A warning against romanticism in military planning. In the early 1940s, the US Army Air Corps (USAAC) made a fateful decision that would affect the lives of tens of thousands of men over the next decade. Two years prior, the Army had just begun testing her newest [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…]
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…]
The bullpup rifle tends to be – when it comes up – a pretty divisive subject among “tactical” rifle shooters. Bullpup detractors dismiss the layout as clunky and awkward, while its proponents cite the advantage of longer barrels and shorter [Read More…]
Quick: What’s the definition of “assault rifle”? I’ll give you a moment to think about it. Now, a good definition for “assault rifle” in my opinion comes from Anthony G. Williams, a British author, ammunition collector, and military [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…]
In the first two parts of this article on a new long range infantry rifle paradigm, we painted a picture of what sort of weapons would be needed to maximize the infantry’s long-range capability, in theory allowing them to achieve “overmatch” versus [Read More…]
More and more, it seems like we are on the cusp of a break in the small arms “plateau”, and that major changes may be coming both in the technology and use of infantry small arms and ammunition. The biggest harbinger of this coming paradigm shift has been [Read More…]
Probably the most obvious element of ammunition design is the choice of caliber, or more specifically the choice of bore and bullet diameter. These two dimensions are of course closely linked in conventional ammunition systems (they can be decoupled with sabots, but [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…]
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…]
How can one balance the trade-offs inherent in ammunition design to create a true one-caliber infantry weapon system that is both effective and lightweight? This is a question I’ve been exploring for close to a decade, and writing about for over four years. The [Read More…]
One of the primary focuses of my study of modern small arms has been that of their terminal effectiveness, i.e. their “lethality” or “wounding”, although neither of these latter terms are exactly correct. Over the past several years, I have [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…]
“Caliber”. It can mean a lot of different things, but when we use it, what does it really mean, and what’s its significance? Title image: From left to right are the 7.65 Parabellum, 7.63 Mauser, .300 Blackout, 7.62×45 Czech, .30 Remington, 7.62 [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…]
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