Kelos'vaarda-pattern storm rifle

Template:Weapon Infobox

The Type-55 Directed Energy Rifle/Advanced (T55 DER/A), commonly known as the storm rifle, is a Sangheili directed energy weapon.^[1]

Overview

Designed by Lodam Armory in the wake of the Great Schism, the T55 was in use by 2553^[2] and saw use during Sangheili civil conflicts following the Human-Covenant War's conclusion. The T55 DER/A is considered to be a successor to and direct evolution of the widely used Type-25 plasma rifle;^[3] however, it is more similar to the Type-51 plasma repeater, itself an upgrade of the T25, in both form and function. The weapon features such modifications as a rotating modular coil set, a high-mounted cooling shroud, and an extended barrel, which improve upon the features of the standard plasma rifle it replaced the role of.^[1]

Despite their typical use of matériel dating back to the war with humanity, Sangheili in the reformed Covenant use the Type-55 as their standard-issue weapon. SPARTAN-IV supersoldiers often use the storm rifle as part of their on-mission loadouts.^[4]

Trivia

"Storm rifle" is a literal translation of the German "Sturmgewehr", which is generally rendered as "assault rifle" in English. The StG-44 (roughly: Model 1944 assault rifle) was the first assault rifle to see widespread deployment during World War II.
The storm rifle is the only loadout weapon in Halo 4 with no customizable skin.
Strangely, the storm rifle does not count toward automatic loadout weapon commendations in War Games.
The weapon's reticule is similar in both appearance and bloom behavior to the plasma repeater from Halo: Reach.
While the storm rifle is canonically an upgrade of the plasma rifle, it is less effective at removing shields in gameplay. It takes a plasma rifle six shots to remove shields, while it takes the storm rifle up to ten shots to do so.
Although it only takes six shots on flesh to kill, the plasma rifle requires ten. It is likely that the Storm Rifle uses plasma more as a "filament" to the projectile, focusing on kinetic energy rather than heat distribution.