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…]
The Russian PKM: Arguably the best general purpose machine gun in the world, it combines a robust reliability with best-in-class light weight. Ian McCollum of Forgotten Weapons recently released two video overviews of the weapon, giving us a good enough excuse as any to [Read More…]
The following is an article that was originally written in Russian by TFB contributor Maxim Popenker, and Andrey Ulanov, and translated to English by Peter Samsonov. With their permission, I have replicated the text here, and edited it, for the enrichment of you, our [Read More…]
It’s a blunder so bad it makes you look twice: On the new sculpture dedicated to Russia’s most famous small arms designer, there is an unintentional homage to a weapon of Russia’s hated adversaries during the Great Patriotic War. Behind the tasteful [Read More…]
In yesterday’s article, we took a look at examples of two different methods of design, which I called “preference-driven” and “process-driven”. For these examples, I supposed two engineers from two different cultures – called [Read More…]
If you were designing the next small arms round, how would you do it? What methods would you use to determine its physical characteristics and performance attributes? How would you know what was too large or too small, too powerful or too weak? Perhaps more critically, [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…]
Those who take advantage of SIG’s recently announced “voluntary upgrade” may soon be taking home a little piece of the Modular Handgun System program: The company evidently plans to introduce a new trigger design developed for the MHS program as part [Read More…]
The AR-15-style combined safety/selector thumb lever has become a hallmark of modern assault rifle and carbine design, proving to be an ergonomic and simple design for fire control management. However, it wasn’t always that way. The AR-15’s selector lever [Read More…]
Looking at the 24 different calibers we’ve covered as part of the Modern Intermediate Calibers series, some patterns begin to emerge. We see that larger rounds with heavier bullets weigh more, and have more recoil, that more slender bullets shoot further for their [Read More…]
Around the same time that Small Caliber High Velocity was starting to percolate through the US Military, so was another set of programs designed to increase the hit probability of the individual soldier. Considering that 5.56 was ultimately adopted as the standard [Read More…]
Yesterday, we took a close look at the AK’s operating group, to enumerate the details that make this pattern such a dependable design. Today, we’re going to be looking at some of the other elements of the AK that make it so reliable, but first I want to [Read More…]
Today we know the Kalashnikov family of rifles as one of the most successful and reliable weapon families ever designed. Even as the rifle’s legend has begun to be peeled back, the weapon’s reputation for reliability is still largely unquestioned, and many [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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
What if there was a caliber that was suitable for everything from coyote to brown bear, kicked less than your whitetail gun, fit in a micro-length (2.25″/58mm) action, and cost a quarter a round to shoot? That would be a pretty awesome caliber, wouldn’t [Read More…]
Previously in our introductory series on ballistics, we’ve discussed the concept of caliber, as well as ballistic coefficient and its close relative form factor. Today, we’re going to look at the concept of rifling, and how it relates to bullet stability. [Read More…]
Previously, we looked at the most common type of locking mechanism for rifles, but what about handguns? Well, today we’ll be looking at tilting-barrel locking, a method used in virtually every modern locked-breech handgun today. Tilting barrel locking was [Read More…]
In the second of our 101-level discussions on firearms operating mechanisms, we mentioned that firearms may have what’s called a locking mechanism, which prevents the separation of the breech and barrel during the high pressure ignition of a round of ammunition. [Read More…]
What makes an automatic (or semiautomatic) weapon work? How do these weapons accomplish being able to fire round after round through a single barrel with no interference from the operator? That’s what I aim to explain in this series, which hopefully will give my [Read More…]
In the second installment of Ballistics 101, we took a look at the concept of a “ballistic coefficient”, or a drag model based on an empirically tested projectile, against which other projectiles can be measured and compared. Mentioned in that post – [Read More…]
UPDATE: Jim says he was mis-represented by HBO. He responds here. Jim Sullivan helped design the AR-15 back in 1957, and later the Ruger M77, the Stoner 63, Ruger Mini-14 and the crowd favorite Ultimax 100. Most recently he was the brains behind Surefire’s 60 [Read More…]
The concept of a stockless – or “bullpup” – rifle has been around since the very dawn of the 20th Century. It was invented in the United Kingdom, the country with which it still is most closely associated. After World War II, the concept began [Read More…]
Not quite old or obscure enough for our beloved Forgotten Weapons, the M9 handgun is still in service with the US Military, though the Army now has the Modular Handgun System RFP bids in (but will take at least a year to test and determine the winner). With its modern [Read More…]
How many people really are “average”? Is it possible to design a system to fit the average person, and if not, what’s the alternative? A recent article published on thestar.com examines this question, excerpting the work of L. Todd Rose from his recent [Read More…]
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