In the comments section of my recent article Are We Gearing Up to Lose the Next War? Overmatch, Part 2: Bullets & Backbreakers, two of TFB’s readers shared documents that help us describe the problem of the modern soldier and Marine’s load. The first, [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…]
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…]
The most consistent request I received in the comments of my Weight Omnibus posts (if you didn’t catch them, here are Part I, Part II, and Part III) was to continue to expand the content of this series, both in the guns measured and the analysis of them. Further [Read More…]
In Part I and Part II of the TFB Weight Omnibus, we published the weights of 58 rifles and submachine guns, and their magazines. Now, we’re going to take a look at that data, and do a little analysis to them to see what we can learn. First, my methodology when [Read More…]
(This is Part 2 of the TFB Rifle Weight Omnibus. You can read Part 1 here.) In October, I traveled out to see my co-writer Alex C. to collect data on the weights of different long guns and some of their components. Over that weekend, I weighed 58 rifles and submachine [Read More…]
In October, I traveled out to see my co-writer Alex C. to collect data on the weights of different long guns and some of their components. Over that weekend, I weighed 58 rifles and submachine guns, and numerous magazines, bolts, bolt carriers, and other miscellaneous [Read More…]