What if Assault Rifles never where created?

Deleted member 1487

The BAR was a great addition when it was just the M1903, it showed the way much like the Chauchat how suppressive fire opened up Squad tactics to fire and movement. The BREN and MG42 show how to get this done and would have been even more devastating had either army paired it with a Garand or MAS-40 equivalent but perhaps the success of them let us linger with bolt-actions longer. I do not think we need the StG or its progeny to see that the path was certainly towards a SLR that mostly fired semi-auto with option to full-auto paired with a LMG and either rifle grenades or M79 launcher as the pattern that likely sticks. Again the push would be to concentrate the LMGs at Platoon rather than distrubute them once you have such rifles, but that is no certainty. The assault rifle might only get developed once armies move to full APC and then IFV theories, that lets us remove the LMG and use the dismount infantry to be the maneuver element as the APC/IFV acts as the fire base. The Soviets seem to have showed us that was the theory once you build a BMP. Thus the StG/AK47 is a product of the next generation after the Garand/FAL/CETME serves out the 1940s to 1960s era. If you asked how things go without a war that is my bet. Before 1950 I think everyone has a Garand equivalent or even the FAL capable full-auto like rifle in service or tracked to enter service, SMGs fade and the GPMG retreats to a more traditional fire support role.
It would be interesting to wonder if people might have moved toward a smaller caliber to lower recoil and get performance for 1000m or less range, rather than a bigger, heavier round for 2-4km range (when indirect MG fire was en vogue).
Stan Crist makes an interesting case why we should adopt a 6mm universal round now.

Given that the US experimented with the 6mm high velocity round in the late 1890s it is possible you could see a shift down in calibers to moderate recoil and get practical infantry weapon rounds for SLRs without going full intermediate cartridge assault rifle.

So a 6-7mm battle rifle might well be doable, with it having a full auto mode for "LMG" role as needed.
 
It would be interesting to wonder if people might have moved toward a smaller caliber to lower recoil and get performance for 1000m or less range, rather than a bigger, heavier round for 2-4km range (when indirect MG fire was en vogue).
Stan Crist makes an interesting case why we should adopt a 6mm universal round now.

Given that the US experimented with the 6mm high velocity round in the late 1890s it is possible you could see a shift down in calibers to moderate recoil and get practical infantry weapon rounds for SLRs without going full intermediate cartridge assault rifle.

So a 6-7mm battle rifle might well be doable, with it having a full auto mode for "LMG" role as needed.

This is a really hard one for me, the crystal ball is so clouded as to be a toss up. I think the institutional bias was holding firm to what we call the "full power" cartridge, the Generals thought that the rifleman reigned supreme with aimed fire at 1000 yards, the tactics are barely out of step with line infantry as Napoleon might have fought them. To get any serious consideration of moving away from that takes both experience and acceptance of the lessons, even as the Germans researched it in the 1920s they stuck to 8mm Mauser and put it in the FG42 dooming it to be too unwieldy (imagine that weapon with such a cartridge). Add the logistics of differing rifle and machine gun rounds and you see how the Garand stays the course. The revolution that is the assault rifle is accepting that battles are fought close and furry, the long ranges belong to specialists, hitting power belongs to machineguns, mortars and eventually rockets. Look at how the mortar only took hold after we fight the trench war. Before that it was all going to be flat direct fire. The best bet is a more innovative German army pursuing its trench raider tactics, that gets you at minimum an full-auto carbine, our Vollmer, at worst it compromises into the semi-automatic. And as an aside I really cannot understand how Japan did not pursue this, for the smaller statured soldiers it fielded and lighter infantry style warfare it fought this seems the obvious path does it not? Yet they reverse course back into big bullet land once the war gets truly going. The British have tinkered with it endlessly only to step right past it. On and on. Even the M16 was a bit out of the blue for the US Army. Thus I see the left turn away from the "lighter" cartridge is a hard one to steer from.
 
There is a way to have automatic weapons but not automatic rifles. Just keep gas-operated weaponry from being invented somehow. You can still have recoil- and blowback-operated pistols and heavy machine guns but rifles would stay manual action. Somebody might try something like the Johnson Rifle as a squad machine gun, but its inherent inaccuracy would mean it wouldn't be the main rifle of the squad.

As for how to make there be no gas-operated weaponry, I'm not sure.

EDIT: Immediately after posting I remember that there have been delayed-blowback infantry rifle designs, so even this wouldn't meet the requirements of the OP
 
No assault rifles would force SMGs and semi-auto rifles to narrow the gap.
I have fired an FG42 replca and thoroughly enjoyed it. Felt recoil is less than FN C1A1. It does have a vicious "bark"'so the next step is reducing muzzle blast by lengthening the barrel to burn all the gunpowder. Since FG42 is only a metre long, that would require moving Breech even farther aft from semi-bullpup to full bullpup configuration. Shortness only increases in importance as more parachutes, more helicopters and more
APCs are introduced. The biggest challenge is developing a way to eject spent cartridges away from soldiers' faces, especially when fighting around couriers.
An updated FG42 still needs a burst mode for trench-clearing.
Since FG42 barrels are far too light - for sustained full-auto Fire, the next step is develop a stouter SAW version with quick-change barrel, etc.

From the SMG side, the goal is extracting the maximum muzzle energy from pistol ammo. An 18.5" barrel increases muzzle velocity by 12% but increases muzzle-energy by 44%!
Again, longer barrels require bullpup actions to make room for longer barrels. That allows installing an 18.5" barrel in an SMG with a total length of about 28", similar to an extended Stirling. To improve accuracy, you need separate firing pins or balanced recoil actions.
 

Deleted member 1487

There is a way to have automatic weapons but not automatic rifles. Just keep gas-operated weaponry from being invented somehow. You can still have recoil- and blowback-operated pistols and heavy machine guns but rifles would stay manual action. Somebody might try something like the Johnson Rifle as a squad machine gun, but its inherent inaccuracy would mean it wouldn't be the main rifle of the squad.

As for how to make there be no gas-operated weaponry, I'm not sure.

EDIT: Immediately after posting I remember that there have been delayed-blowback infantry rifle designs, so even this wouldn't meet the requirements of the OP
And apparently even a lever delayed AK-47...which was much better than the actual AK-47 or AKM:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TKB-517

I have fired an FG42 replca and thoroughly enjoyed it. Felt recoil is less than FN C1A1. It does have a vicious "bark"'so the next step is reducing muzzle blast by lengthening the barrel to burn all the gunpowder. Since FG42 is only a metre long, that would require moving Breech even farther aft from semi-bullpup to full bullpup configuration. Shortness only increases in importance as more parachutes, more helicopters and more
Or use a lower powder loaded cartridge and lower weight bullet:
https://forum.cartridgecollectors.org/t/japanese-and-spanish-reduced-recoil-7-62x51-military/7311
 
Top