A Rifle Operating Group for Small Arms Recoil Reduction

This work (a continuation of the author's prior research on small arms recoil reduction) presents a rifle operating group design for small arms recoil reduction. This recently-patented invention is an application of a previouslypatented 7.62mm concept demonstrator to reduce the recoil force transmitted to the user during operation. The recoilmitigating technology developed for the original 7.62mm concept demonstrator has been packaged into a compact and practical rifle operating group design. Like its predecessor, the rifle operating group (the rifle internal components that are responsible for ammunition feeding, firing extracting and ejecting) includes design features to reduce the propellant gas contribution to recoil force and cancel the moving internal component contribution to recoil force. The specific design features in the original invention and follow-on invention for recoil reduction are a translating barrel, a spring-supported upper receiver and a counter-mass that is driven by rack and pinion gears. In computer-based firing simulations, the rifle operating (like its predecessor) produced recoil reaction forces that were substantially less than those produced by the M240 machine gun.