The Mk15 style rifle is a dynamic weapon's platform based on the original Labe Industries design, intended to be an "everyman's" rifle system.
The original carbine model is designed to fill the role of an assault rifle well adapted to spaceborne environments, but variations exist from short PDWs to Recce rifles to large Precision Rifles.
Table of Contents
History
Produced in the Threshold, the rifle platform was first prototyped in the year 3371, and received criticism for being an "archaic" design. In testing, it proved to be exceedingly practical, supremely modular, and easy to work on.
Design
The weapon system consists of three parts:
The Lower Receiver, including buffer-bellows, active-recoil management system, magazine well, fusion-cell well, bolt-carrier-group, and fire-control-group.
The Upper Receiver, including a charging handle, telemetry package, data management package, and user-interface package.
Barrel Group, including mounting points, barrel, and weapon-propulsion package (usually railgun coils).
The original caliber of the Mk15 was designed to be the .321 round, an intermediate cartridge, allowing soldiers to carry a sufficient amount of ammunition without greatly sacrificing the size of the round.
Variants
Variants of the Mk15 are as numerous as the rifles themselves in many cases. They quickly became adopted by hobbyists within the Threshold, and custom builds are very common. Many corporations, too, design their own slightly different variants. Most of these changes are cosmetic, ergonomic, and quality-control related with the internal action remaining the same.
Not truly variants of the weapon, the most common differences seen, particularly in military applications, lie in changing out the barrel group:
Personal Defense Weapon Barrel Group
Barrel Length: 18cm
OAL: 65cm
Carbine Barrel Group
Barrel Length: 30cm
OAL: 77cm
Rifle Length Barrel Group
Barrel Length: 55cm
OAL: 102cm
Precision Barrel Group
Barrel Length: 70cm
OAL: 117cm
Mk15 PDW
The Mk15 PDW was developed for a need for a personnel defense weapon for crews of vehicles and for civilians as a more ideal home-defense weapon.
Mk15 Rifle-Length
The Mk15 Rifle-Length weapon was developed to give soldiers, particularly those with light-power-armor, a better chance and standing up against more heavily armored foes. The Rifle-length includes a longer barrel with electromagnetic rails to accelerate the bullet, delivering considerable force, though not as much as the Mk14 version.
Derivatives
The Mk14 weapon system was developed as a derivative of the original Mk15. The Mk14, also produced originally by Labe Industries, is a larger and bulkier variant intended to give the common soldier the ability to take down larger power-armor-wearing enemies. This need was identified as advances in power armor in the 3390's left the original .321 caliber round feeling underpowered. Though the Mk15 was capable of using larger caliber ammunition with a simple change of the barrel group, the Threshold Armed Forces sought to preclude obsolescence with a new derivative weapon system.
The build of the entire rifle is larger, with the original Mk14 firing a .50 Longbow round, but like the original weapon, it is easily modified and is capable of chambering rounds as large as the .700 Kaiju.
The shorter MkA, colloquially known as the "Mika" reduces Overall Length by using smaller pistol cartridges instead of rifle cartridges and is well suited to personal defense roles. With lower recoil to manage, the entire lower receiver is smaller and lighter weight, and the weapon is more suited to civilians lacking the assistance of armor.