The Vietnam era M40 recoilless rifle has found its way into Syria:
While no one is suggesting the replacements aren’t good weapons, all have their shortcomings. Some, like the TOW, don’t operate well in extreme environments. Others, once fired, sometimes require too many rotations before they arm; that limits their effectiveness in close-in situations. Probably the biggest problem is that whenever targets are inside mud-walled buildings (which, in places like Afghanistan, is much of the time), the explosion’s force tends to get seriously dampened. Enter the M40: a home-grown weapon, already in stock, developed and manufactured at the Watervliet Arsenal, the U.S. Army’s own gun factory, and at Benet Laboratories, which has quietly continued the weapon’s advancement during the decades it’s been out of use.
As weapons go, the M40 is almost amazingly crude. The first thing you notice about the back of the gun is that, unlike conventional cannon, the breech block has big openings. The rounds it fires look different too; the shell casings are also open, more like cages than canisters. But what makes it so different from conventional artillery is its way of dealing with recoil. Rather than try to contain it, as conventional guns do, recoilless rifles endeavor to balance it by offering the propellant gasses the easiest escape possible. That’s why the breech mechanism is vented and open, functioning like a rocket nozzle. It is also why recoilless rifles generate the massive and deadly back blast that can make them such a frightening weapon to be around.
If you watch the accompanying video, you realize the Syrian rebels don’t need tripod-mounted weapons nearly as much as they need tripod-mounted cameras.
Many modern forces prefer the much smaller goose.
As you may have noticed, the recoilless rifle is neither recoilless nor a rifle. Discuss.
Compared to the kind of gun you’d normally use to get that kind of punch they are relatively recoilless, I suppose. As to rifles, some of them are and some aren’t; technically you’re supposed to call the ones that aren’t (most modern designs) recoilless guns.
I’d guess they’re called rifles as they were developed to follow anti-tank rifles which had become overmatched.
Besides the RPG, an alternate approach is the high-low system as in the PAW 600. This is used in grenade launchers today, but I wonder what one scaled to be just capable of being fired from the shoulder (like the goose or the Iranian 20 mm rifle) would be capable of.
My favorite find are still the STG44s:
“The rebel member who posted the video mistakenly claimed that they had found 5,000 AK-47s. Nope, turns out they stumbed upon 5,000 German WWII STG-44 rifles”
I can’t imagine finding a cache of thousands of vintage German assault rifles. Now imagine how many AKs you could buy after selling those collectors’ items.