90mm Autocannon

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Archive: Firepower Through the Ages - A WegMaCo Historical Series

Episode: 12 - “AUTO-NINETY! The Rockwell 90mm Automatic Smoothbore Gun”

Among humanity's weapons of war, few have demonstrated the remarkable longevity of the autocannon. A design so effective and so versatile that even the most advanced energy weapons have failed to render them obsolete. Autocannons have served as mainstays of mobile warfare for more than four centuries, and perhaps none shine brighter in their long history of conflict than the Rockwell 90mm Automatic Smoothbore Gun.

Known colloquially as the crusher or auto-ninety by seasoned fighters, Rockwell’s flagship 90mm gun system was conceived pre-Rift during the early storm tank era. Though originally intended for installation on those early two-man armored vehicles that dominated the terrestrial battlefields of their time, the ASG proved flexible enough for use as a fixed defensive emplacement and field gun, and soon enough, for installation on HE-Vs. Reliable, robust, accurate and highly destructive, the weapon found immediate acceptance with national and corporate militaries alike, and quickly achieved ubiquity. The distinctive report of the gun would be heard in nearly every conflict zone through the following decades.

Rockwell’s design philosophy for the ASG project was simple: guarantee overmatch through delivery of accurate fire at a rate far exceeding all prior autoloading cannons of similar size, and do so with total reliability. For this task, Rockwell commissioned luminary weapons designer Dr. Martin Marcus to lead the project and oversee every facet of the gun’s creation. Dr. Marcus, in his genius, had determined that the sophisticated defenses armies relied on to counter increasingly advanced weapons were vulnerable to comparatively primitive attack in the form of overwhelming, sustained, direct firepower.

Fortunately for Rockwell’s shareholders, and unfortunately for those downrange, Dr. Marcus' prediction was correct and the ASG project succeeded: Delivering ammunition to the breech from a drum magazine via a linkless, helical conveyor system, the auto-ninety is capable of firing up to 180 90mm combustible case cartridges per minute. That benchmark, prior to its introduction, would have been regarded by tacticians and experts as not only impossible but completely ridiculous.

The auto-ninety soon proved itself much more than a madman’s brainchild: When married to the composite fire direction system of a storm tank, a single gun could easily outmatch a company of yesteryear’s main battle tanks. When fitted to an HE-V hardpoint, the corresponding increase in stability and recoil management allowed operators to demolish entire formations of traditional fighting vehicles. Opposing machines, no matter how heavy and how armored, could not hope to weather an auto-ninety’s punishment for long.

However, this tremendous firepower would count for nothing if the crusher couldn’t work in all climates and all conditions, and work every, single time. Dr. Marcus bestowed the auto-ninety with its legendary reliability by eschewing nearly every ordnance design principle common to his era: unlike energy weaponry, there was no need for an exotic power supply or delicate focusing lenses; the ammunition did not rely on then-fussy hypergolic propellant technology; there was no need to harden a guidance suite against electronic countermeasures. There was little to go wrong.

Even the cutting of weight was relegated to tertiary importance. By overbuilding every critical component group, from the vertically sliding breech block to the rammer-extractor assembly and smart fluid recoil inhibitor, the gun’s own prodigious mass acted as a heat sink and allowed generous margins against stress failures. Simply put, the gun proved marvelously reliable and durable, and surprisingly easy to service and overhaul. Rockwell’s gun would not stop shooting due to anything short of critical damage or faulty ammunition, and it filled graveyards and scrapyards alike with dreadful consistency.

But any weapon may only, truly, be measured by those who have carried it or those who have faced it. Consider the words of Captain Marie Barbier, a frontline HE-V pilot who served with the European Continental Alliance during the Baltic Access Dispute of <REDACTED>. Recalling her first time facing the Rockwell ASG, she said:

We knew the strikers had imported weapons, but we were told our technological advantage was total. Our particle lances were newly issued, at the time, but we had seen what they could do. We had used them in combat, they weren’t just demonstrator pieces. Our HE-Vs were new, too. They were equipped to deal with next-gen brilliant missiles, lasers, e-war. What our peer adversaries were using. It didn’t matter against those damned automatiques. They would hit you so hard and so fast, over and over, until you came apart. You couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t keep your feet or draw a bead. You couldn’t think. The pounding! It was debilitating. While you waited for the lance to recharge, they just kept shooting. Constantly. Boom-boom-boom-boom. I got a hit, a hit, on one enemy. He didn’t fix me. I watched the gauge fill for my next shot, five seconds, and in that time he killed two of my friends. Those damn cannons… More arrived in theater and then they were everywhere. You’d hear them far off, roaring, like an avalanche. A constant, rolling thunder, on and on. I still hear that sound in my dreams, sometimes.

Remarkably, the auto-ninety endures today as a legitimate, and respected, frontline weapon. Countless mothballed caches of guns and ammunition have been uncovered, and their contents sold, stolen, and traded among the myriad belligerents of our own contentious age. Retrofit installations on modern warmachines have proven as successful today as back then, and even the most discerning of pilots still praise the gun’s sturdiness and punishing firepower. Such is its influence that modern manufacturers like WegMaCo have turned to Rockwell’s vintage, timeless design for insights in developing their own new autocannons, like WegMaCo’s own award-winning 34-40 family, optimized and precision engineered to mount and function flawlessly in all environments, from the cold vacuum of deep space to the corrosive atmosphere of Venus!

In 2384, the Rockwell 90mm ASG, the crusher, the auto-ninety, soldiers on, chiseling the epitaphs of the vanquished in twisted metal, and that is why it has earned its place as a true legend of the battlefield.

This historical presentation has been brought to you by WegMaCo Media Studios; a division of WegMaCo, a family company.

Illustration by Florian Mellies