Checkpoint Charlie #11 - Steel against steel

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Checkpoint Charlie #11 - Steel against steel

Written by Charles Engelbrecht

Monday, 27 August 2007

Click on the link at the end of this episode and then click on the trigger to fire this schematic and see how the assault rifle processes 30 bullets per second.

The robots were charging. The robots were running.
The robots could not fire accurately while running.
In the subconscious mind a spark of hope was lit. Soon the spark ignited an ember and a bonfire exploded into life.
The rusty wire, that held the cork, that kept the anger in, gave way, and suddenly … it was day again.
The robots had made a tactical mistake. Their cranial processors calculated that human behavioral patterns in a platoon structure would break down when faced with the sudden and vicious slaughter of a large percentage of the platoon. To maximize this psychological advantage, and to maximize the slaughter, the robots charged when their visual processors told them that the remaining targets were running for the tree lines. Their military psychology software told them the two targets that were still standing dazedly in the middle of the field were in a condition of traumatic shock and could not pose any immediate risk.
They were wrong.
Sometimes shock did not become an incapacitating numbness. Sometimes it became an overwhelming urge to tear the enemy apart.
Charlie was shaking Buthelezi by the collar and could see the focus returning to his eyes. He used his collar to wipe Sarge’s blood from the Zulu’s face.
“Buthu,” he shouted, “we have a chance!”
“They cannot fire effectively until they stop running. You take the six on the right. Single shots from the shoulder. Don’t panic. Choose one and fire at it until it falls. Switch to burst when they come close.”
The Zulu’s face settled into a stony glare. He nodded once and turned to face the onrushing wave of steel.

Training took over … and the overwhelming urge to kill, to smash, to destroy. The anger was an overwhelming throb at the base of the skull ...

(Click 'Comments' below to read the full episode) ...

Charlie dropped on his right knee and brought the FN FAL to his shoulder. The weapon was a simple mechanism that utilized the internal combustion of the bullet and the anti-compression energy of two coil springs for automatic reloading, the only weakness was that it was fired by a highly complex machine called the human.
To be effective in battle, the human had to ignore its emotions and simply become a cog of the gun mechanism. The gun processed the bullets stored in its magazine and fired them at the place they were aimed at. The human simply had to take its time, breathe slowly and aim effectively.
Charlie could sense a strange tunnel-like redness at the edge of his vision, but he was amazed at how clear his central vision had become. He closed his left eye, sighted through the back sight, then the front sight, lined it all up with the chest of the sixth robot in the charging line.
He squeezed the trigger. In the firing chamber the firing pin slammed into the soft copper plate at the back of the bullet’s brass casing. The combination of heat and compression ignited the explosive powder in the rear chamber of the bullet and the igniting gas exploded into the only direction it could, pushing the tungsten-tipped lead projectile forward and into the barrel – at a speed of hundreds of meters per second.
As the bullet was pushed forward in the muzzle, some of the compressed gas escaped into a small hole at the top of the muzzle, from there it flowed into a cylinder that led back to the gun’s firing mechanism. The compressed gas pushed violently against a piston inside the cylinder, slamming the piston back. The back of the piston was connected to the firing mechanism, which now slammed back violently against the powerful compression spring at the back of the weapon. As part of this backward motion the firing mechanism opened the door of the firing chamber while ejector pins flicked the empty shell out of the firing chamber and into the air.
While this was happening a crucial piece of hardware came into play. The seemingly unimportant coil spring at the bottom of the magazine was pushing upward with just enough pressure to keep the top bullet in the magazine pressed firmly against a bent lip at the top of the magazine. The top of the magazine was shaped in such a way that a small part of the top bullet was protruding above the rim of the magazine, with only the lip holding it in position.
As the firing mechanism’s bolt was slammed forward again by the powerful rear coil spring, it scooped up this top bullet by hooking the protruding part and sliding it forward and up a slide into the firing chamber, where the firing pin was ready to incubate its second egg.
In automatic mode, the firing mechanism would be slammed back and forth at around 30 revolutions per second. The firing mechanism would be dependent on the seemingly unimportant small coil spring at the bottom of the magazine to push the next bullet into place within the nanoseconds between firing and reloading.

The heavy bullet was well on its way before the bolt slammed the next bullet into the firing chamber.
The extra length of the FN FAL’s barrel and the large amount of explosive powder in the big shell created a massive muzzle velocity that combined with the large size of the bullet to result in massive momentum and kinetic energy.
The bullet hit the robot to the left of where its right arm was connected to its chassis/torso. The tremendous kinetic energy of the speeding bullet combined with its tungsten tip to smash through the robot’s armor-plating, where it deformed and tore through the robot’s top right servo motor before blowing a fist-sized hole out of the back of the machine. The robot was flung sideways and its right arm fell limply to its side, but it regained its balance and kept on coming ...