Sunday, December 13, 2020

Ultra-Tech Firepower: Wolden & Hawks PDW-7P, 8mmAADR (TL 9)

Note: Slight update

 GURPS forum user Kale made the great suggestion of allowing the forward grip be swapped with a tac light which I should of included from the state. Good call man. He also suggested adding the option of adding a small 20 gauge shotgun in lieu of an idea I had off adding in a really small grenade launcher earlier in my concept phase for this gun. I was looking into maybe adding something like the S&W Governor but then it dawned on me that 15mm gyroc was about the same size as a 20 gauge so I went with that idea instead. Also another forum user by the name Say, it isn't that bad! has said that my stat lines are coming in weird for him. Well I looked into ways to fix it and it looks like Blogger has made it easier to add tables (the last time I tried it was so finicky that I gave up and have been hand adjusting stat lines since) so I have updated the PDW-7P's stat line to have a proper table. It's still wonky AF but hopefully it's more stable.


Wolden & Hawks PDW-7P, 8mmAADR (TL 9)

The PDW-7P was the first fully in-house developed firearm designed by Wolden and Hawks, a very successful gun modding studio run by Greager Wolden and Carter Hawks. With furthering social unrest and increased attacks and kidnapping attempts on high value corporate exec, research engineers, and politicians the team saw a chance to fill the growing need for a compact and easy to conceal high rate of fire weapon that can also defeat most forms of soft body armor to sell to the growing private security firm sector.

Deigning the actual firing platform was the easy part. Based on interviews with potential clients, Wolden & Hawks  only took seven design iterations to come up with the PDW-7P. It was to be handy in closed in fighting situations and with a strong emphasis on making it very easy to holster or conceal and extremely reliable (treat as Fine( Reliable)) so that it didn't jam or fail to feed in the middle of fight. This lead to the weapon being no larger then a heavy pistol (hence the 7P, seven for the seventh design iteration and P for pistol form factor) with a somewhat boxy appearance do to it having an integrated P90 style forward grip in front of the trigger guard which incorporated an ambidextrous fire control selector (which could be switched between safe, semi-auto, 3-round limited burst, and full auto) and a built in telescoping collapsible stock (one ready maneuver to collapse or pull out the stock). This let it be stored and used as readily a normal pistol but with a flick of the selector allowed it to instantly transition into a machine pistol or if better stability and accuracy was needed the stock could be extended turning it into a full on submachine gun. While the weapon only used a standard iron sight and smart gun electronics to keep the weapons bulk down, it did have a top mounted modular rail so buyers could add their own sighting options if needed. The forward half of the forward grip can be removed and replaced with either a tactical flashlight (50 yard beam, $100, 1 A/8hrs. See High-Tech pg. 52) or a under barrel Holdout Gyroc, 15mm (see Ultra-Tech pg. 144 and 145)

The hard part was what to chamber it in. Feedback had reviled a desire to have penetration levels near what the 5.7mmCL could do in a full sized SMG but given that the PDW-7P had a normal pistol length barrel there was not many round that could fit the bill and they were going to have to make their own custom cartridge. After several rounds of simulations and testing they found that a high-pressure round based on a heavily modified 9mmCL cartridge would suit their needs. The base round was necked down to 7.92mm with a 6 gram bulk amorphous tungsten cored projectile. To push for a high muzzle velocity a a higher pressure propellant block was used with a light composite coating applied to the block making it semi-caseless. This coating would briefly contain the expanding gas when the round was fired further increasing the chamber pressure bumping the muzzle energy up by roughly 9.3%. The composite coating is then burned up and ejected out the barrel with the rest of the propellant residue. Between the high velocity and dense core, this gives the round nearly 10mm of penetration of RHA equivalent. Given that the round was close enough to 8mm and its primary purpose it was christen the 8mm Advanced Armor Defeating Round. 

The PDW-7P originally only came with a conventional sized doubled stacked pistol magazine capable of holding 20 rounds to help with concealment  but W & H eventually developed a 33 round extended mag (0.5 lbs, $20) after customer receiving enough customer feed back asking for the option. A third party developed 100 round  C-mag (2 lbs, $160. An integrated A cells powers drum for up to 1,000 rounds. Worsens bulk by -1) also became available but W & H strongly recommend against its use as they viewed it as unreliable (drop Malf. to normal while loaded with this magazine) and the amount of extra bulk it added to the platform was over all incompatible with the weapons concept.

The excellent performance of the weapon however came with a high cost per round which was further impacted by the 8mmADD's production being limited to just its flagship platform. But despite this sales have been have been at lest steady with many of the major private protection firms buying at lest a limited  test of the weapon. This has also lead to other firearm manufacturers to start to take note of the round which may lead to further adoption driving costs down further.

 

GUNS (SMG) (DX-4, or most other Guns at -2)


TL Weapon Damage Acc Range Weight ROF Shots ST Bulk Rcl Cost LC Notes
9 PDW-7P,      4d-1 (2) pi- 3
220/2,400    2.5/0.3         12 20 +1 (3) 5† -3      2 $890/$18 2 [1, 2, 3]

     
8mmAADR

[1] With the stock collapsed Acc drops to 2, ST changes to 7, and bulk goes down to -2 and can be used with the GUNS (PISTOL) skill instead. 

[2] With drum mag ST becomes 6 with stock, 8 with the stock collapsed.

[3] Accessory rail.

8mmAADR

TL   WPS   CPS

9     0.015   $0.52



1 comment:

  1. I keep thinking of tubular penetrators. They maintain good sectional density with low drag and high velocity, while, being a full-bore projectiles, make bigger hole and not require sabots.
    Apparently it was said that they are very hard to manufacture, but at TL9, I think, they can be a viable alternative to subcaliber flechettes.

    ReplyDelete