What could have been: The RAS-12 semi-auto shotgun

[BlackIce_GTS]

I remember reading that Firearm Blog article, I was pretty excited until it said it took proprietary ammo. It looks like a lot of people agree with me, based on the comments.
It seems like this sort of thing has failed several times, and for the same reason. None of them are 'better enough' to be able to push their new ammo on the market.
What does the ammo do? It does what 12ga does.
What does the gun do? It does what a Saiga does, but slightly better.
Speaking this thing vs. Saigas, wasn't the Russian importation ban only this year though?

Tangent: what is it about 54R and .303 that makes them work in a double stack when other rimmed cartridges don't?

[Nyles]

Nothing really. Rimmed cartridges went out of fashion about the time double column mags came out so those are just the ones ones that ever got made in large quantity. There were also Siamese Mausers and Arisakas in 8 x 50 and 8 x 52 Siamese with dual column mags, and both those and Lee - Enfields have been converted to .45-70 in fairly large quantities. I've also seen tons of 1889 Schmidt-Rubins converted to .30-30 over the years.

8mm Lebel doesn't very well but that's more to do with the taper than the rim.

[Mazryonh]

Originally Posted by BlackIce_GTS

I remember reading that Firearm Blog article, I was pretty excited until it said it took proprietary ammo. It looks like a lot of people agree with me, based on the comments.
It seems like this sort of thing has failed several times, and for the same reason. None of them are 'better enough' to be able to push their new ammo on the market.
What does the ammo do? It does what 12ga does.
What does the gun do? It does what a Saiga does, but slightly better.
Speaking this thing vs. Saigas, wasn't the Russian importation ban only this year though?

Proprietary ammo isn't always a problem. It helps if you're a big company like FN that can push lot of marketing and promotion for something like the 5.7x28mm cartridge, even though FN only makes 2 firearms chambered for that caliber. .300 Blackout succeeded in getting a good amount of market share even without a major manufacturer, and the TFB link I posted claimed that ITS was trying to make deals with Remington to get the RAS-12 ammo made in large quantities at competitive prices.

I think the demand for "significant improvement" in firearms is sometimes wrongheaded. How many "new rifle" programs have been cancelled and the allotted budget wasted because the firearm proved not to be "enough" of an improvement over the old models? The RAS-12 was significant because it used COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) components for its lower and magazines, which would in the long run have cut costs. The TFB article also outlined how the RAS-12 was more reliable than the Saiga-12, the latter of which often came with substandard proprietary magazines and occasionally had problems with feeding the rimmed ammunition. If ITS ever wanted to make a comeback, the fact that the Saiga-12 was banned from importation in 2016 is another mark in the RAS-12's favour.

Originally Posted by BlackIce_GTS

Tangent: what is it about 54R and .303 that makes them work in a double stack when other rimmed cartridges don't?

It could be that the larger the diameter of a rimmed cartridge, the greater the circumference of the rim and the more likely will butt up against others or even interfere with the loading process. Recall that despite .357 mag's popularity, there have been next to no semiauto handguns in that caliber with double-stack magazines.

On the other hand, there have been millions of .303 British bolt-action rifles made by Lee-Enfield, and the 7.62x54mmR still sees use in semiauto weapons with double-stack magazines, like the SVD rifle and its derivatives. So the difference between a protruding rim's size that will work reliably in double-stack magazines for semiautomatics and a size that will not work can't be large, even though there isn't a big difference in rim diameter between the .357 mag and 7.62x54mmR or .303 British (circumference is another matter).