Gyrojet - History

History

Robert Mainhardt and Art Biehl joined forces to form MBAssociates, or MBA, in order to develop Biehl's armor-piercing rocket rounds. Originally developed in a .51 caliber, the cartridges were self-contained self-propelled rockets with calibers ranging from .49 and 6mm to 20mm.

A family of Gyrojet weapons was designed, including the pistol, the carbine and a rifle, as well as a proposed squad-level light machine gun and the Lancejet, however only the pistol and carbine were built. The space age-looking carbines and an assault rifle variant with a removable grip-inserted magazine were tested by the US Army, where they proved to have problems. One issue was that the vent ports allowed the humid air into fuel, where it made the combustion considerably less reliable. The ports themselves could also become fouled fairly easily, although it was suggested that this could be solved by sealing the magazines or ports.

Versions of the Gyrojet that were tested suffered from poor accuracy, cumbersome and slow loading, and unreliability (at best, a 1% failure rate was suggested; users quote worse figures, with many rounds that misfired the first time but later fired). Possibly these disadvantages could have been overcome in time, but the technology did not offer enough advantages over conventional small arms to survive.

When spin stabilization was chosen for the Gyrojet, the compact electronics used in today's smart bullets were not available. Both the cost and size of inertial navigation equipment have reduced greatly since a Gyrojet launcher was reviewed in "Guns and Ammo Magazine" in 1965.