Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we're going to take a look
at a super cool rifle. This is a Steyr ACR,
that stands for Advanced Combat Rifle.
Because this was a part of, well, this was Styer's entry
into the US military program which was tasked with
improving on the M16A2 rifle. Now that program started
almost as soon as the army adopted the M16A2,
and what they wanted to do was improve hit probability.
So the problem was, when you have soldiers who are stressed, and, you know,
both physical and emotional stress on a battlefield, and they're getting shot at,
and they don't know where it's coming from, and they're jerking the trigger,
and they're firing in full-auto, and recoil is bouncing the guns around,
soldiers in combat don't tend to hit very much. Unless they're really well-trained,
and really experienced veterans. So,
the idea was maybe they could come up with some piece of military hardware
that would compensate for this, and allow soldiers to get better hits, or get more hits,
without having to be super well-trained or experienced. That was the Advanced Combat Rifle program.
And, generally speaking, what they were trying to do with this was fire multiple projectiles
with every pull of the trigger. The idea was to have something, kind of like a shotgun,
but at an effective rifle range. So, of course, the advantage of a shotgun with, say,
buckshot is you pull the trigger once and you get 9 or 10 to 12 pellets going out there
in a spread, and how big of a spread depends on how far away the target is, you know,
it gets bigger as it travels downrange. But you don't have to necessarily be exactly on target.
If you're slightly off to one side, some of the pellets will hit your target,
even if most of them don't. And that's what the Army was going for.
In fact, the Army had been investigating this sort of idea for decades, back into the 1960s
with the Special Purpose Infantry Weapon program.
And this was simply the most recent, well, when this was made, this was just another iteration of this program.
And so there were two ways that they looked at doing this sort of improved hit probability.
One was by firing multiple projectiles simultaneously. Colt's entry into the ACR competition
fired a duplex cartridge, which means it was basically a 5.56 cartridge,
but instead of having one bullet, it actually had two bullets nested on top of each other.
So every time you pulled the trigger you got one recoil impulse,
but two bullets went down range which, in theory, meant you had a substantially
better chance of at least one of those bullets hitting what you're trying to shoot.
Some of the ... well, for example, the HK entry into the program was the G11 rifle,
that fired a three round burst at about 1,800 rounds per minute. The idea there was
you pull the trigger once, you're going to get three separate recoil impulses
but they're so close together that the rifle doesn't have a chance to substantially
climb off target before the third one has left the barrel, and thus you have a better chance with three
projectiles of hitting your target. The Russian AN-94 did the same sort of thing with a two-round burst.
Well, ... the Steyr ACR here did a couple things, it had a three round burst mechanism,
although it only fired at about 1,200 rounds per minute. But it also, instead of firing traditional bullets,
it fired flechette cartridges, meaning basically a long needle-like cartridge [projectile] with some fins on it.
And the three round burst on this fired at, well I said, 1,200 rounds per minute.
The individual cartridges, the flechette, was about 10 grains, that's about 0.66 grams.
So an extremely lightweight projectile, travelling really fast. The muzzle velocity on this thing was
4,800 feet per second. That's about 1,450 metres per second. That's like 50% faster
than any standard, even, you know, a high-velocity 5.56 rifle bullet.
And the advantage to that was, well, first off, with a very light bullet going fast
you have less felt recoil
and
you have a much greater point-blank range. Meaning the bullet, because it's going so fast,
doesn't drop very much, or the flechette. So out to at least 300 yards you could
just hold your sight dead on target and you'd make a hit. You didn't have to try and
compensate for elevation, and that helps. That sort of estimating your holdover with
unknown ranges is a difficult thing to do, and takes a lot of practice and training or experience.
As I'm sure you've already noticed, the Steyr ACR is a bullpup style of rifle, magazine at the back,
in fact, very close to the very back of the rifle. We'll take a look inside this in just a moment.
Controls are really quite simple.
The magazine release is back here, push that in and the magazine comes out.
This is a, interestingly, a double stack, single feed magazine. And when you see
inside the rifle, you'll see why it does have to be a single feed magazine.
Interestingly, and first off, ... you'll notice the similarity between this and, say, the other
magazine that Steyr was kind of specialising in at the time, the Steyr AUG.
Quasi-transparent, very similar style of magazine.
We have some numbers moulded on the outside here, so you can see from the
outside how many rounds are loaded. And this is only a 24 round magazine.
That seems to me to be a little bit odd, given that its purpose was firing a lot,
firing three round bursts. I kind of would have expected a larger magazine,
but that's what they had. So that's what we've got.
You'll notice there is no bolt release lever anywhere, because this is actually an open bolt firing weapon.
Again, we'll touch on that in just a moment.
The safety is a push-through button right here. So a single dot is fire, semi-auto.
Pushing it all the way through to two dots gives you full-auto, which is actually a three round limited burst.
And then you can push it all the way through on the other side to expose the white dot and that is safe.
We have a sling swivel up here, which appears to be able to be reversible if you're left-handed.
The other sling swivel is on the top of the back of the stock.
... Of course, there's a rail on top of the gun. There is a front sight up here.
I believe the rear sight is a unit you would have to put in to replace this optical sight.
That is a low powered optic, I don't know the exact specifications.
It looks to me like it's about 2 power, maybe 2.5 power, not much more than that.
A neat little muzzle brake design, flash hider and brake. You'll notice there
are these circular holes to vent gases upward upon firing to help control muzzle climb,
as well as a birdcage style of flash hider.
And then the last control on there is this very AR-like charging handle. So pull that back and
it locks the bolt open, you then push it forward. Like I said, this is an open bolt firing rifle, so
there is no need for a bolt release, because the bolt release is ... the trigger.
While, unfortunately, I'm not able to fire this for you guys today, I do have a round
of the ammunition to show you. So it is roughly the same size as a 5.56 cartridge.
(Green tip here for comparison's sake.) If we look at this up close, because it has a
semi-translucent case, you can see right through it. That's our main powder charge.
Right up here is the sabot, so this grips around the front of the flechette projectile.
This actually does engage with rifling in the barrel. It has a very slow rifling twist,
one in 85 inches, which is like one in 213mm [2160mm?],
but it does give the sabot a spin, stabilisation, in addition to the fins that it has.
We have this little port in the front, that's where the projectile is going to pop out of the case.
And there's nothing on the back. This actually has a ring primer,
so this silver band at the back is a primer. You can actually almost think of that as a rimfire primer,
because it does go all the way around the case. So there is a single firing pin at the
top of the chamber, but because the primer ring goes all the way around,
... it doesn't matter what orientation the cartridge is in, in the magazine.
Speaking of which, there is the cartridge loaded in the magazine. So,
we have a slot in the back, that is where the cartridge is going to be pushed out forward,
directly into the chamber. So let's take a look at that.
Field stripping is very simple. You push in this button,
and ... pull the back of ... the stock off.
So the way this thing works is really pretty slick and pretty cool.
This is the back end of the barrel. So it's a very long barrel, goes all the way to the end.
The magazine (by the way when we're in this configuration, the magazine sits
basically here, right behind the action).
There is a chamber in here, a firing chamber, that actually ... slides
vertically up and down, and it's connected to this pin. So when I pull
the cycling handle back,
you can see the chamber right there.
This action rod is connected to the gas piston up in the front end of the gun and it's going to
(sorry, kind of takes two hands to open this thing all the way up, it's got a stiff piston on it),
but this locks open, because it's an open bolt gun.
... You can now see that the magazine fits
basically, right there,
and this is our feed system. This little block, right here.
When you pull the trigger, this whole assembly, this frame, goes sliding forward,
this little nub, right there, pushes a cartridge straight into that hole,
where it goes into the chamber. It then lifts vertically up like this,
hits the firing pin, and immediately upon closing, fires.
Now you can see how this would be a slick locking system, because
once the once the cartridge is ... in line with the barrel, there's no force pushing it down.
So it's pretty easy to lock that sliding chamber in the upward position.
Now when it comes to ejection, there is an ejection port right here on the bottom,
and this actually ejects before it fires. There is no ... purpose-built ejector,
the cartridge that you are feeding actually works as the ejector.
When one cartridge gets pushed into this chamber, when it's in the downward position,
it actually pushes the existing spent case out the front, right in front of it.
That's something that you can do with this neat little polymer case, because it has no rim on it. So,
it can go from here, slide into the chamber, and then get pushed
right out the front of the chamber again, after it's been fired.
So, a little ejection port down there. Don't know how well this would have fared with malfunctions.
I would think that it's actually a simpler system, less likely to malfunction,
at least as far as the technical aspects of ejection, because
you're not worried about a spring-loaded extractor or gripping on the edge of
an extractor rim.
That said, ... I've seen a few little excerpts from people who were involved in test firing these,
and they said they weren't all that reliable, so I would suspect that would have to do
more with feed malfunctions. Problems of the cartridge jamming going into this chamber,
as well as, quite possibly durability issues. Because this is a plastic cartridge,
this would probably be relatively easy to deform, certainly much easier to deform than a brass case.
And if you had a cartridge that was a little bit squished, it would very easily cause problems.
Now as for the actual gas system, it is, unfortunately, located up here.
I think the way you're supposed to get this out is there's a little hex head screw here, connected to the sling swivel.
Unfortunately, when I tried to take this one out, it does not budge, and I put quite a lot of force on it.
As much force as I was willing to put on a prototype machine gun like this.
It didn't move, so I gave up. I'm not willing to break this gun to try and show you guys the inside.
The way it works, however, is an annular gas piston up here. So,
the outside of the barrel actually acts as the inside surface of a gas piston.
This is kind of like the Mauser G41, or the Walther G41 for that matter.
And then there's a sleeve over the outside of the barrel, gas is tapped out of the barrel into this
sort of
concentric piston area, which then pushes this assembly backwards to cycle the gun.
It is a remarkably simple action mechanically, it is fairly easy to manufacture,
and overall a far simpler system than the G11 that HK came up with.
Couple other things I do want to point out about the rifle.
I have not had the chance to shoot it, but handling is really quite nice.
It's a very short, compact little rifle, doesn't weigh very much.
The cheek rest, the cheek weld, going into this optic is quite good.
Now the optic itself, ... it's a crosshair with a large circle in the centre,
which is actually very similar, kind of like the magazine and the trigger guard, similar to the Steyr AUG.
I don't know how good that really is,
I suppose for close, fast shooting it's probably decent. For long range,
maybe you get some effect, kind of like an aperture sight,
where your brain will naturally try and put the target in the middle of the dot.
Without actually trying it, it's hard for me to say, I don't really have any substantial
trigger time on an AUG with that style of optic. So I can't refer to that.
The trigger pull is kind of interesting, in that it's very,
very crisp and very short, for semi-auto.
And then when you put the gun into full-auto,
it has a much longer, much heavier, trigger pull to it.
So, I don't know if that was intended to sort of remind the shooter
what mode they're in, or if it was just if you're in full-auto you need to be a little more
sure that you actually want to dump three rounds downrange than if you're in semi-auto.
Or maybe it was just an attempt for semi-auto to allow better accuracy
by having a better trigger pull. Either way, ... it's an interesting thing to notice.
... It is limited to a three round burst.
I think that's kind of ... about it.
There is a ... DoD, like a VHS tape, documentary that was released in 1991 about
the ACR program. And that has some shooting footage from this, as well as all of the
other contenders, the HK G11, the Colt ACR and the AAI, the Advanced Armaments Inc gun.
So if you're interested in hearing more about it, and what the Army was trying to do,
and their excellent projection that by 1996, one of these guns would be the new standard army weapon,
definitely check out that US Army documentary.
Ultimately, the Steyr ACR ... had some good points and some bad points. On the good side,
it was one of the least ... it was in fact the least expensive rifle in the program.
It would have cost less than an M16, at the time, to manufacture.
It was a pretty darn lightweight gun, this weighs in at just over 7 pounds, about 3.25 kilos.
It's relatively short because of the bullpup configuration.
It's pretty simple, it has a lot going for it in that way.
The biggest problem that it had was accuracy.
And this could have been ... fixed to some extent, but
in the iteration where it was actually being tested by the Army, in late 1980s early 1990s,
the case material hadn't really been completely figured out yet, and
the front of the case would open up and release the cartridge at varying pressure levels.
Which meant you kind of got varying muzzle velocities.
And the upshot was that the accuracy on this was about half that of a standard M16.
And that was, well, that was really kind of a problem. When the overall goal is to increase hit probability,
sacrificing accuracy is, well, not something you really want to go for.
Ultimately, the result of the program was that none of the rifles that were suggested,
none of the rifles that were supplied, were able to meet the goal. And the goal had been
to improve hit probability by 100% over the M16, so it really was a pretty lofty goal.
They weren't able to make it and so, like every similar sort of burst fire,
flechette firing, shotgun style research program that had led up to this, this was just cancelled.
All the guns went away, and we're left with just a very small number of the prototype rifles still floating around,
mostly in museums. Very lucky to have gotten my hands on this one. So,
hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
Not often we get to take a look inside something like a prototype ACR.
If you do enjoy seeing this sort of thing on the web, please do consider checking out my Patreon account.
It is folks there, folks like you, who make it possible for me to travel around,
find very cool guns like this, and bring them to you guys.
Thanks for watching.