Kitbag 5: Close Assault Weapons (Traveller) PDF

Close assault weapons are intended for use, as the name suggests, at very short ranges and often in a confined space. They are excellent for room-to-room urban combat but may lack the range to engage an opponent in more open terrain. In a close combat situation the ability to put a lot of rounds into the target is often more important than long-range marksmanship, so close assault weapons are generally built for firepower rather than accuracy.

Secondary considerations include lightness and general ‘handiness’, i.e. how fast a weapon can be maneuvered in a confined space and brought to bear on a target. This can be very significant when high-firepower weapons are being used at close quarters – often survival is a matter of shooting first and shooting a lot.

Although urban combat is the commonest close-assault environment, it is by no means the only one. Spacecraft and associated installations are another area where short-range weapons are ideal – it is rare that a starship corridor is long enough that even a handgun would lack the effective range to hit a target at the other end. Specialist low-gravity weapons are manufactured for combat in space, since the recoil of a conventional weapon may disorient a combatant and could in some cases send him spinning out of control in the middle of a firefight. Close-assault weapons are also used in many security applications, not least since security personnel tend to operate in fairly close terrain or inside buildings.

The close-assault environment is an area where specialist ammunition sees a lot of use, sometimes to compensate for the low power of a weapon designed to have little recoil. Other applications for specialist ammunition include less-lethal rounds, breaching charges and a range of unique applications.