Since we’ve covered the two most prominent PDW rounds of today, I want to take a quick detour and look at an interesting – but obscure – personal defense weapon/assault rifle round from history. After World War II, the apparati of the German war [Read More…]
If the 5.7x28mm FN is the first successful modern PDW round, then the 4.6x30mm HK is the second, and its biggest rival. German firm Heckler and developed the microcaliber 4.6mm in the 1990s as a response to a NATO solicitation for a Personal Defense Weapon, to which [Read More…]
At this point, we’ve talked about 25 different intermediate and full power calibers as part of a series comparing different types of modern small arms ammunition. However, one subject not yet thoroughly covered is rounds for personal defense weapons (PDWs). These [Read More…]
Information on this round and the weapons designed to fire it is scarce, so the details in this article may be at times incorrect. Just letting you know. -NF Before the SIG SG 550 was adopted by the Swiss Army as the Stgw. 90, there was another series of rifles, called [Read More…]
In a previous post about the sometimes ambiguous meaning of the word “caliber”, we discussed how the word had mutated through the centuries, picking up different definitions and connotations along the way. In that article, I wrote: So “caliber” has gone [Read More…]
Previously, we discussed different concepts for lightening the soldier’s load, including aluminum-, composite-cased and caseless ammunition. Today we’re going to look at the weight-reducing concept that many believe is the horse to bet on when it comes to [Read More…]
Previously, we discussed the benefits of and challenges facing saboted projectile ammunition, including the advantages of decoupling the diameters of the bore and the projectile, and the problems of accuracy during sabot discarding. One concept that could possibly [Read More…]
After World War II, US Army analysts determined that the effectiveness of the infantryman was not as closely related to their marksmanship discipline as had been previously thought. It seemed that instead, the random environmental circumstances and effects, plus the [Read More…]
Previously, we discussed trying to lighten the soldier’s load by making the cartridge case out of different materials, including aluminum and compositing the case out of polymer and metal. Yet, wouldn’t the lightest possible case configuration be… [Read More…]
In the last episode, we discussed how the most ballistically efficient projectiles are the longest, most slender ones, with the highest sectional density. This naturally leads to the idea of using a super long, rod-like projectile which would in theory have excellent [Read More…]
One of the problems of small arms ammunition is that of swept volume. That is, the most ballistically efficient projectiles are the longest and thinnest ones, which cut through the air more easily than squatter, fatter projectiles. Yet, the best projectiles from a [Read More…]
In the last installment, we talked about the growing need throughout the 20th Century to reduce the weight of the cartridge case, to lighten the burden of the soldier. Experiments in aluminum have thus far proven unsuccessful, but another material is even more [Read More…]
The metallic cartridge case was invented in the 1840s, and – starting in the 1860s – its military application brought with it a host of of advantages for the soldier: Now, ammunition was self-contained, weatherproof, and durable. Yet, despite it being a [Read More…]
What happens when you take the two concepts of a traditional, full-power rifle and machine gun round, and a small-caliber, high-velocity round, and smash them together? You get one of the most extreme military small arms calibers ever developed, and one of the last [Read More…]
Modern? Sure, but let’s take a step back… Way back. It’s 1890 and smokeless powder has just been invented. There’s this guy named Rubin going around and spreading the gospel of the small caliber, high velocity .30″ bore round. You’re [Read More…]
In the mid-1950s, the People’s Republic of China followed the Soviet Union’s example and adopted the intermediate 7.62x39mm round. This decision substantially helped to promote that cartridge’s ubiquity throughout the world, as millions of cheap [Read More…]
Shouldn’t “Modern Full Power Calibers” be its own series? No, because then there would only be two episodes! So instead, we’re rolling today’s two most popular full power .30 cal rounds into the series on intermediates, primarily as [Read More…]
On Saturday we looked at one British “contender” which could have in some alternate reality become the NATO standard round, and today we’re going to look at another: The 4.85x49mm. After the United States adopted the .223 Remington round as the [Read More…]
Today on an extra special episode of Historical Intermediate Calibers, we’ll be taking a look at one of the most controversial experimental military rounds, one that many believe should have become the standard for the Western World at the beginning of the Cold [Read More…]
Among the interesting concepts that were tested in the mid-late 20th Century is that of an extremely light for caliber, very long bullet made in part of a lightweight material like aluminum and plastic. The 7.92×40 CETME, which if I can find a specimen I will cover [Read More…]
In this installment, we’ll be looking at a very unique round. The 6mm SAW was probably the first small arms round ever designed using computer-calculated parametric analysis, and it was also probably the first American rifle round designed from the outset for [Read More…]
The 6x35mm TSWG, also commonly called the 6x35mm KAC, is a round shrouded in mystery. Apparently designed by Knight’s Armament Company for the interagency counterterrorist program cryptically named the “Technical Support Working Group” alongside the [Read More…]
In the late 1950s, after the first public demonstrations of the AR-15 and its new small caliber, high velocity cartridge, the Soviet Union took notice of the radical developments in military .22 caliber rounds in the United States. By 1959, four years before the [Read More…]
At this point we’ve looked at the data for seven intermediate calibers currently on the market, each of which is – one way or another – influencing the discussion around the question of what next generation military rifle caliber will be. Those rounds [Read More…]
On the heels of the 7.62x40mm WT, we are now going to take a look at another former wildcat based on the 5.56mm case, the .25-45 Sharps, a round I’ve discussed before. This .25 caliber round existed for years as the .25-223, a niche quarterbore caliber used mostly [Read More…]
Like the .300 AAC Blackout that we discussed earlier, the 7.62×40 Wilson Tactical was intended to be a medium-performance .30 caliber cartridge that would function in standard AR-15 type rifles with minimal modifications, such as a barrel change. Also like the .300 [Read More…]
Previously, we talked about the Soviet 7.62x39mm caliber, which was paired with the famous Kalashnikov automatic rifle. With its much heavier bullet, larger caliber, and lower velocity, the 7.62x39mm contrasts heavily with the US 5.56mm caliber, and US weapons [Read More…]
Note: In this article, I call this mechanical feature “underlug”. However, this is an error. Several friends of mine and I have been discussing the mechanics of firearms operation for close to a decade now, and we misremembered the term [Read More…]
In the first post of the 101 level series on firearms operating systems, we briefly described what the word cycle means in terms of the operation of automatic firearms. However, there’s a lot more to the cycle of an automatic firearm than just the completion of [Read More…]
So far we’ve looked at the most basic concepts in firearms operating mechanisms as part of the 101 series of posts, and some more advanced concepts like locking and bolt configuration in the 201 level entries. However, there is a whole lot more depth to the [Read More…]
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