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The Special Purpose Individual Weapon (SPIW) was a long-running United States Army program to develop, in part, a workable flechette-firing "rifle", though other concepts were also involved. The concepts continued to be tested under the Future Rifle Program and again in the 1980s under the Advanced Combat Rifle program, but neither program resulted in a system useful enough to warrant replacing the current M16. ==Project SALVO== The idea of a flechette-firing individual weapon started in earnest during the Army's Project SALVO. SALVO had earlier concluded that a small weapon with a high rate of fire would be considerably deadlier than the large "full power" weapons being developed in the 1950s, and followed several lines of investigation to find the best way to provide high firing rates. SALVO had a small number of "duplex load" weapons developed, where two bullets were stacked, while Springfield Armory〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=The Gun Zone -- A 5.56 X 45mm "Timeline" 1957-1962 )〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Operating mechanism for a plural barrel rifle with a feeding rotor )〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Feeding mechanism for a salvo gun )〕 and Olin/Winchester both entered multiple barrel firearms. Even before the SALVO tests, Irwin Barr of AAI Corporation had been developing single and multiple flechette cartridges. The Navy became sufficiently interested in the concept to provide him with some development funding from the Office of Naval Research, resulting in a 12 gauge shotgun shell firing 32 flechettes. The Army later added funding as well, and AAI was invited to SALVO. In SALVO testing they were found to be able to penetrate one side of a standard steel helmet at —excellent given their light weight—but the dispersion of the darts was so great as to make them only marginally useful. Further development continued by adapting a Winchester Model 70 rifle with new XM110 5.6×53 mm rounds firing a single dart. The result was a weapon with somewhat less accuracy than the 7.62×51mm NATO rounds, but with equal penetration and a trajectory so flat it could be fired with no sight adjustment out to . Better yet the rounds were very light, and had almost no recoil in comparison to even the 0.22-inch caliber weapons under development. This meant they could be fired at extremely high rates of fire, from a very lightweight weapon. Project SALVO began in 1951 and was based on the assumption that firing multiple projectiles would increase the probability of hitting the target. During World War II, an infantryman with a rifle at an average engagement distance of 300 yards under combat stress expended 10,000 rounds for one hit. Consideration to lighter ammunition types and rifle/grenade launcher combinations was given. Flechettes were found to be inaccurate and expelled fiberglass fragments with each round fired. SALVO mainly studied weapons and ammunition as opposed to developing them. It determined that higher velocity projectiles, smaller than 7.62 mm, had equal or greater lethality with less weight. It also found that fully automatic fire did not increase hit probability.〔(Perception Meets Reality: The 2009 Enhanced Carbine Program ) - SAdefensejournal.com, 15 August 2011〕 Since the Army was by this time only interested in fully automatic weapons, Barr suggested that they build a multiple barrel prototype in order to quickly test the concept. Various multiple barrel rifles entered the project. The resulting "burst simulators" were tested in 1961, and the general conclusion was that the light weight of the flechette meant that it could be fired at extremely high rates of fire, the baseline being 2300 rpm, from a weapon of only , fully loaded with 60 rounds. Accordingly, the Army became extremely interested in the weapon. The conclusion of Project SALVO was to adopt the Armalite AR-15, which became the M16 rifle. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Special Purpose Individual Weapon」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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