96 G & A

j a n u a ry 2 0 1 5

SPENT CASES

W. GOLDEN AND J. HANSON SET OUT IN 1841 to

invent a caseless cartridge with their muriat gunpowder. It
didnt work. Like Horace Smith, Daniel Wesson and several
others, many met with the same results. In 1891, Alfred
Nobel is known to have been granted the frst of several
patents for early predecessors of the caseless cartridge,
which gave Dynamit Nobel unique experience in working
with Heckler & Koch nearly 80 years later.
Development of the HK G11 goes back to the 1960s
when NATO allies began rethinking military calibers. A
platform utilizing lightweight materials was insisted on,
and ammunition would be a critical design factor.
On March 7, 1967, the frst meeting between HK and
Dynamit Nobel AG took place, leading to another meeting on August 29th to establish technical criteria related
to the problem of feeding and fring a caseless cartridge.
Early experiments found that a 4.9mm cartridge might be
suitable, so HK redesigned an HK33, serial number 0252,
to discharge a prototype round with dual ignition to best
disintegrate the propellant body and control combustion.

The HK G11 Advanced Concept Rife, or ACR, was

developed to fre a caseless cartridge. Though several
prototypes chambered for 4.92x34mm were seen in publications between 1981 and 1988, this confguration used a
4.73x33mm cartridge and became known as Standard K-2
in 1989. The caseless cartridge featured a bullet projectile,
primer and booster charge within a propellent body that
was secured as a unit by a plastic cap. The translucent
sleeve attached to the 45-round magazine and served as a
10-round reloading device, a speed clip if you will.
Hundreds of millions of dollars had been spent on its development. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the politics created by German reunifcation and the large quantities of AK74s taken over from the former East German
army, the German armed forces offcially denounced its
interest in the G11 on June 25, 1993. In the U.S., the ACR
program to replace the M16 kept the G11 in the media for
10 years, culminating in a test that took 15 G11s through
4,000 rounds each at Fort Benning between January and
August 1990. The ACR program ended that year.

PHOTO: ERIC EGGLY, POINT SEVEN STUDIOS

THE FUTURE THAT NEVER WAS