AAI Flechette Prototype
The late 1950s saw AAI Corporation develop a series of prototype rifles and advanced flechette (or dart) technology. The rifle pictured above is a simple prototype dating from c.1959 is a simple rifle with a thin jacketed pencil barrel, inline tubular stock and a rudimentary stamped metal receiver. This made for a very simple, very light weapon. The prototype did not include the burst feature later SPIW rifles would require. The rifle was part of AAI’s development of an ‘All Purpose Hand-Held Weapon’ relying on flechette rounds to enable controllable burst fire and increased hit probability.
The prototype is one of a line of rifles developed in the run up to the Special Purpose Individual Weapon (SPIW) Project. The development of these weapons was funded not by the US Government but by the AAI themselves. It is probably chambered in AAI’s XM110 round, which used a glass polyester ‘puller’ to which pulled the flechette down the barrel under gas pressure from behind. The rifle has a perforated barrel jacket and a wooden foregrip and butt. The rear sight, which appears to be taken from an M1 carbine, is mounted on a raised sight base.
AAI’s later family of SPIW weapons from the early 1960s (Reproduced in Stevens & Ezell’s SPIW Deadliest Weapon)
AAI’s earlier flechette prototypes were superseded by more complex, more refined government-funded, rifles which attempted to fulfil SPIW’s ambitious requirements. AAI continued to develop flechette technology, with their later Advanced Combat Rifle programme entry also using flechette ammunition.
Sources:
SPIW: The Deadliest Weapon That Never Was, R.Blake Stevens & E.C. Ezell (1985)
Photo courtesy of US Army Ordnance Small Arms Inventory/P. Hokana
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