a magazine in a similar manner as loading a bolt action rifle from a stripper clip. I'm sure they had that thought through, though I'll admit that what the Bundeswehr considered good ergnomics didn't always check out with what the soliders would have considered good ergonomics! :-/

(By the way, it seems that in the final configuration of the G11, the magazines held 45 rounds each, or three ammunition sticks.)

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)
 

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