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You ought to check a few facts :

a) This site is visited mostly by Americans, who include a greater percentage of gun nuts than any other country in the whole wide world.

b) Palladium games (especially the likes of Recon and N&SS) have always had a biggish emphasis on military grade hardware. (well, other lines like HU, RT and Rifts too, but those get away to what is available IRL)

c) Even among Americans, Pally RPGs seem to be enjoyed by a greater than usual proportion of current and former military personnel and gun enthusiasts.

so what's weird about weaponry threads raising above avearge interest?

BTW, your thread title is in VERY bad taste. Although technically a pistol round, .357 magnum is much too big and powerful a munition to be used in submachine guns...
a) the size of the round would make the gun's magazine well proportionately huge, and probably restrict clips to a measly capacity
b) such a powerful round would make the gun completely impossible to control in burst/autofire mode.

Actually, I resent your evaluation.

while my picture may be in broad strokes (can't go too far into details, lest I be bogged down, and I never was big on statistics), my statements were no way so sweeping as you make them to be... I said that More Americans were gun nuts than you can find in any country, not that all were. Also, if you think my "opinions" are unfounded... you're welcome to show me the error of my views... given the actual number of current and former servicemen and gun enthusiasts at large on these boards, you won't have a very easy time of it.

and oh, yeah... I guess that being deprived of toys by stupid french laws makes me a bit quick tempered when I see gunk even I can debunk.

and I know that there are .45 SMGs... I also know they are rare, and that .357 is a bigger round (especially in length), and reputed to be quite a bit more powerful than good old .45 ACP... the one being an auto round while the other was designed for revolvers may have to do with it, though I could not say exactly why, not being as much of a ballistics expert as I might like.

On a technical note, I think it wouldn't be too hard to develop a skorpian varient to fire a .357 round. .357 SIG that is. Same calibre as 9 mm, but a bit more oommph. Still nowhere near as much as the magnum. There's mroe than a handful of pistosl developed for this round.

On the note about Recon as a Wargame or RPG . . . I've done both, with good results. You jsut have to knwo how to make it interesting and exciting.

About Palladium's posters: There has always been a hardware bias here, I'm not sure why, but if you notice, the Palladium books that are basically a Sears Catalogue without the lingere section almost always sell better than the books that feature adventure ideas and characters.

Jefffar wrote:On a technical note, I think it wouldn't be too hard to develop a skorpian varient to fire a .357 round. .357 SIG that is. Same calibre as 9 mm, but a bit more oommph. Still nowhere near as much as the magnum. There's mroe than a handful of pistosl developed for this round.

That's not entirely true. With semi-auto pistol barrel, the chamber is included in the length. However, with revolver barrels them chamber is not included.

A number of year back one of the gunrags compared the .357SIG to the .357 Magnum, using comparable actual barrel lengths. At least when comparing popular 125gr JHPs, the .357SIG round's velocity matched or exceeded the .357 Magnum round.

BigLEE wrote:A number of year back one of the gunrags compared the .357SIG to the .357 Magnum, using comparable actual barrel lengths. At least when comparing popular 125gr JHPs, the .357SIG round's velocity matched or exceeded the .357 Magnum round.

Very Interesting.

I didn't know that Mauser made the Broom Handle in 1986, I thought it was more an 1896 vintage.

If I was going to make a full auto .357, I'd probably look to an AR-15 conversion so I'd have enough weapon to soak up some recoil.

Not to mention the fact that if he is referring to the .357 Magnum, it is a rimmed round. Rimmed rounds are generally not chosen for box magazine fed weapons, due to feed reliability and magazine stack geometry issues.

Tsh77769

pulphero wrote:I would think the Scorpion design would be the way to go. It has the banana-style clip set forward of the trigger housing--or perhaps a Sten gun design could accommodate larger calibers. There is also a fine line between carbines and SMG. The present M-4 or older Colt Commando fired assault rifle (5.56mm) and were hardly bigger than the Uzi, if not the same size, but were/are considered carbines not SMGs. I know Spetnaz crews have 7.62mm Warsaw round airborne carbines and also even smaller 7.62mm sub guns (actual nomenclature escapes me). That is a fairly heavy round.

As some one else said you are thinking of the AK74-SU which is also nicknamed the Krinkov. It doesn't fire 7.62x39mm (AKA 7.62 Warsaw), it fires the 5.45x39.5mm round.

The Krinkov also operates with a gas system and small 60 grain rounds, on a bottle neck casing. With lighter faster ammunition, and the gas operation, and muzzle brake plus it wieghs 5lb 11oz.

Where the Skorpian pistol is blowback operation in a .32 ACP (7.65mmx17mm) or 9mm Paraballum, or 9x18 is fine. Yet in a .357 magnum your talking about unmanagable recoil. Plus the .357 magnum has a rim on the shell casing which could cause problems in automatic feeding.

A .357 magnum bullet wieghts more than a Warsaw 5.45 or a NATO 5.56mm in terms of grains. In a blowback weapon in automatic form it would be hell to fire.

The original SKorpian pistol wieghed around 2lb 14oz. You would have to beef it up a bit to get it to handle .357 magnum. After that why would you want to carry a heavy machine pistol, with very heavy magazines (loaded with .357 mag) that has restricted accuracy, range, and penetration.

When you could carry a Krinkov (AK74-SU) that shoots a rifle round, with better accuracy, and penetration, and probably around the same wieght as your beefed up .357 Skorpian.

Also they do make modified versions of the Krinkov in 7.62x39mm Soviet, and the Yugoslavians made an export version in 5.56mm NATO just for those wondering.

Buy the way Jefffar long time no see. I lost my old password and email addy when I changed internet services. I am sure you reconize my screen name from another board we visit though. But I am the old Conformer. How ya doing?

Hi Con.

you should email prettz if ya want your old account back.

prettz@palladiumbooks.com

As to your post: The Short version of the AK-74 would probably be a decent sized weapon to chamber into .357. It's got enough mass to withstand the recoil. But for that matter,t here are allready 9 mm conversions for the M-16 family, and the difference between a 9 mm and .357 is more about cartridge length than bullet diameter.

There are a coupleof AK derived SMGs in Russia now, the Gepard and the Bizon. Both of them are available in 9 mm. The Gepard has a specialized 9mm chambering available, the 9mm Grom, which has a cartridge case of 30 mm in length as opposed to the 19mm of 9mm Parabellum. This is probably as close as we have to an existing .357 Magnum subgun.

Jefffar,

I was just saying that the 5.45 is perfectly adequet. I see no need for a .357 sub gun. It having that rim and there are plenty of other weapons available.

Jefffar wrote:About Palladium's posters: There has always been a hardware bias here, I'm not sure why, but if you notice, the Palladium books that are basically a Sears Catalogue without the lingere section almost always sell better than the books that feature adventure ideas and characters.

Well thats just us, a bunch of hardware geeks

Yes, 5.45 is prefectly adequate. So is 5.56.

So why is the US SOCCOM looking to switch to 6.8mm and why did the Russians develop a line of 9mm assault rifles?

There are advantages and disadvantages to every calibre. What we're debating here is how would a weapon system in this particular calibre actually work.

It does seem to me that we agree that a fully automatic weapon in this chambering would have to be assault rifle sized to soak up the recoil.


Of course there's an in game reason for wanting the .357 full auto. In some of the books, the .357 does more damage than any chambering less than a 7.62 NATO.

It does seem to me that we agree that a fully automatic weapon in this chambering would have to be assault rifle sized to soak up the recoil.

Thats what I am saying, because it would be a trip and half through a sub gun.

Well, a .357fired from a barrel appropriate to a submachinegun or compact assautl rifle is probably going to still be accurate at about 200 metres. Plus, it will probably have less chance of overpenetration or ricochet if used in an indoors situation.

Of course, it still wo't do as good at medium to long range as a true rifle round will.

Then again, the Russians have these 9x39.5 mm rifles. The cartridge specifications are reasonable close to a .357 magnum, and allegedly the sniper varient of the family can still pick off targets at around 800 metres.

Jefffar wrote:Well, a .357fired from a barrel appropriate to a submachinegun or compact assautl rifle is probably going to still be accurate at about 200 metres. Plus, it will probably have less chance of overpenetration or ricochet if used in an indoors situation.

Of course, it still wo't do as good at medium to long range as a true rifle round will.

Then again, the Russians have these 9x39.5 mm rifles. The cartridge specifications are reasonable close to a .357 magnum, and allegedly the sniper varient of the family can still pick off targets at around 800 metres.

I think you may have the 9x39.5 confused with the 9.3.x54R Medved SVD round.

Also Jefffar I have explained this before the Russians alot of times make a couple prototypes claim they have something and then its never to be seen again.

7.62x39 gives a hell of a muzzle climb on 20 and 16 inch barrels. I would hate to see what kind of controlability the 9x39.5 has.

Also the .357 is a straight walled round, that 9x39.5 is probably bottle necked. Big difference there.

BTW: What happened to the reissue of the Medved rifle you were using in your game back about a year ago? It was a 9.3x54 round remember we ended up debating the history of it and the history of German rounds?

They've been promoting the 9x39.5 round and several different associated weapons now for about a decade. The rounds are more or less straight sided by my memory. They just necked up the old 7.62x39.5 to 9mm. There are at least 6 different weapons systems from at least 3 different design bureaus chambered for this round. They range in type from submachinegun to assault rifle to sniper rifle. Many of them have built in silencers (which is aided byt he rounds being subsonic).

This is a different round than the one we talked about a while back. They are using that round as a heavy sniper round. This round was spcifically chosen for urban warfare situations and special forces and SWAT operators. That other round's dimensions are like 9.3x64 or somethign like that. It's essentially a big game hunting round that the Russians are possibly going to use as their equivalent to .338 Lapua.

Here are some of these weapons firing 9x39.5

http://world.guns.ru/assault/as09-e.htm

http://world.guns.ru/assault/as10-e.htm

http://world.guns.ru/assault/as65-e.htm

http://world.guns.ru/assault/as64-e.htm

http://world.guns.ru/sniper/sn58-e.htm

http://world.guns.ru/sniper/sn20-e.htm

Oh, here's some stuff about the ammunition:

http://world.guns.ru/ammo/sp-e.htm

It's at the bottom of the page. It looks like the round has a very slight bottleneck.

Thats some intresting stuff, I have shot several Russian weapons and wonder hos this would do? You know living in the USA we may not see these weapons or ammunition for along time, depending on how thier imported.

Hey, leave it to the Russians, they are smart when it comes to rifle rounds. Thanks for the links Jefffar.


I will be honest I am usually trying to familiarize myself with military weapons on the USA market and not study about the new stuff as much as I use too.

That website you provided does scare the hell out of me. I used to post on thier board got a request and and left. Long story but it doeas scare me to go there.

For a while I was basically writing a new version of the compendium of modern weapons. I stopped when I realized Palaldium don't publish 500 page books.

I also was focused of former soviet gear for a while because I was doing an EBSIS module for Robotech.

Writers Block wrote:I wish I had seen this sooner.

Look at older copies of things like "Guns of the World". Beofre the 9mm became the cal of choice (largely due to the success of first the Uzi and the H&K, as well as the ROF to size to number of rds per mag trade off) the .45 was not a rare cal for SMGs but the standard.

The .45 was the standard for American SMGs since the days of the Thompson. Europe has always preferred the 9mm.

BTW, rather than worry about the problems inherent with chambering a SMG in .357mag, it would be easier to track down a H&K MP-5 chambered in 10mm. The ballistics are similar, and the cartridge is more compact.

Or .357 SIG.

If you want a bit less recoil there's also .40.


For a long, long time the SMGs of the world were divided amoung three kinds: those firing 9 mm Parabellum, those firing .45 ACP and those firing 7.62 Soviet smg ammunition.

In the 1970's and 1980s, the .45 more or less disappeared.

Since the 90's we've added .40, 10mm, 9mm Makarov, 5.7 mm and 5.8 mm weapons to the list.

Also, there are weapons that could technically called sub-machineguns that fire 5.45 mm, 5.56 mm, 7.62 mm Soviet, 9x39 mm and even 7.62 mm NATO rifle ammunition.

No, 7.62 mm NATO is not a msitake. there's a british firm that offers a highly modified MP-5 for use by police when engaging armoured subjects or vehicles.

Attaching it directly to the vehicle probably improved the recoil characteristics quite signifigantly.


There's the fun conversion of an M-16 to a machine pistol. Take off the stock and remove the barrel except for a little numb of a muzzle break extending out of the receiver.

The M-16/Ar-15 Pistol (for lack of specific model number) has been out for sometime. Actually some pistol chambered for rifle rounds have been out for a good many years as target guns. And well vise versa

Anyways anything is possible if you have the time money and equipment to do it. But as with all firearms you have to study the rounds and it's ablility(s)

FN has the P90 which has a very odd round. 5.7x28mm so they made a whole firearm around a bullet? Eh well anyways it seems to be a great little gun, 50 rounds, 200 meter range, penetrates armor seems to be something that I would buy if i needed to hang out in Iraq. Which maybe and option for me in a year or so.

Don't forget anout the H&K G4? which had caseless ammo at 50 rounds and fire a 3 round burst so fast the third round was out the barrel before you felt the but hit you. I still don't know why it never went into mass production

Last but not least the new electronically fired guns from Metal Storm
http://www.metalstorm.com/04_what_is_a_smart_gun.html
But then heres another fine example of too high tech for it's own good

It was the H&K G11. Apparently a small number were produced, and issues to German Speical forces, but the gun proved too costly in the post-cold war era, and was shelved.

I beleive the AR-15 machine pistol is called the Carbon-15.

The only group I know of that has used the P90 under combat conditions is the Peruvian special forces teams that lifted the embassy siege a few years back. Right after the siege they went from a mix of MP5s and P90s to just MP5s.

Might be a lesson there.

Apparently one of the Peruvian SF casualties came from a fellow who'd allready been shot more than or 10 times with the P90.

All of the terrorists hit with 9mm stayed down.

That's what the checking I did said.

BigLEE wrote:It was the H&K G11. Apparently a small number were produced, and issues to German Speical forces, but the gun proved too costly in the post-cold war era, and was shelved.

Oh ya my bad, forgot the model LOL. But now they have nice U.S. Army contracts for the MX-8 Yea! I hope with all my heart the H&K cooks up some nice stuff for the troops!