Small Arms Commission Quest II: I swear I won't just wander off again edition.

This is the start of the second part of Small Arms Commission Quest, jumping ahead a generation and to the other side of the world.

You are Major Flavio Wekiva of the Kubachi Constitutional Republic Navy Marine Corps (naturally serving the people and congress of the Kubachi Constitutional Republic.) You have been assigned by the Commandant and the Admiralty Board to begin the process of investigating and possibly adopting a new self-loading service rifle with the goal of finding something with better performance than the existing Elta rifle, and unofficially, a rifle which will finally be good enough to break free of army procurement. The board is to convene on the rainy west coast at Illahe Naval Arsenal on 1 August 875.

Needless to say, as any rifle will be ordered in considerable quantities and remain in service for a significantly length of time, the quality and performance of anything selected will affect your career. Particularly given that with only some seventy thousand men and an officer corps barely large enough to fill an Opera hall, every Marine will know who made the bad call.

One of the adjutants assigned to actually do the secretarial work under you has been considerate enough to put forward a short list of possible board members.

(Choose FOUR)
[] Lieutenant Koehajo Caine, DrEng (KCRN), Deputy Engineer for Small Arms at Illahe Naval Arsenal.
[] Lieutenant Michel Isobo (KCRNMC), 2nd Marine Regiment, 4th Battalion.
[] Doctor Engineer Gabriel Gott, a specialist in self-loading weapons design retained by Illahe Naval Arsenal.
[] Surgeon-Captain Tristan Bove, Trauma surgeon formerly of KCRNS Callisto.
[] Sub-Lieutenant Goodluck Cayetano (KCRNMC), 7th Marine Regiment, 6th (Raider) Battalion
[] Kelinky Wekiva (no relation), noted trick shooter, Ballistics Expert and Gunsmith.
[] Edouard Hughes, one of the surviving members of the Elta Rifle Commission.

The Kubachi Situation:
The Kubachi Constitutional Republic Army is very much lesser service to the Kubachi Constitutional Republic Navy, and the KCRNMC is only about 3/8ths the size of the KCRA. Needless to say, to maintain adequate funding for naval expenditures vital for the defense of the Kubachi Home and Outlying Islands, the KCRA and KCRNMC do get the short end of the stick and are traditionally required by congress to share ground equipment from tent halves to tanks as a cost saving measure. The KCRNMC has chafed under this, and having lost out on their preferred choice of rifle and ammunition, and backed the patriotic coup that overthrew the vile Kubachi Free State and established the Kubachi Constitutional Republic some ten years ago, while the Kubachi Army supported the Free State and got purged for it.

Now of course the time to strike would've been when the iron was hot years ago, but that wasn't happening while the navy was getting everything they wanted, so things had to wait. But with some play in the budget, and some decent tanks finally adopted by the Marines and the Constitutional Guard, it's time for small arms to get replaced.

Also general announcements:
There's a discord for this and my other shit, and a patreon I mostly use for beer money.

Other than that, there's information on that discord, I'll add stuff here if people ask me here, and I will try to be forthcoming with questions and like actually include details in this version.

I'll leave the vote open for another day while I work on Beads and Brass stuff that should've been out weeks ago.

[x] Lieutenant Koehajo Caine, DrEng (KCRN), Deputy Engineer for Small Arms at Illahe Naval Arsenal.
[x] Doctor Engineer Gabriel Gott, a specialist in self-loading weapons design retained by Illahe Naval Arsenal.
[x] Sub-Lieutenant Goodluck Cayetano (KCRNMC), 7th Marine Regiment, 6th (Raider) Battalion
[x] Kelinky Wekiva (no relation), noted trick shooter, Ballistics Expert and Gunsmith.

The commission met first thing in the morning on the (actually not that wet) first of August, and after a quick meet and greet and a briefing about the ostensible mission of the commission, immediately hit the ground running. Everyone at the table has been waiting a lifetime for this competition.

Gabriel Gott is the oldest member of the commission aside from yourself, and has been working on self-loading weapons since the dawn of smokeless powder, and has more than a few improvements to the Balzac portative under his belt as well as being a driving force in finally adopting the Montel in some capacity. He's a grey haired sixty year old, and has pretty thick Tæxali blood, certainly more than the rest of you who tend to be a bit more native and African and all sorts of shit in Caine's case. Regardless, after having dealt with it for a quarter century, Gott hates 7.8mm Army almost as much as he hates the army that forced it on him and wants a decent cartridge for once. Something more portable, flatter shooting and rimless so it'll actually feed fine in something more modern and less expensive than a second generation Holborn. Naturally, Gott wants to adopt the round the navy was originally going to adopt before the Army put a stop to it, 6mm r/50. Gott is also saying some things about including a fully automatic mode as an option, because it could be useful and if anything Marines and the Constitutional Guard can be trusted with a fun button. That said, Gott is a bit concerned about the cost of gas pistons and drilling holes in all those barrels, so he's suggesting that the commission focus on short recoil and delayed blowback weapons, and is willing to tolerate a 5kg rifle.

Kelinky Wekiva is the second youngest member of the commission at thirty, and has made a name for herself as a trick shooter since she was a child and made a career as a gunsmith and shooting instructor, not that she could have entered a shooting competition under the free state, as she was a full blooded Hitchi woman and in the eyes of the old regime the two did not cancel each other out. With the reforms the coup brought about, she got her degree in ballistics, and is now one of the foremost in her field in the country. Her husband is a national hero and a commander in the Constitutional Guard, so of course no one is willing to comment on the fact that she's a former suffragette in a suit who brought a baby to a meeting. Wekiva of course insists on a better cartridge than 7.8mm Army, and while she thinks full auto might not be desirable for a standard battle rifle, she's willing to cop to selecting a round based on what would work for a light machine gun since carrying more ammunition for the same weight is always better (except on Skull island, which she did show some scars from.) Wekiva isn't sure what'd she would recommend, although she'd assume 6mm r/71, 6.5mm Irmione or even 7.5mm r/63 would be good as all are both more portable and more powerful than 7.8mm Army as well as being flatter shooting. Wekiva thinks that drilling gas ports and building full gas systems in all those rifles might get dirty and expensive so she's suggesting delayed blowback or a gas trap system. At a minimum Wekiva wants something that's under 4.5kg unloaded.

Sub-Lieutenant Cayetano was too young to have been majorly involved in the coup, being all of twenty four this year and is, aside from Kelinky Wekiva, easily the person on the commission who benefited the most from it. Under the Free State a scrawny half-breed paperboy from the slums would've been well out of the running to get into officer candidate school. But he was still on the barricades at that age, and he tested well enough to not only get in to OCS but excel. Needless to say, after joining the Raiders, Cayetano is gaining a reputation as an aggressive and politically astute young officer and while he might see this staff position as a temporary stepping stone on the way to a higher position, he's suitably impressed by its importance. Cayetano probably has the most crystalized image of the sort of weapon he wants. 6mm r/71, capable of full and semi-automatic fire, and (this is the part that makes Wekiva and the engineers scream) capable of firing from either a closed or open bolt depending on mode, all in a package that is the same weight or still lighter than the existing Elta short rifle the marines use (3.5-4kg.) Cayetano wants a rifle that can do it all, so he doesn't have to his platoon rely on tanks or risk getting caught with not enough firepower while leap frogging in combat.

Lieutenant Caine is an old navy man and was actually involved in the shelling of the old capital during the coup before moving over to arsenal work. Like you his career benefitted from the coup, but Caine is from a distinguished Pardo Navy family, and his great grandfather was the bastard son of a planter who went to sea, so he wasn't going to hit the glass ceiling you did before the coup. That said, Caine isn't really worried about the cost of a proper gas piston and is perfectly fine with using 7.8mm Army because it's what's in use and it's good enough for a three-hundred-meter firefight even if it has considerable drop at longer ranges. That said, he does think handing out select fire weapons would raise the cost a bit too much and encourage ammunition wastage by the troops, instead of leaving suppression to machine guns. Also, on full auto you'd either have to have a detachable magazine, or use some special stripper clips which would break commonality with the army and make it harder to resupply. Of course, this is also a benefit if the Army tries something as they wouldn't be able to use captured ammo unless they also converted, so Caine seems to be more on the fence than not about ammunition. Caine also doesn't give a fuck about weight, but wants an ergonomic and well-sealed design.


The next thing to do is settle on a cartridge and what you want in a proposal from manufacturers. This will be vote by plan as it was in SACQ I.

EDIT: But let's take a day to talk first, so there's a voting moratorium in place for 24hrs from this post (polls open 05:00 GMT Thursday.)