If you're going for stupid rifle designs, the OICW really isn't even in the same league as some of the ridiculous projects that preceded it, particularly SPIW / SALVO, which managed a wonderful combination of impossible initial goals and ridiculous demands of the prototypes, which ended up being some truly bizarre weapons. What can you really say about a flechette-firing rifle with internally discarded sabots, a grenade launcher with a 25-pound trigger pull, a demand that an over-under weapon loaded with 60 5.6mm flechettes and 3 40mm grenades come in under ten pounds, and the realisation, years into the project, that the flechette rounds would actually deflect off raindrops?
As for stupidest tank engine, the turbine might not make sense in today's world, but the US trumped it many years ago with a tank that wouldn't make sense in this world or any other. The T-95 or T-28 had four sets of treads, 12 inches of frontal armour, a 105mm main gun and weighed 95 tons. And what was it powered by? Um...One Sherman engine, with an almighty 5.2 hp / ton.
Last edited by Vangelis; 08-11-2009 at 10:08 AM.
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