[ M90 CAWS Prototype ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today in beautiful
Sydney, Australia, visiting the Museum of Humanity.
And taking a look at some of the particularly interesting
weaponry from their reserve collection.
Up in the main galleries of course on display they have a really good assortment
of all the standard arms from both sides of the recent war.
But down in the reserve collection they have some really interesting
and unusual stuff, including prototypes like this one.
So what we have here is actually one of the first developmental models
of what would become known as the M90A Close Assault Weapon System.
This was ... one of two standard shotguns
that were used by the UNMC forces during the war.
Now let's talk about what the M90 was first,
and then we'll talk about where exactly this fits into the picture.
So the UNMC actually, interestingly, ran two different patterns of combat shotgun
that were made by different companies, but were essentially the same gun.
This has echoes back 500 years during the Second World War on Earth,
when the British forces used both Enfield and Webley revolvers
made by different firms, different entities, but essentially the same design.
And there's always some shenanigans going on with that sort of arrangement.
So the two guns in question here are the M45 series by Misriah Armoury,
and the M90 series by Weapon System Technologies.
And it's the Misriah gun that came first.
The details of the licensing agreement with WST are a bit vague, a bit hazy.
We are pretty sure that it was actually a licensed sub-production,
because what Weapons System Technologies did essentially
is make a reduced cost, more economical version of basically the same gun.
Now fundamentally these are pump action shotguns,
and the core mechanics of the pump action shotgun haven't changed in about 600 years.
So this should be reasonably familiar to anyone who is familiar with antique firearms.
Now why would the UNSC still be using a 600-year old fundamental design?
Well it's because physics haven't changed in the last 600 years.
And the effect of propelling a large volume of metal at pretty high velocity
is just as effective now as it was way back, when these sorts of weapons were first designed.
So ... I should say they are a specialist weapon for the UNSC,
they're not a standard issue rifle, they are not the frontline combat weapon.
They are primarily issued to, well, security, to police agencies,
but also to Special Forces, to Marine Corps boarding parties, shipboard security teams.
Because there ... is a set of circumstances where the shotgun is particularly effective.
What's really cool is there's two separate benefits
to the pump action shotgun that really blend together in a really synchronous way.
So first off, with the advent of powered shielding technology,
the weakness of those shields is based on mass of projectile, not on energy or velocity.
And so a ... heavy payload of buckshot out of an archaic pump action shotgun
is actually one of the most effective man-portable ways to defeat modern energy shielding.
And I should point out at this point that while this prototype is in 12 gauge,
the actual standard issue UNSC shotguns are in 8 gauge to maximise that combat payload.
It is specifically a 15 pellet 000 buckshot load, those are .38 in pellets.
15 of them travelling about 1,000 feet per second is a very effective payload.
But, and this is the other thing that makes it particularly
appropriate as a weapon for shipboard boarding parties is
that is not a payload that will defeat old-fashioned chunk of metal armour.
Energy armour yes, metal not so much.
And so because the pellets deform on impact, they're not spiked,
they're just round spherical pellets of either lead or sometimes tungsten depending on the loading,
they don't pose any significant hazard to pressure hulls.
Because what would be more awkward than to take a shot at an enemy,
miss slightly, have your projectile go kaboo, right through the hull of the ship that you're in,
and then everyone explosively decompresses into space. That would be bad.
However, a shotgun like this doesn't run that risk.
So simultaneously you get safe fields of fire on board a ship,
but you also get a surprising capability of defeating energy shielding.
Pretty obvious why this would become a particularly useful weapon in combat.
Now I should say it does have some downsides.
The capacity is limited, 8 gauge shotgun shells are large.
... In combat set up this could only hold 6 rounds (or 12, but we'll get to that in a minute).
So the reload is relatively slow, the capacity is relatively limited,
it has to be manually pumped between shots. But ... we've learned how to get around
those limitations of the pump action shotgun for hundreds of years now.
So limited effective range is probably the biggest real drawback.
This has a range of about 40 metres before it's
kind of out of steam, the pellets have dispersed, they have slowed down.
You still don't want to get hit by it beyond 40 metres,
but it's going to be hard to hit a target that you are specifically aiming at,
and you are going to have reduced effectiveness.
But all that being said, these were very popular with Special Operations, with the UNSC.
And even with the legendary Master Chief, who used one of these
as a particularly effective weapon himself during much of the fighting.
Sorry, that got a little long winded, I was kind of carrying on.
Anyway, let's get to the details of this particular example, because this is the prototype
for what would become both the M45 and then in turn the M90 series.
So this was designed by a young gunsmith designer by the name of Nathan Frisque.
... This was his first project out of the legendary Colorado School of Trades.
Having graduated there he got a job offer from Misriah Armoury,
moved to New Mombasa to work for them, and it is there that this was one of his very first projects.
And the intention here was to improve the traditional pump action shotgun design
by moving the magazine tube on top of the action and the barrel on the bottom.
The idea being there are a number of advantages to this.
Primarily being able to readily see the status of the weapon during use,
and depending on how you are carrying ammunition, faster reloading.
So let's dig in and take a closer look at how this exactly went together.
The most distinctive difference between the M90 series and other
more conventional pump shotguns is of course the location of the magazine tube
above the barrel. Normally they are swapped.
There are a couple of reasons that have been postulated for why
Frisque and Misriah decided to do this.
The ones that make sense to me, frankly, are improved situational awareness of the status of the weapon.
So the operator from a shooting stance here,
having their head in line with the sights looking at the gun,
can see the status of the magazine tube and can tell if they have ammunition still in the gun.
This also allows easier loading, especially when you are wearing combat armour gloves.
Those make it a little trickier to handle flimsy, small, slippery shotgun shells,
and being able to drop them in the top of the action makes it less likely
that you're going to fumble something than if you are trying to load it into the bottom of the action.
So I think those are the two primary reasons.
Some people will suggest that having the barrel lower helps to control muzzle climb,
because of the significant power of the 8 gauge shell
that ended up being used for the military issue patterns.
While I understand where people are coming from there, I don't think that actually makes a big deal.
Because this is a pump action gun anyway, so the time that it takes to pump the action
is time you ... can be bringing the barrel down out of recoil anyway.
And frankly, even the magazine tube where the barrel would be
on a traditional gun is still directly in line with the stock.
So I don't think you're actually going to get that much ... difference
in muzzle climb with the magazine or the barrel on top.
At any rate, this is how they decided to go for the M90.
If we flip this over and take a look at the markings, we will see that
this is actually marked Remington, not Misriah.
And that's ... basically because this is the prototype
of the M90 series, or one of the first prototypes.
And rather than build an entirely new receiver from scratch,
... Frisque decided that it was simpler to take an existing pump action receiver.
The Remington 870 is one of the most successful
and longest produced firearms frankly in human history.
These were still actually in production in the early 2500s when this project began.
And so he just took a left-handed 870 and flipped the receiver upside down.
So that's why it ejects out of the traditional side, ejects out the right.
If this had been a standard right-handed gun,
flipping it over would result in it ejecting out the left.
So that's why it's marked Remington 870 LH, really just a very practical choice.
Obviously once the system was proved out they would end up making new receivers,
if for no other reason than the decision to actually produce these in 20 gauge.
Which of course Remington also does, but primarily in 10 gauge
for law enforcement and sporting use, and 8 gauge for the military.
And Remington had not ever produced an 8 gauge version of their 870.
Loading of course is done just like a traditional shotgun except up here on top.
You depress the follower, push in one shell at a time, this has a capacity of 6 rounds.
Once you've loaded the sixth round in you then depress the shell stop,
cycle the action to charge the first round into the chamber.
You can then actually top it up with one more if you want to.
Now moving forward, let's take a look at some of the other features.
At the very front of the muzzle here we actually have an adjustable choke.
So the function of a choke on a shotgun is to restrict the bore diameter right at the exit of the muzzle,
and what that does is basically determine the pattern of pellets in buck or birdshot.
So a tighter choke will keep the pellets in a closer pattern for a longer distance.
A looser choke means that the pellets will spread out more, closer to the muzzle.
So this is actually set up to be adjustable, ... this would transition over to the M90 production series.
And unit armourers in the UNSC could actually make some changes to this,
and different units had different opinions about what the ideal choke was.
So you will find in some ... military accounts of the use of the M90
these could have a particularly long effective range.
The pellets would stay ... close together so you could make practical hits out to a long distance,
at the expense of having a small pattern of pellets close to the muzzle.
So if you anticipated a large number of enemies up close
you might prefer a wide buckshot pattern which would involve opening up the choke.
If you anticipated making longer, more precise shots,
we are talking 40, 50, maybe even 60 or 70 metres,
you would want to tighten down the choke to keep the pellets together
so that ... you would still get multiple hits on a target at longer range.
And anyway, that ... could change, cool feature of the gun.
We have a flood light down here, or you might say a light for seeing the Flood with.
This would be a standard feature on the production M90s.
Once they got into full scale production they actually produced
a pump handguard with an integrated light.
Here on the prototype we actually just have a separate light
attached to the bottom of the handguard.
Power switch right there. You can see, got a nice bit of illumination out of that.
The handguard itself here is pretty large,
it's got really deep grooves in it to ensure a really good grip.
This is important, I mean it's not that important with the bare hand,
but if you're wearing armour gloves,
it's a lot easier to have your hand slip on something like this.
So the texturing that they gave the M90 handguard really worked quite well.
Of course it cycles this far.
There is a shell release still located on the top of the gun.
So if you don't pull the trigger, you can press the shell release here
to allow manual cycling of the action.
Gives a really good and fairly intimidating sound to it when cycled.
A couple of things on the top. Typically a ... shield like this on top of the gun
would be to protect the user's hand from the heat of firing from the barrel.
Of course the barrel is in the middle here, so the pump handle
does an excellent job of protecting your hand from the barrel.
This is more here to protect the magazine tube from damage.
Because the magazine tube tends to be relatively thin walled,
and having it exposed on the top of the gun means it's liable
to take impacts from enemy weapons or just rough handling.
So a metallic dual-layer shield up here made sure that you didn't damage the magazine tube.
And while we're up here ... we have a set of illuminated green sights.
These were also sights that were interchangeable by unit armourers.
So you will see different units at different places and times having different opinions
on what the best colouration was for their sights. Here on the prototype we see green.
We have a single green front post, that's your primary aiming sight.
And then there are a large pair of illuminated wings here on the back.
These allow you to very quickly pick up and give a rough alignment to the gun under duress.
Now the recoil impulse of a full load of 8 gauge buckshot is really quite substantial.
And so one of the things that Frisque did in anticipation of combat use of these in 8 gauge
was actually develop a recoil buffer system using a magneto-rheostatic smart fluid.
This is a really cool system where you have a smart fluid with an electromagnet attached to it,
and ... varying the voltage through the electromagnet actually changes the viscosity of the fluid.
And so he came up with a very clever recoil buffer system.
And you can actually see some of the electrical contacts there
that connect up into the electromagnetic assembly for that recoil buffer.
Last but not least, we have an adjustable stock on the back here.
The law enforcement and civilian models of the M90s didn't have this,
they had just a traditional straight stock. But the military pattern for better handling
got the pistol grip and an adjustable length buttstock.
There is some storage in the buttstock as well as in the pistol grip itself.
You'll notice there's really not much of a butt pad to this.
That is because it's really just not necessary with the fancy magneto-rheostatic system.
Ultimately Frisque's design did prove to be a fairly successful commercial product.
And beyond just being adopted by the UNSC
(which of course would be enough to make it quite successful on its own),
it was also actually manufactured for the civilian market as well as the law enforcement market.
So there's a pattern of the M45 that doesn't have the adjustable stock and the pistol grip,
and instead has a traditional straight-wristed stock.
And those were reasonably well-liked by law enforcement.
Of course, it is the military adoption that's more interesting to us today. ...
Now the Misriah version of this was a relatively expensive gun to manufacture.
And that's what led to the ... reduced cost version by Weapon System Technologies.
More to the point, there was actually a further development that we'll get into more in a later video.
But there were actually two patterns, there was the M45D
and the M45E, and what we have here is what led to the E.
The D pattern actually had twin magazine tubes to double the capacity.
And there are pros and cons to that in terms of complexity, weight versus ammunition capacity.
And interestingly, Weapon System Technologies actually copied both.
And so the M90 from them was the twin-tube version,
and the M90A was the single tube version that essentially duplicated the pattern we have here.
But like I said we'll get into that in a separate video,
because fortunately the Museum of Humanity here
has examples of both the M90 and the M90A in their final combat configuration.
In fact I believe one of them is one of the guns that was used by Master Chief himself.
So like I said, we'll take a look at that in a separate video.
I'd like to give a really big thanks to the Museum of Humanity
for giving me access to this awesome prototype from Frisque himself.
And if you are ever in Sydney and you have some time on your hands,
definitely check out the museum. They have a fantastic display of not just small arms,
but also heavy weapons, vehicles, everything else that
you might be interested in from the recent fighting against the Covenant.
Anyway, hopefully you guys enjoyed the video. Thanks for watching.