M41A pulse rifle


 * This article refers to a fictional weapon featured in the Alien series.

The Armat M41A is a fictional weapon, a 10 mm pulse-action air-cooled automatic assault rifle, which is the basic rifle of the U.S. Colonial Marine Corps and the U.S. Army in the Alien series of films. The standard service variant has an over-and-under configuration incorporating a PN 30 mm pump-action grenade launcher.

Since the release of Aliens in 1986, the M41A has become one of the best-known and most popular science-fiction weapons in cinema history. The M41A also makes a brief appearance at the end of Alien³, carried by the company soldiers, but the prop weapons originally used in Aliens were re-painted black for that film.

Prop design
The M41A Pulse Rifle was designed by James Cameron, and built by British armorers Simon Atherton and Andrew Fletcher from the parts and components of three firearms (all supplied by prop armory Bapty & Co., U.K.). The rifle component utilised a World War II-era Thompson M1A1 submachine gun while the grenade launcher component was built around the action of a Remington 870 pump-action shotgun and the shotgun was encased inside the shroud and foregrip of a Luigi Franchi SPAS-12 shotgun. It was originally designed around a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun but the MP5 is said not to have produced a muzzle flash as large as desired for the impression of a futuristic infantry rifle.

The M41A Pulse Rifle looks (vaguely) like a miniature version of the USCM ship Sulaco; though the rifle was designed by James Cameron and the mother ship by Syd Mead. This was because James Cameron was not happy with the original design of the Sulaco and sketched a more streamlined warship. Syd Mead then redesigned the warship, transforming the sketch into an enlarged pulse rifle design.

Description
The M41A Pulse Rifle is an air cooled, fully automatic, short- to mid-range combat rifle. Made of light alloy plates, it fires 10mm Armor Piercing slugs from a 99 round U-bend magazine in either semi automatic, four round burst, or fully automatic rates of fire. The Pulse rifle has a small battery powered digital readout screen that displays number of rounds left in the magazine; the battery is located in the handgrip. With a retractable stock and an underslung 30mm PN grenade launcher, this weapon can be used as a carbine and an assault rifle.

M41A and Airsoft
There are several kits available to convert the Tokyo Marui M1A1 Thompson airsoft gun into an M41A Pulse Rifle. One version is avalible from Monsters In Motion, but it is unclear if the shotgun is functional based on information from their web site. A less expensive kit (with a 100% static non-working shotgun) is currently under development at Arnies Airsoft. Another is avalible from AirSoft Extreme, that features a non-firing shotgun with sliding action.

Cameo appearances

 * The Pulse Rifle also makes an appearance in another James Cameron film, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, being carried by members of John Connor's resistance force. They are not featured prominently, however. In Terminator 3 T-X's on-screen display also list the M-41 Pulse Rifle as an available weapon.
 * In an episode of The Simpsons entitled "The Lastest Gun in the West", a black version of this gun appears.
 * The rifle is also mentioned in the movie Soldier.
 * Several models of the Pulse Rifle are shown in the Sony PlayStation game G-Police, where they are used in a few FMV cutscenes.
 * Black Versions of the M41A Pulse Rifle have been featured in one episode of the Anime Excel Saga, though their function is questionable at best.
 * The Pulse Rifle is the weapon held by the main character on the cover of D.E. White's book Jettison.
 * The Pulse Rifle is a main weapon in the Half-Life mod Desert Crisis.
 * The Pulse Rifle made an appearance in South Park in the ending of the episode "Go God Go".
 * It is also used in the opening FMV sequence of the expansion pack Defiance of the game I-War. Here it is seen used by a team of marines boarding an Indie ship.
 * The Pulse Rifle can be seen briefly in one episode of the anime Galaxy Angel.
 * The Pulse Rifle is the weapon wielded by the GDI Light Infantry in CGI cutscenes of the game Tiberian Sun (labeled as the M16 Mark II in the instruction manual).
 * It appears in the B movie Battle Queen 2020.