Horizon HR-M Heavy Railgun

Horizon's niche in weapon design has always been in create extremely powerful designs for special situations where nothing else will work. Enter the Heavy Railgun - Mass energy, or HR-M for short. It is considered one of the only sniper-class weapons used in modern combat but it makes no exceptions on lethality, incorporating technology that no other weapon uses on the battlefield.

The HR-M is one of the newest Terran designs, entering service as of 3277 TSC it has already proven its worth time and time again. Sacrificing fire rate for levels of power that proponents called "overkill" and even "useless." The one thing to note about this weapon is that it cannot be fired on the move even with the use of power armor. This limits it from being deployed to the front line as a primary attack weapon but it was made clear from the start that this was a purpose-built gun designed for one thing - range and accuracy.

The longest acceleration rails of any railgun before the HR-M was 1420mm of the Remington 150 which was due entirely to the limitations of designs at the time it was first produced. Later railguns could operate with much shorter rails because of their added efficiency and most never exceeded 1000mm in length. For maximum power, the HR-M uses a heavy gauge rail that is 2260mm long. This heavy of a barrel combined with the supporting structure of the weapon makes for quite the heavy platform. The need for a locking bipod and advanced cooling system on top of this brought the final mass to 98kg.

The 5.5 x 95mm slug the HR-M fires is in a league of its own as far as rail weapons are concerned. The high-mass of the round coupled with the equally high velocity it would fire at meant that the only viable option for a power source would be based off of mass-energy technology since chemical power cells would be limited to 1 or 2 shots before their power was depleted.

The end result of this design is a weapon capable of delivering a fatal strike to a Wardog main battle tank from a range of over 4km away. This puts the effectiveness of the HR-M well beyond heavy plasma weaponry operating in a similar anti-armor roll. The disadvantage of this level of power is that the weapon must be locked to the ground with stabilizing spikes that are fired through the bipod legs into the ground. Setup time for this means that mobility is highly limited when in use and HR-Ms are deployed in a minimum of two-man teams, one as operator and the other as his defender and spotter, however three man teams are the generally accepted practice in Terran tactical doctrine.

Class: Armored Infantry / Armored Sniper
Caliber: 5.5mm x 95mm rail slug
Energy Source: ME-100, 5.5mm slugs loaded in 5 round magazines
Capacity: 5
Rate of Fire: 5 RPM
Max Range: classified
Effective Range: classified, estimated 10,000m
Armor Penetration: Extreme
Shield Penetration: Extreme
Damage per round: Very High
Velocity: 26,000 m/s
