#Spiw

In January, just before the 2017 SHOT Show, I got the opportunity to travel to Cody Wyoming to visit the Cody Firearms Museum at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, to see some of their rare firearms and bring photos of them to our readers.

In January, just before the 2017 SHOT Show, I got the opportunity to travel to Cody Wyoming to visit the Cody Firearms Museum at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, to see some of their rare firearms and bring photos of them to our readers.

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 loading does not take away from the ingenuity of the designers at the time, who developed many remarkable solutions.

In the last episode, we discussed how the most ballistically efficient projectiles are the longest, most slender ones, with the highest sectional density. This naturally leads to the idea of using a super long, rod-like projectile which would in theory have excellent ballistic characteristics… But there’s a problem with that: Unfortunately, modern rifle projectiles are spin-stabilized, and there’s a limit to how long of a projectile can be and still be stabilized by gyroscopic forces in that manner (that limit is about 7 calibers long in theory, more like 6 in practice). This means that to successfully stabilize the longest possible projectile with the highest possible sectional density, another method is needed. The most popular alternative – and the one used in arrows, darts, APFSDS tank projectiles, and today’s topic, flechettes – is fin-stabilization.

Project SALVO’s experiments with multiple projectile ammunition did, surprisingly, result in the production of service ammunition. The 7.62mm M198 Duplex round was an attempt to improve the short-range combat effectiveness of the M14 rifle (so far as this author knows, it was never linked for use in the M60 machine gun – ED: Commenter Bud Harton mentions that it was linked for use in the M60, and this has been confirmed by other sources), but the fundamental limitations of duplex ammunition remained, and it was never successful. Eventually, the improved hit probability rifle would be realized in the .22 caliber AR-15, adopted as the M16 before the Vietnam War.

As in all Small Caliber Book Reviews here at TFB, I will be covering the area of relevance and strengths and weaknesses of the book, as well as whether it is more introductory or advanced.

Up for auction through Rock Island Auction Company is a rifle that is very significant to the history of the military .22 caliber rifle cartridge. Below are pictures of the rifle, an experimental M1 Garand chambered for the .22-06 Duplex caliber which was a part of the SALVO II test conducted in December of 1957:

In 1963, on the eve of the M14’s cancellation, and the adoption of the AR-15 by the US Army as the M16 rifle, Guns & Ammo published a remarkably well-researched (if characteristically over-optimistic) article on the M14 rifle, its uncertain future, and potential new developments.

It’s often said that small arms technology has plateaued; that development of better kinds of weapons is essentially unfeasible for the moment, and that non-optic related small arms technology had pretty much reached its peak by 1965. It would be very difficult to cover the state of the art and how to improve it in-depth, so I won’t. Instead I want to take only a moment of our readers time to explore an often-missed element of firearms technology that is the key piece in understanding the technology “plateau” and how to end it.