The golden age of polymer cased ammunition has probably already begun. Certainly, Norwegian-Finnish ammunition manufacturer Nammo seems to believe that, as they recently took a significant stake in American company MAC, LLC, makers of polymer-cased composite ammunition, [Read More…]
Inceptor Ammunition has introduced new cartridge offerings loaded with their ARX and SRR projectiles. Particularly, they now offer the defensive/frangible ARX bullets loaded into 10mm Auto and .450 Bushmaster rounds. The SRR bullets are now available for the .223 [Read More…]
In March of 1963, a man named Lee Harvey Oswald purchased an M38 Carcano rifle and some quantity of ammunition from Klein’s Sporting Goods in Chicago. Oswald would later use this rifle and ammunition (or so the official narrative goes) to assassinate the [Read More…]
The United States Marine Corps has finally officially announced its adoption of the 5.56mm M855A1 EPR round, developed in the late 2000s by the US Army, marking an important step towards ammunition commonality between the two services. Until now, the USMC has officially [Read More…]
Those eagerly awaiting the market for the new .224 Valkyrie round have something to celebrate. Gunmaker JP Enterprises recently announced that they are now offering three different barrels for the new cartridge, in 20″ light, 20″ medium, and 22″ medium [Read More…]
Texas company True Velocity, LLC, has released the first images of their advanced lightweight polymer composite cased ammunition design via Instagram. Training company BAT Defense sent out an image of what appear to be 12.7×108, .50 BMG, and 5.56mm rounds made by [Read More…]
If we can make a round that is significantly better than the existing 5.56mm or 7.62mm ammunition, shouldn’t the military just bite the bullet and switch, to the benefit of the servicemen and women in harm’s way? What’s stopping the powers that be from [Read More…]
Previously, we compared the Russian 9x39mm subsonic sniper round to its Western counterparts, including the .300 AAC Blackout and the .45 ACP. As it stands now, the 9x39mm is a subsonic round only – no supersonic loads exist for it currently. But… What if [Read More…]
Idaho company Trom Technologies (formerly PNW Arms) is advertising a new .300 Blackout round that it claims extends that cartridge’s effective range to 900 meters, more than twice the generally accepted 400 meter value for that round. They claim the new round [Read More…]
Today’s Modern Intermediate Calibers will handle something a little different. While virtually all rounds we have looked at so far were designed primarily for supersonic use, today we will be taking a gander at the Russian 9x39mm round – a dedicated [Read More…]
Ammunition maker Federal Premium recently released its full bundle of press info on their new .224 Valkyrie round, coming on the heels of teasers released at Big 3 East. The .224 Valkyrie is a high performance .22 caliber round for the AR-15, which uses heavy, low drag [Read More…]
Sierra Bullets is a long time manufacturer of projectiles for the firearms industry. Some of its designs are legendary, and many shooters prefer its designs to any of the other options on the market. One of the company’s best known bullet lines is the MatchKing. [Read More…]
Let’s start off with a question: What is the best round for the AR-15? At the Big 3 East conference this week, a new caliber was unveiled for the AR-15. Called the “.224 Valkyrie”, it is based on the .30 Remington/6.8 SPC case, necked down to .22 [Read More…]
Advanced Shooting Products is a bullet manufacturer located in South Africa. They make both handgun and rifle bullets. Arguably the most interesting of their products are their defensive handgun bullets. The information on this company’s bullets is very scarce in [Read More…]
We are at a crossroads in small arms development. Demands for improved weapon effectiveness have reached their apex. At the same time, the soldier’s burden has grown into a crisis so pressing even the Army Chief of Staff has acknowledged it in testimony to [Read More…]
Federal Premium has released a video explaining the AccuChannel Groove technology seen on the bullets of their Edge TLR ammunition. Based on the conducted tests, they’ve found out that if placed in a specific location, a single groove on the projectile will have [Read More…]
What do you get when you take the venerable speedster 7.62 Tokarev, and load it with a muzzleloader-style sabot and 50gr .22 cal projectile? You get one of the most interesting pistol, submachine gun, and personal defense weapon ammunition concepts there is! Today [Read More…]
It has been a little while since we visited the subject of modern personal defense weapon calibers, so to start it off again we’ll be taking a look at a new high velocity round that is only a few years old: Armscor’s .22 TCM. This round was reportedly [Read More…]
In the rush to augment the infantry’s firepower with new advanced small arms technologies, we may be on the precipice of crippling their ability to fight wars. The push to equip the infantryman with more powerful rifles and machine guns risks reducing his mobility [Read More…]
In three previous articles, we briefly discussed some of the tradeoffs involved in the bullpup concept, and some of the challenges they face in the field of military procurement specifically. Today, we’re going to continue this deep-dive into the bullpup concept [Read More…]
Good news for everyone’s favorite Dakotan ammunition company, Black Hills has just won the contract to provide subsonic .300 Blackout ammunition for the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Hostage Rescue Team, according to a listing at FedBizOpps. The [Read More…]
Oh yes, it’s that time. The 10mm Automatic, what hasn’t been said about it? Well, a decently sourced article about its history*, maybe, but that’s for another time. Right now, we’re considering the 10mm Auto (or 10mm Norma as it’s more prim [Read More…]
Lehigh has a well-deserved reputation for making gimmick ammunition. Their Controlled Fracturing Hollow Point pistol ammunition does perform as advertised insofar as it fractures, but fragmentation in a pistol round is not a desirable feature. Fragmentation can be [Read More…]
The issue of ammunition standardization between the United States Army and the Marine Corps has come to a head: Congress has delivered an ultimatum in the final version of the FY 2017 National Defense Appropriations Act for the two services to kiss and make up. [Read More…]
Warner Tool Company (WTC) is specialized in manufacturing of precision long range shooting products. They produce precision rifle sights, complete rifles, reloading dies, shooting accessories and a line of bullets called Flat Line Projectiles. Warner bullets are [Read More…]
Lehigh Defense announced a new 176 grain bullet in its Controlled Fracturing line of projectiles. The new bullet is designed for subsonic use in 300 BLK, 300 Whisper and .308 Winchester cartridges. These all copper bullets have pre-stressed fracture points with a brass [Read More…]
In the last installment, we talked about the trade-offs involved in increasing or decreasing the projectile’s diameter (and, thereby in convention systems, the bore’s diameter as well). One of the major pieces of the equation that we left out was how [Read More…]
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…]
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