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Knight's Armament Silent Revolving Rifle (Ad-free)

The best firearms reference books: https://www.headstamppublishing.com In the early 1990s, Knight's Armament was approached by an unnamed agency looking for a very specialized weapon. It needed to be a repeating firearm that left no brass behind while being effectively silent and capable of shooting a 1.5" group at 100 yards. To meet these requirements, Knight's chose to begin with a .44 Magnum Ruger Redhawk revolver. They added a stock, suppressor, and scope mounts easily, but to be functionally silent they had to seal the cylinder gap of the system. This was done by making a unique new cartridge with the bullet held in a sabot. Upon firing the sabot move forward a tiny fraction of an inch and a rubber o-ring on the front of the sabot sealed it against the back of the cylinder. After the bullet left the bore, the firing pressure abated and the sabot retained enough clearance for the cylinder to revolve. After extensive work, they were able to manufacture this ammunition well enough to meet the accuracy requirements. In total, about 100 of these revolving rifles were made, for two different clients. One batch used .30-caliber bullets and the other used a 7mm bore. The project was called "r-squared" at Knight's; a shortening of Revolving Rifle. Thanks to the Institute of Military Technology for allowing me to have access to this very interesting piece and bring it to you! Check them out at: http://www.instmiltech.com http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons http://www.floatplane.com/channel/ForgottenWeapons Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! http://shop.forgottenweapons.com

Comments

Tobias Prinz

Hmmm. Why not leave the gap and cover the cylinder? Some German gunsmith did that. And: was the Ruger 77/44 not available at the time?

Tobias Prinz

Thinking about it more: i would probably spend a week designing a brass catcher for a bolt-action instead of a month for a new cartridge.

Thomas Nini

The smoking man on x-files used a weapon similar to this.

Wayne S.

I remember an article on the revolver and ammo in a magazine (SOF?) back in the day. The yellow plastic sabots brought Speer shot caps to mind. The mouths of the sabots were countersunk to mate up with a matching cut on the exterior of the forcing cone of the barrel. This also provided a camming action to force the sabot back into the chamber when the cylinder rotated. My thoughts at the time were: cool silenced revolver; my GAWD what complicated ammo!

John Roy

Hum! One wonders how many such "projects" have existed. Perhaps the basis for a book?

Pumba’s Gpa

Did the old Russian 7.62 Nagant revolver meet this requirement by sealing the cylinder gap…..

Pumba’s Gpa

The previous typed exactly at the moment Ian said he could hear people frantically typing Nagant. Srung…..

Risto Alanko

I would convert a bolt action, with an extractor to drop the empties in the space that used to be the box magazine and add a tube magazine in the fore-stock.

Rock Steady

i wonder why you would actually need to not leave brass, as a gov't agency, couldn't you just use a normal gun, they're going to know a shot happened when the guys head explodes, would a 9mm case really give the game away.

Mark

Brass could provide evidence of the source of the shot.