.303 Modern.303 Modern is the standard round of the British army in the Gamma Universe from around 2018 onwards, after the great revolution and the subsequent vast reorganisation of the British armed forces. Why .303? .303 was re-adopted because of good old, thinking-with-the-heart-not-the-head TRADITION. With the huge relaxation of gun control in the UK, following the Great Revolution of 2014, many people bought remanufactured (in Britain!) Lee Enfield SMLE rifles, which fire the traditional .303. Quite a few people even fired them, though many others just owned them as the symbolic "rifle on the wall" that George Orwell wrote about. With this large number of experienced .303 shooters in the country, and also with the revolution causing overall instability and severe recession (but there are things more important than money, after all), it was expected that the army might need to call up a large number of new soldiers, but not neccessarily have the time to train them fully. What is .303 Modern? .303 modern is a shorter round than the traditional .303 rifle round, using more potent explosives in a thicker but lighter casing. This gives it a higher velocity and a (slightly) lower weight. The shorter size means it can even be used in some pistols, though they aren't common. The unique round for the British army means that soldiers can't easily capture ammo from the enemy, but then again, the enemy can't capture ammo from them, either. Ammo sharing with Britain's allies is an issue, and some units in joint operations may exchange weapons with allies before battle, or else use machine guns that fire the more common 5.56 NATO and leave the .303 for the soldiers. .303 modern is designed for ease of manufacture. With the right components it can be made in the kitchen, and British shooters often "make" their own ammo from bought parts. When World War 3 started, anybody with a small lathe or tools in the shed could volunteer to be sent blocks of raw metal and tubes from which to machine the makings of rounds themselves. This effectively distributed ammo production over the entire country. The explosive component and percussion-caps were screwed into the rear of a round by more specialised facilities later, but home machinists could make the threads and do this part of the operation themselves too, with more practice. This did, of course, make all of the civilian homes where this was done into "war materiel factories", and thus legitimate military targets. But Intersoc see post-revolution Britain (and the rest of the New European Alliance and New United Nations) as a "far right", "populist" state, filled with "low information", "counterfactual" "deplorables"... and thus not just not human beings, but not even sentient life at all, so would be attacking random civilian houses, anyway. |