Moroz Rifle AM

"It's a great rifle. It works in the snow, in the vacuum, in the corrosive atmosphere that will kill you with an unfiltered breath. It sheds mud like a dog shakes off water. A soldier can't ask for a better companion."

- Major Alexander Konovolov, Siberia Prime CDF

The Moroz AM is a select-fire assault rifle historically issued by the Siberia Prime Civil Defense Force. First designed and manufactured in the years before the Decision War, the Moroz would become an icon of the coalition government that emerged from that conflict. Within fifty years, tens of millions of the rifles would be exported, landing in the hands of government militias, security forces, and insurrection cells throughout UEG territory.

Design
A quirk of the Koalitziya battle doctrine was that riflemen should not be expected to make accurate shots beyond 200 meters. Any shots beyond that range were to be taken for suppressive fire effect only, pinning enemy infantry down long enough for heavy support weapons and artillery to flatten their position. This doctrine was disdained by both the UNSC and the CMA, who adopted an "Every Marine a rifleman" ethos, but it made sense for the battles that the Koalitziya found itself fighting. Most battles were brutal knife-fight affairs fought in arcologies, rarely at distances greater than 100 meters. Engagements beyond 200 meters took place outside the arcologies, where infantry could rely on fire support.

As such, the Moroz was never designed for precision fire. Although the rifle can be accurized, the upper receiver is not fixed to the barrel and cannot effectively mount large optics. The Moroz rifle was designed to mount a 1.5 minutes of angle (MOA) holosight with a magnifier over the trunnion, and does not adapt well to a scope.

This was rectified with the light machine gun variant. The heavier lower receiver was ideal for mounting a side-rail, allowing heavier optics to be added to the weapon. The Siberia Prime CDF was reluctant to adopt an ICWS, and that final development would have to wait until the Human-Covenant War.

Unit Decoration
A quirk of CDF-issued rifles is the unit-specific furniture. The rifles are often issued with orange polymer for the grip, buttstock, and handguard, but many units opt for red, green, off-white, or other colors. This dates back to popular modifications made during the Decision War.

The early models of the Moroz were designed to be as fast and cheap to manufacture as possible. The receiver was a simple aluminum extrusion and the handguard was perforated sheet metal. Likewise, the buttstock was an injection-molded block of plastic, and could not be adjusted for length of pull. Soldiers took to fabricating replacements in the field, often carving new handguards and stocks out of plastic pallets. Many industries on Siberia Prime used color-coded pallets, and so the color of a rifle's furniture was often a clue as to where the user had served.

These colors were codified in the years after the Decision War, often with different units feuding over the right to use one color or another. The gamesmanship between units and branches became emblematic of the struggles that the Civil Defense Force faced as it tried to forge a new identity in the wake of the civil war, so much that those struggles became known as the "Color Wars".