NCS Service Rifles

After 2036, the NCS found itself desperately in need of a new rifle as current NCS armories were a smorgasbord of military and civilian weapons. A modern assault rifle was deemed unfeasible, as manufacturing costs would be too high for a nation that had just recently formed. With this in mind, the NCS went looking for a manual action repeater.

From the outset, the NCS knew that it wanted a lever action rifle. The cavalry arm of the military had proven itself extremely valuable and since a lever action rifle is easier to manipulate in the saddle, the NCS arms committee went searching for a suitable one.

Unfortunately, the NCS went looking a lever action just as the ADF was beginning to adopt the .30-30 cartridge and citizens across the NCS were gathering up their Marlins and Winchesters to hopefully sell off to their purchasing agents (who just so happened to be paying more money per rifle as well). The few citizens that did participate in this buying program usually sold their more obscure rifles, so what the arms committee ended up with was a vast array of rare lever actions chambered in hard to find cartridges.

While frustrated, the committee decided to go over their new collection anyway, just on the off chance they had wound up with something good. The big bore lever actions chambered in cartridges like .45-70 were abandoned for having too much recoil for the average soldier. The pistol caliber rifles were also abandoned, as they had little use outside of 100 yards. That left about a dozen Savage 99s, around half a dozen Winchester 1895s, and a single Winchester 88 that was quickly dropped for being to complex.

It is thought that, had the committee had access to a Winchester 1895 that had been chambered in something other than .30-40, it would have won. As it happened, all but one of the 1895s was chambered in the cartridge (the last one being chambered in the far too powerful .405 Winchester). The cumbersome method of loading a .30-40 Winchester 1895 was quite the turn off for the arms committee, especially in the face of the Savage 99s which loaded in the same manner as a bolt action hunting rifle. Another point in the Savage's favor was that one of the test rifles was an 1899-D military musket, a gun that provided a glimpse into what a militarized Savage 99 would look like. The final conformation was that .300 Savage brass could be resized from then extremely common .308 brass. All these points combined allowed the Savage 99 to beat out its competition by a wide margin.



Army Rifles

R1 - The first newly manufactured small arm of the NCS, all 1000 of these rifles were issued to soldiers for troop trials in April of 2038. These rifles were straight copies of the original Savage 99, even retaining the original sights and furniture. They were used to test the viability of the unmodified rifle in field conditions and the battalion that made use of them were drilled in a wide variety of environments and situations, coming back with several issues that were addressed in the next iteration of the rifle.

R1* - The biggest request from the troops was clip loading, shorter barrels, and better furniture and the Charleston factory delivered another 500 rifles with the requested changes in August of 2038. These rifles, equipped with new clip loading bridges, 19" barrels, and a two piece new stock that retained the pistol grip while also adding a full length forend and handguard.

The troops were satisfied with new changes and full scale production began in September of 2038. The first rifles reached troops in November of 2038, and stayed mainline service until 2063.

R1A1 - The genesis of this weapons, the first NCS semi automatic rifle, was a Bill Ruger prototype that had been housed in the NRA museum in Fairfax, Virginia. The majority of that museums collection had been gathered up after the eruption and sent to Norfolk, the Virginians maybe thinking they could use some of the designs housed there. By the time of the Delmarvan War, much of the collection sat forgotten in the Charleston CSA as part of a small museum they had there.

After the first few months of the Delmarvan War, when the Confederate assaults stalled and the realization hit them that this would be a longer war than anticipated, designers began looking for anything that could help to break the stalemate. It was then that the designers at Charleston began to pour over the NRA collection, striking gold with the Ruger prototype; a Savage 99 chambered in .250-3000 that Bill Ruger had converted to semi automatic operation.

After working out the operating system, production began at once. The initial rifles were converted from R1*s and reached the troops fighting in Tennessee in May of 2063. Those conversions served well for the last two years of that war. After the war, all subsequent R1A1s were of new manufacture.


R1A2 - The R1A1 soldiered on for over a decade and was well regarded after the Smoky Mountain War, seeing a good bit of combat in Northern Virginia in the hands of the ASV. NCS arms innovation stagnated in the face of this. The War of 2074 in Cuba changed all of that. While the R1A1 matched up with the M1s and Mausers of the Cuban forces rather favorably, it was woefully outgunned by the AKMs used by the Cuban elite troops. The war ended before any solution could be presented, but the next couple of years were spent trying to update the R1A1 in some way.

Early in the 2068, the PTR plant had been reopened by a pair of former Charleston engineers. At the time of the War of 2074, they had still been working on repairing the tooling that was still in the factory, but they were aware of the failures of the R1A1 during the conflict and rushed to fix the issue.

While the plant didn't have any magazine manufacturing capability at the moment, it did have a wealth of old G3 magazines that could be reworked and used as a proof of concept to leverage funds to build proper machinery. The two engineers set off to design a proper magazine and retrofit a magazine well onto an existing R1A1. They unveiled their finished product in Charleston in mid 2075.

The Charleston CSA began work on tooling for the new magazines and also new R1 receivers with pre-made magazine wells. The PTR plant owners received a good sum of money for their magazine patent and were able to get the plant up and running, renaming it Aynor Arms. Meanwhile, the R1A2 entered service in 2076 and stayed in mainline service until after the Bayou War.

R1A3 - After the horrors of the Bayou War, North America realized that the nature of warfare had changed. All nations began programs to modernize, and the NCS was no different. One of the products of this modernization was the R1A3, the final evolution of the R1 rifle series.

The R1A3 had it's genesis in the Aynor Arms company. With the adoption of the R3 by the NCS Navy in June of 2099, the Army realized that they too would need a rifle with modern ergonomics. A contract was made with AA to develop new furniture for the R1A2 that was similar to the R3. The finished product was first fielded in January of 2100 and has remained in service since then.



Navy Rifles

R1* - The Confederate Navy adopted this rifle at the same time that the Army did. It served well enough in that role, but Marine commanders always thought that landing parties would need more firepower.

R2 - While mainly a pistol manufacturer, NFA had been selling small numbers of Remington Model 81 clones, which they dubbed the Frontiersman, almost since their founding. The Navy saw potential in these rifles and purchased a number of them for boarding and landing parties in 2053, but the five round magazine proved to have the same firepower issues as the R1* did.

R2* - NFA unveiled their new 15 round magazine for the Frontiersman in 2068, generating quite a bit of interest in the Navy. Existing rifles were sent to back to NFA in order to update them to accept the magazines. A contract was also signed to purchase a large number of the new magazines. Unfortunately, the magazines proved expensive and were not able to fully replace stripper clips. The Marines who landed in Cuba during the War of 2074 were generally only issued two magazines per man, having to rely on stripper clips after emptying both magazines.

R3 - After the Bayou War, the Navy looked to replace their aging R2*s. The Aynor Arms made R3 rifle proved to be the perfect choice and they were officially adopted in 2099.