Discusing recoilles technology

A coherent discussion of our unique proprietary recoilless technology can only be obtained by referencing the fantastic book: ENGINEERING DESIGN HANDBOOK: RECOILLESS RIFLE WEAPON SYSTEMS. The book was declassified in the 70s and you can google it. I think it is a must read for anyone interested in recoilless firearms.

The handbook advises viewing a recoilless rifle in general as two launch tubes connected yet separated by a common central breech block (forgive me for rewording the model to make it even more general and be more in-line with the earliest Davis gun). The different recoilless rifle technologies can then be broadly classified by how this central breech block is treated.

The first broad category is that of the vanished central breech block. In this case, the two launch tubes are transformed into a seamless tube of one and the two separate charges are combined into a single charge that propels the targeting projectile in one direction and the counterbalance in the opposite, like a Gustaf for example. It is a brilliant twist that simplified things, reduced the weight and made the weapon more reliable and safer, although with simplicity comes some loss of flexibility. For instance, recoillessness is critically a geometric ratio of front vs back exits, non-negotiable, and often these critical dimensions are engineered into the ammo casing that got thrown away after a launch just like a non-recoverable rocket engine. I wonder how easy it is to get less than one buck per shot. Nonetheless, virtually all fieldable recoilless rifles existing belong to this technology. There has been a lot of brilliant rocket science done to develop the technology and sincerely hats off to the brilliant developers.

The second broad category belongs to the good old rigid central breech block. With the two charges separated, recoillessness depends on the relative amount of charges placed on both sides of the central breech block. Therefore, typical ammo used for closed breech guns can be employed, which are relatively cheap and plentiful. On the other hand, you do not want to be a central breech block, with two explosions occurring simultaneously on both sides. It is far, far, far worse than being between a rock and a hard place. Only the strongest metals can survive the repeated pounding of the high pressure and high heat. It is therefore logical that the breech block is somewhat bulky and heavy. That may be a main reason why few if any fieldable recoilless rifles are based on this old but intuitively attractive technology, although there seems to be some new interest in reviving this technology.

The third category is related to what I termed an oscillating central breech block. Same as the second category, recoillessness depends on the relative amount of the two separated charges and therefore typical ammo can be used. The difference is that, in this case, the central breech block is made compressible enough that it will contract axially a good distance from both sides under high pressures of the explosions. At the same time, the central breech block remains strong enough that the contraction is changed into expansion/recovery after a desired contraction distance has been achieved. We will then take advantage of the contraction to extract and eject the spent casing, and the expansion/recovery to load a new ammo. On top of that and optionally, we can eliminate the recoil energy retained by the oscillating breech block by firing prior to battery stations, using an old trick proven to reduce recoil as employed by the venerable Oerlikon or Browning M2 for example. There are several variations and flavors but the most basic ideas are described in the above discussion. On the whole, this technology promises to eliminate central breech block stress energy similar to the vanished breech block technology, with the added benefits of automatic operations and cheaper ammo. Therefore, unlike the Gustaf for example, with our firearms you can happily yell: " Mom. Look. No hands!" without breaking the bank.

This recoilless technology of an oscillating central breech block is new. In fact, it is as fresh as a new-born baby because we just invented it. We have obtained patents for and are continuing to obtain even more patents related to this technology. We will jealously protect our hard-earned IP.

Interestingly, with our technology the automatic recoilless firearms converge with conventional closed-breech automatic firearms. There are subtleties and more complexity regarding the recoilless technology but many of the parts and components are very similar. One consequence is that you no longer need to be a rocket scientist to build a competent automatic recoilless rifle particularly in smaller calibers (the large calibers will likely remain the realm of rocket scientists). Should this new technology turn out to be as versatile as I anticipate, authorities will be presented with some interesting challenges, both domestically and internationally, in terms of counter-terrorism, counter-insurgency as well as peer conflicts. All the more reason the United States should take a serious look into and makes suitable investment in this interesting technology.

References

1. ENGINEERING DESIGN HANDBOOK: RECOILLESS RIFLE WEAPON SYSTEMS, by ARMY MATERIAL COMMAND ALEXANDRIA VA, //apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA023513.
2. Recoilless Aparatus for Guns, by Zhisong Huang, May 31, 2022, U.S. patent number 11346621.
3. Recoilless Automatic Firearm, by Zhisong Huang, Aug. 18, 2022, U.S. patent application number  20220260329 17/661499.  
4. Patents pending, by Zhisong Huang, Patent Offices of EU, China and Russia.