It's a SPIW (Special Purpose Individual Weapon). Basically a flechette-based rifle. |
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It would have been cool if the Army had opened a museum at the Frankford Arsenal in Philadelphia instead of turning it completely into a business park. Great Pics! I am surprised by the number of M16's on display...there must have been a lot of experimenting going on... |
OK.. here's what I just received from Kevin Dockery on the exact weapon pictured -- That's one of the Special Purpose Individual Weapons (SPIW) developed during the 1960s to fire the flechette rifle round. The flechette rifle was to be the point target weapon while the grenade launcher under the barrel was to be the area effect weapon. This specimen is of the infamous H&R SPIW which fired a special three-projectile "tround" a triangular-bodies plastic cartridge that put out three flechettes for each pull of the trigger. Under the barrel is a three-round 40mm grenade launcher. The whole package comes in at 23.9 pounds, while the Army specified a max weight of 10 lbs. But that's not the worst part. Twenty of the plastic trounds were attached to a plastic strip belt that fit in a drum that would lock in just in front of the trigger guard. There were twenty of these weapons made and this one is unfired, the reason I can say that with relative certainty is that they only fired one of the guns during testing. The plastic cases split, gas and crap came flying out of the breech, and the Army Ordnance officers declared the weapon unsafe to fire. All specimens went to storage or display. Cool barrel, I've examined the fired weapon and took some pictures looking down the muzzle. The barrel has a triple-bore, three holes in the same barrel. I would have hated to try and make that in shop. The only decent thing that came out of this whole SPIW fiasco (ammunition turned out to be incredibly expensive to make accurately enoungh to be fired as a single projectile - think centerless ground here, not stamped) was the GLAD program - the Grenade Launcher Attachment Development. The idea to combine an area effect weapon with a point target weapon from SPIW went on to the GLAD program and finally resulted in the M203 being developed and adopted. Then this whole mess came back as the OICW, but that's a completely different, but very recognizable, boondoggle. |
Can you bring me the gun of Rambo? ETA: Dammit beat me to it |