Hornady Manufacturing, widely regarded as one of the top ammo companies in the industry, has made quite a splash with their June 3, 2020 announcement. TFB recently hinted at a new SAAMI accepted cartridge, and now it’s here. Meet Hornady’s newest player: the [Read More…]
At SHOT Show 2020, Nosler announced a new .270 caliber addition to their cartridge family – the 27 Nosler. In their press release, Nosler describes this cartridge as an offering “that redefines performance as radically now as the 270 Winchester did upon its [Read More…]
In this article, we’ll take a look at an experimental Soviet cartridge (5.6x60mm) and an interesting technological failure of the manufacturing process. This article is based on one written by Nikolay Dvoryaninov, a renown Russian ammunition and firearms expert. [Read More…]
What did we see at Range Day? Valkyries, Valkyries everywhere. Federal’s pint-sized long distance runner has already outstripped the market purchase of its direct competitors in the high performance AR-15 market, testified to by the sheer number of .224 Valkyrie [Read More…]
At an AUSA breakfast conference yesterday, US Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley gave us a hint at exactly what the US Army’s next rifle could look like, and the focus was on extended range capability. The rifle, Milley said, will give a 10x improvement in [Read More…]
Browsing through the CIP cartridge standards while doing a research, I noticed several cartridges named PICRA. The name was unknown to me and apparently, it is unknown to many others too. So I thought why don’t I do a little research to find out who has designed [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…]
Is the US Army pushing for a new high-powered 6.Xmm caliber with their new NGSAR program? Recently, the listing for the NGSAR industry day in December was updated with a document describing in part the agenda of the second conference. Scheduled for 9:45 in the morning [Read More…]
In the comments section of my recent Brief Thoughts article regarding caseless ammunition, there was a discussion about whether the cookoff issues of caseless would also be problem for LSAT-style polymer cased telescoped ammunition. Based on conversations I have had [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…]
Caseless: The ammunition designer’s holy grail, and the engineer’s worst nightmare. It would obsolete the cartridge case overnight, resulting in cheaper, lighter, and more compact ammunition. Weapons would be able to carry 50, 60, or more rounds in slim, [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…]
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…]
In the coming decades, it is likely that one of the biggest challenges facing small arms ammunition designers will be solving the problem of how to deal with advanced body armors. The problem is already percolating to the surface, as Level IV body armor – which is [Read More…]
While doing a research for another article and looking for different information, I visited Indonesian Pindad’s website. Their small arms page shows the different models of their SS-1 and SS-2 rifles chambered in 5.56x45mm. But then I noticed a couple of rifles [Read More…]
Earlier we reported about the first leaked images of the new Russian 9.6x53mm Lancaster cartridge. Recently, Molot published a video explaining the features and showing the details concerning this new cartridge. The 9.6x53mm Lancaster cartridge was developed by Russian [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…]
With the recent push for small arms ammunition with increased range, power and capability, are military customers in danger of being taken for a ride by industry marketeers working to sell rifles in new calibers? Is the primary driving force behind new infantry [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…]
Vladimir Fedorov (sometimes written as Fyodorov) was a famous Russian/Soviet firearms designer mostly known for his automatic rifle (Fedorov Avtomat) which is arguably the world’s first issued assault rifle. Besides designing firearms, he was also one of the most [Read More…]
SAAMI has accepted cartridge and chamber drawings of a couple of new cartridges. Both are Nosler cartridges. One is the recently announced .22 Nosler, which we covered in a separate article. And the next one is a .20 Nosler, which is a cartridge not yet officially [Read More…]
Have you ever thought that 7.62x39mm and .243 Winchester can be a pair of cartridges that are dangerous if mixed? Of course, any cartridge is dangerous if not used in a gun it is chambered for and nobody should do it. However, there are some pairs of cartridges known [Read More…]
RG-037 (a.k.a 7.62x28mm) was an experimental Soviet cartridge developed in 1983. Its parent cartridge is the 5.45x39mm. The RG-037 has similar dimensional relation to 5.45x39mm as the .300 Blackout has to .223 Remington. If you apply the .300 Blackout case forming [Read More…]
Many of you may have read the title and asked: “What in the world is a .277 Wolverine?”. So first, let’s see what cartridge it is. In a nutshell, it is a wildcat cartridge based on .223 Rem or 5.56 NATO case with a .277 caliber (6.8mm) projectile. It [Read More…]
The post-election gun industry downturn has hit Federal Premium Ammunition, which laid off a significant number of its employees earlier this month. 110 of the roughly 1400 workers at the company were let go from the company’s Anoka, Minnesota plant, the company [Read More…]
I have no doubt that the majority of our readers know about SAAMI (Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers’ Institute), which sets the ammunition standards, cartridge and chamber drawings etc. These standards are guidelines for manufacturers, but many [Read More…]
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