Is Aliens' Iconic Pulse Rifle Realistic? Loadout & Breakdown

[QuintusUndead]

Its not really realistic but, hey! Its a pretty damn good sci-fi gun

[bobhill]

the fact that the subtitles had pounds as the British currency instead of the wait had me in stitches

[MrDDiRusso]

Fun fact: the prop guns used in ALIENS are built from Thompson submachineguns.

[Snailman]

Fun Fact, the Pulse Rifle canonically has issues with overpenetration against unarmored humans as the rounds are meant to penetrate body armor and then explode inside the target

[Potates]

Honestly this is still one of the coolest guns in sci-fi to me.

[plaguedoctorjamespainshe]

Fun fact, because of the fact that it uses an real gun with blanks to fire the prop gun, many such "caseless guns" can be seen ejecting cases in shooting scenes, Aliens being one of those examples, Star Wars and Terminator 2 also have the same thing happening

[cpl.barbarusc]

The definitive bug busting rifle alongside the Morita MK 1 from Starship Troopers.

[asdfjoe]

We have propellants powerful enough. What we don't have are chambers and barrels that won't have a service life measured in single digits.


Unless of course we're willing to accept the rifle would grow to the size of a cannon.

[milkmoemoe]

Dude I was up at night trying to think of a new, unique sci-fi gun for the story I'm writing and I opted for an electric rifle firing caseless rounds... then I realized, "shit, that's just a pulse rifle"

[MEGATRYANT]

Dynamit Nobel pretty much fixed the issues with caseless ammunition in the 80's with the G11 program, according to both the Bundeswehr trials and the US ACR program, so as far as caseless ammo reliability, we got that covered.

[archmagosdeciuskronen]

IRL it's a Thompson with an underbarrel SPAS12 firing explosive shells. Still scary af

[fishfossils]

I don’t think enough people realize just how powerful a Pulse rifle is. For my HALO fans, imagine a handheld MAC cannon that fire Full Auto. That’s basically the pulse rifle. If the UNSC had been equipped with these babies the Covenant would have been a little more hesitant about zurg rushing marines. Heck the Imperium of Man is even nodding its head in approval.

[AnonEMus-cpmn]

In the early 2000’s Reminton released the EtronX as an electrical-primed hunting rifle to achieve a light trigger pull with minimal delay due to the lack of a striker mechanism. It did not see much commercial success. There is also a long history of weapon programs intended to increase hit probability like the SPIW, ACR, and more recently the NGSW program. The first of which had requirements for a high-capacity rifle with a multi-shot grenade launching system but with high-velocity armor piercing flechettes rather than explosive rounds. It is very likely the Pulse Rifle was inspired from those requirements. Caseless and polymer cased ammo have been developed for all these programs with the most recent (NGSW) showing some promise. Ammunition for newly developed small arms is trending towards high ballistic-coefficient projectiles, some with steel or tungsten penetrators as opposed to flechettes or explosive payload munitions. But the added cost, accelerated wear, and marginal performance over common munitions means that such weapons and their ammunition might only be in niche roles for the time being.

[enovos]

I love the aliens fire team version you showed there for a second! I love the sound, the universe, and how practical the gun is. Love your vids man.

[California_Doge]

Fun fact: Someone made a functional replica of the pulse rifle. Clip of it in action is somewhere on YouTube.

[gold]

The 'pulse' in the name comes from the fact that the weapon supposedly uses an 'electronic pulse action' rather than a traditional firing pin. In other words, as each round was fired the primer embedded in the base of the caseless round was ignited from an electrical arc at the back of the firing chamber. This is why the gun has such a distinctive sound, it is a combination of a high rate of fire and an electronic whine from the gun's capacitor rapidly discharging. The power pack in universe is mounted in the carry handle and the gun racks seen in the film are designed to recharge the battery when the gun is placed into a rack. Seems to be a really cool, realistic design, something you would expect the military to be using in a hundred years or so. The reason why the ammo count is so high by the way (90+ rounds in a full magazine) is because the rounds are much shorter due to being caseless, so the magazines are double stacked but also form a 'U' shape all the way around the inside of the magazine to fit all the bullets in.

[Potates]

The main issue i have with it is how it manages to fit 95 rounds in a 20 round Thompson mag

[nicholaswhiteway]

There actually a chapter about the pulse rife and it’s factual history in the anthology aliens, bug Hunt. Highly recommend it if you’re a aliens or space marine fan

[LSparrow]

Just a thought, why not use rocket ammo, but instead of penetrating, it works like British HESH rounds? That way you don’t have the drawbacks of less kinetic energy from mini rocket ammo.

[angryscotsman]

Speaking of reliable caseless ammo, I think the largest issue we have with regards to something like the Pulse Rifle is simply the fact that what materials we have for caseless ammo don't burn clean enough for continued operation. Brass casings may be heavy and take up space in your mag, but they serve the dual purpose of absorbing/removing a lot of the heat from firing a round, along with preventing the residue from the combustion process from fouling the chamber, which can cause huge failures. From what I've read about the H&K G11, two huge issues that the designers had were that:

1. The chamber would become seriously fouled after a short period of fire, causing serious feeding issues,
2. Excessive heat buildup would cause the caseless propellant to combust spontaneously, causing a runaway fire situation (until the fouling jammed up your mechanism, I guess). Until both of these issues are solved, something like the pulse rifle is just the far-off wet dream of gun nuts everywhere.