Advantages of shotguns: spray & pray, stopping power, and diversity of ammo
Disadvantages: The ammo is too big to carry much of, small clips, short range
In our modern arsenal, is there a place for the shotgun? Do you see combat in the future where a short-range weapon like it would be useful, or are assault rifles the best idea?
They were useful in Viet Nam for close range bush blasting. I can see where they could be applied in an urban combat zone.
I believe Seals still train with them, sometimes with a “duckbill” attached to spread the buckshot in a horizontal pattern. Most effective for “street sweeping.”
Shotguns were used by American forces in WWI in trench fighting. However I believe that nowadays submachine guns (which the Germans more sensibly call “machine pistols”) are the preferred close quarters weapon.
Miltary police forces use them, as do ships force for repel-boarders and security. In fact, for intra-ship comabt, a shotgun is ideal. You can do such nasty things as banking shot around corners or under equipment, and not have to worry about excesive damage to the ship’s equipment.
I know they are sometimes used to blow open doors by SWAT teams. They also have the ability to deliver a forceful shot while not overpenetrating through too many walls.
If our military plans on operating in an urban setting, then shotguns will have a niche.
I think that shotguns are very useful in certain situations and completely wrong for others. The seem sort of primitive to some people, and I hear that a lot of Europeans (not including Italians) regard them as barbaric. A lot of people discount shotguns because they look humble and plain, while modern assault rifles look high tech.
On the other hand the OP brings up some serious limitations. I would add a fourth: difficulty dealing with body armor. Buckshot isn’t very good a penetrating armor at any range. You could always hope that a pellet would hit your target in the the throat (esp. at moderate ranges where the pattern has had more distance to spread). You could also hope that the simple momentum transfer effect would disrupt whatever your target was doing (i.e., a non-penetrating shotgun blast will at least be like a punch in the stomach). These hopes really aren’t reliable enough. A good rifle round will still penetrate body armor up to level III, and level III and level IV armor is not common (the level IV should stop a .30-06 armor-piercing round but that armor is mostly ceramic, if I remember correctly). Replacing buckshot with slugs makes your shotgun a latter-day musket - fine for deer hunters but not great for someone who has to fight over a variety of ranges. Replacing slugs with flechettes seems promising, but has “seemed promising” for so long that some (including myself) are starting to get skeptical.
People have written volumes about the efforts to modernize the shotgun. They usually result in high-tech, expensive products which get produced in miniscule quantities. The Heckler & Koch and AAI candidates for the Close Assault Weapons Systems are famous far beyond their numbers. The Pancor Jackhammer likewize. These weapons all had their own strategies for getting around traditonal shotgun limitations; they are interesting for historical value.
The big contracts just never roll in. This doesn’t prevent weapons fanciers from vastly overestimating the importance of these weapons; some still seem to believe that fully automatic, box-fed, flechette-firing shotguns are a standard tool for many armies. Not so. The shotguns which make it into actual military service tend to be the tried and true models. American guns tend to be tube-fed pump-actions; Italian models are most commonly tube-fed with some box-fed models as well, and can be semi-automatic, pump-action, or both. The South Africans prefer wheelguns like the Striker and Protecta.
Apart from the latter, the closest thing to a truly radical shotgun that has seen reasonable success is Franchi’s SPAS series. The SPAS-15 is fed by detachable box magazine, getting around the slow-reloading problem of the SPAS-12 and most other shotguns. Duckbill chokes (aka diverters) spread buckshot to make the weapons even better at point shooting; I believe rifled extension tubes are available for extending the weapon’s range. Grenade-launcher attachments have obvious possibilities. Naturally, the ammo selection here is tremendous. Some problems have been solved, but the whole class of weapons is still hampered by bulky ammunition and difficulties penetrating soft body armor reliably.
In short, they are interesting weapons, but look for pump-action Mossbergs for specialized duties, not 12-gauge science projects in general issue.
As if I hadn’t already pontificated on this topic enough, I have to say I was really disappointed by Rogue Spear’s handling of this matter. (Rogue Spear is a computer game - the sequel to Rainbow Six - which follows a secret international anti-terrorist group created by author Tom Clancy.) First, they ignore American shotguns completely (no American pistols make it into the game either). Really, it wasn’t nationalism which disappointed me here, it just seems like the U.S. is a pretty important shotgun maker.
Second, they treat the SPAS-12 as a full-auto! It’s a hybrid pump/semi-auto gun, guys, not full-auto. Get it right! (A similar hybrid, the Benelli M3, gets treated as a plain old pump gun by another anti-terrorism game, Counter Strike. Bad! Bad!) Third, they they offer rubber shot as an option, but it works just like buckshot only very weak. Shoot a terrorist in the face with it once, and it won’t bother him in the slightest. Shoot him half a dozen times, and he’ll fall to the ground and bleed to death. Hmmph.
A friend told me that shotguns are against the “rules of war.”
I did a couple searches on Google and couldn’t confirm it.
I’m not a military expert, but IMHO, a shotgun is such a freakin’ powerful weapon that there’s sure to be useful military applications for it.
Freedom wrote:
Damn you, Freedom! Now I’ll never get the theme song to that 1970s TV series out of my head.
*There’s a man
In a van
With a gun
In his han’,
Called SWAT!
(ba doom boom, boom ba doom boom,
boom, ba doom boom, boom ba doom)*
Nah. I just don’t believe that: it’s just a firearm, admittedly a fairly inaccurate one. If SWAT teams and special forces units can use them openly, I don’t see them being banned.
WRT the OP, I’d agree that probably they’re fairly uncommon because they have a limited, specialised use: close-range urban combat. When range and accuracy are not huge issues, but weapon size and shot spread are, shotguns might be ideal. But assault rifles surely combine a greater degree of accuracy and range with a decent rate of fire and size: a more all-round solution applicable to a whole host of environments.
Marines still train with shotguns.
In close quarters, clearing building, etc… I can’t imagine anything I would rather have.
If I only get ONE weapon regardless of the situation, I would take a light automatic rifle. It is not the most effective in any situation, but pretty useful in every situation.
A shotgun is a special use weapon. But, if you are in that situation, what could be better?
Shotguns are a good weapon in urban warfare where their relatively limited range isn’t a handicap. I’d speculate that due to the increasing urbanization of the world, you’ll see more city fighting in the future and the shotgun will become a more important infantry weapon.
I think this might be a reference to World War I-era protests made by Imperial Germany against the doughboys’ use of Winchester trench guns (12-gauge, slide action, with bayonet lugs and shortish barrels). It’s sort of ironic, really - the country which introduced the world to unrestricted submarine warfare, strategic bombing, and chlorine gas protested because American buck was not fully jacketed. The Hague Convention banned the use of weapons calculated to cause unnecessary suffering; the Hague Declaration of 1899 forbade, in more specific terms the types of bullets known as Dum Dums with gilding metal (the copper-nickel mixture which jackets most bullets) missing from the tip. Since buckshot has no gilding metal at all, I suppose someone could mistake it for a soft-point.
Really, it was and is a bogus complaint. Buckshot violate neither the spirit (banning newfangled ammo causing horrific wounds of the Hague Declaration, nor its letter:
A buckshot pellet weighs as much as a lot of bullets, but it is not bullet shaped, does not have any hard envelope, and does not expand upon impact. I’m not saying buckshot doesn’t create horrific injuries, but I have never heard that they heal more slowly than ordinary gunshot wounds (and I’ll wager they heal much more quickly than ragged shell fragment wounds). Also, shotguns had been around for eons before the Dum Dum bullet or the Hague Declaration - if they had wanted to ban it they certainly could have.
As far as the “unnecessary suffering” of the Convention language, well, I don’t know. It sounds like a judgement call. Gas warfare caused suffering even to those who were protected against it; you might not kill troops in gas masks but you could make them miserable for days on end in their ill-fitting gas masks as they labored from breath. But then, the First World War was such a bizarre era I suppose it is almost fitting. Airship crews breathed bottled oxygen as they soared over columns of sabre-wielding cavalry. Italian commandos went into combat on land clad in chainmail; comrades at sea went into combat riding clad in wetsuits, riding converted torpedoes.
getting hit with a shot gun blast would almost certainly knock you down no matter what armor your wearing, getting hit with a slug in the chest would leave you breathless.
I know a guy who has a pair of 12guage doulbe barrled pistols. if you call anything 12 guage a pistol that is. the barrels are around a foot long. they were from an armored car service. I dont know how long ago but I would imagine they were dam effective.
they will probably remain in their current limited use for a very long time.
Critical1 wrote:
Not if it was Starship Troopers powered assault armor, or +5 Plate Mail of Etherealness.
Boris B:
Chainmail? Really? That’s interesting. Got any pictures/more info?
Well, it’s not riflemen in chainmaille, but it’s different: WWI Italian Bicycle troops.
For those who are interested, here’s a nice primer on the nature of shotguns.
This page shows some shots of the Model 1897 “Trench Broom”.
I dunno, shotguns are pretty useful.
I got a Remington Pump with the sporting plug removed.
I keep it loaded with a “Gambler’s choice” of rounds.
I use a slug, heavy game shot,slug, buckshot, slug and keep that locked upstairs for home defense.
A slug is pretty accurate over medium ranges, and it has the added benefit that if you hit somebody in the pinky, it will more than likely tear their whole arm off. You can also shoot through walls, floor, ceilings, body armor, cars, cinder blocks and such. The really loud boom sounds like the end of the world, too.
I like to use slugs against groundhogs. It’s more effective than a rifle if your target is moving. You don’t even have to hit them. Come close and the ground will literally explode near them killing them with shrapnel.
My father, the sniper has a lot of disdain for machine guns or pistols.
The classic example is take ten guys with machine pistols and put them at one end of a football field. At the other end place one decently trained rifleman with a bolt action rifle. You’ll need to dig ten graves.
Scylla, are any of them allowed to move? And let’s not forget that, AFAIK, pistol rounds aren’t terribly effective at 100 yards anyway.
could you fill me in on what a sporting plug is? Is that like a choke tube, or is it a plug that limits magazine size?
Man, one of these days I need to get armed. I hate trying to participate in firearms threads when I’ve only shot a few times in my life.
