Rhino

"Nothing stops a charging rhino!"

-Tagline for the Rhino Anti Enhanced Infantry rifle

Due to the increase in hardened and specialized infantry such as Enhanced Gammas, war beast and other units, many Alliance infantry squads were getting to the point of being under-gunned to take on these enemies. While many anti-mecha weapons were readily available on: harnesses, frames, Strikers, mecha, vehicles and as squad support weapons, the common infantry platoon were finding themselves cut off from heavy weapon support and getting wiped out. Furthermore over-barrel rail guns, lasers and under barrel grenade launchers were too slow to reload and track rapidly moving targets. In the long term the KEW (kinetic energy weapon) and DEW (Direct energy weapon) projects to develop small infantry sized weapons would solve these problems but would not be ready for 5 years to decades. In the intern a rifle would be designed to use the larger 20 mm auto-cannon round but fired out of a man portable rifle. Lacking the outright range of an auto-cannon the Rhino still had an effective range of 2500 meters and could fire rounds as fast as the trigger could be pulled. This rifle could be carried alongside a Kabuto and gave infantry platoon a much needed punch when dealing with anything up to light mecha size.