MA5 ICWS Series

The MA5 series is a family of standard-issue assault rifles issued across most branches of the UNSC, and later adopted by the security forces of the Phoenix Initiative. Built from a proven design, each member of the series came with an extensive electronics suite that improved the soldier's capability on the battlefield.

Electronics Suite
While militaries have been incorporating electronics into infantry weapons for hundreds of years, most of these electronics are discrete modular systems. Misriah Armory chose to go with an integrated unit. The forward housing of the ICWS incorporates a ballistic computer, electronic scope with low-light filters, a bullet counter, and a smart-link compatible with the HINT-2 Battlenet. This electronics suite is powered either by a battery or a hydrogen fuel cell, depending on the environment that it is deployed into.

The ICWS electronic suite is meant to cover all mission profiles without modification. Modifying the suite to swap out the scope for a more powerful unit, for example, requires special training and armorer's tools. Even patching the software must be performed at the armory, a feature meant to prevent the spread of malware and badly programmed hacks through UNSC kit.

The MA5K uses a stripped-down housing with a simpler electronic scope that removes the vision enhancers. This shaves off over half a kilo of weight.

Ammunition
MA5 rifles are chambered for 6.5x52mm Unified cartridges, which had long replaced the older stockpiles of 5.56mm and 7.62mm rounds in UNSC service. Although it is on paper a middle-of-the-road cartridge, it was introduced at the same time that they transitioned to new electrothermal propellant mixtures during the Inner Colony Wars, granting it overall superior performance to legacy ammunition. They usually come in Mark VI-pattern 32-round box magazines, with longer 40- and 60-round magazines also available. The standard cartridge is the M118 armor-piercing full-metal jacket (AP-FMJ), although M122 hollow-point is also frequently issued to avoid over-penetrating unarmored or lightly-armored combatants. More exotic ammunition, such as Shredder rounds, may also be issued.

The lower handgrip and flashlight of MA5 rifles can be replaced with a M301 40mm grenade launcher, which can fire high explosive dual-purpose or flashbang grenades. Due to its compact setup, only one grenade may be loaded at once.

History
The Individual Combat Weapon System (ICWS), as a concept, hails from the Interplanetary War. Koslovic ideology about improving human capability through integrated technology was applied to warfighting. More sensors and more computers were built into Koslovic gear. Their guns, their armor, their drones, their vehicles freely shared information with one another. When this technological omniscience failed to perform on the battlefield the way it did on the proving grounds, the Koslovics doubled down. Rudimentary AIs were designed, and decision making was increasingly offloaded to the computer.

Of the many experiments that the Koslovic tried, the ICWS was one of the few that would live on to fight other wars, albeit in a reduced form. Modern individual combat weapon systems are select-fire rifles with on-board sensors and smart-links that share information directly with the user's headgear.

MA5A / MA37
The MA5A, designated the MA37 in the UNSC Army, is the earliest model that was adopted by the UNSC, having entered service in 2437. It is a substantially different to the rifles that would follow it, as it was not originally designed as an ICWS. Instead, the Army wanted a conventional service rifle that was cheap and fast to manufacture, reliable, and chambered for the then-new 6.5mm cartridge. These stringent requirements gave the MA5A a simplified, streamline construction. It lacks integrated electronics including the distinctive LED screen, with an picatinny rail present instead to mount a wide variety of scopes. True smart-link functionality wasn't introduced until the introduction of compatible scopes in 2467, and then the modern module in 2490.