It’s been a while since we’ve done one of these Modern PDW Calibers installments, but we’re back, and today we’re looking at a very new round on the market, one that is currently making some pretty big waves in the pistol world. I am talking of [Read More…]
In my comments section recently, I was asked to shed some light on the velocity penalty created by moving from 20″ long rifle barrels as in the M16 to 14.5″ long carbine barrels as in the M4 Carbine. Our readers’ wish is my command, and so here we are. [Read More…]
In the last installment, we talked about the trade-offs involved in increasing or decreasing the projectile’s diameter (and, thereby in convention systems, the bore’s diameter as well). One of the major pieces of the equation that we left out was how [Read More…]
Since we’ve covered the two most prominent PDW rounds of today, I want to take a quick detour and look at an interesting – but obscure – personal defense weapon/assault rifle round from history. After World War II, the apparati of the German war [Read More…]
If the 5.7x28mm FN is the first successful modern PDW round, then the 4.6x30mm HK is the second, and its biggest rival. German firm Heckler and developed the microcaliber 4.6mm in the 1990s as a response to a NATO solicitation for a Personal Defense Weapon, to which [Read More…]
We’ve discussed a lot of different rounds in this series so far, but today we’re going to discuss a round that actually has a shot of being adopted (at least in some form) by the United States military as a next-generation small arms ammunition [Read More…]
In the mid-1950s, the People’s Republic of China followed the Soviet Union’s example and adopted the intermediate 7.62x39mm round. This decision substantially helped to promote that cartridge’s ubiquity throughout the world, as millions of cheap [Read More…]
Though I’ve been involved with shooting sports for a long time, Chronographs never really interested me before. When people were setting them up on crowded range days, it could be a big time-killer for everybody else while the user tried to get the shades right, [Read More…]
In this installment, we’ll be looking at a very unique round. The 6mm SAW was probably the first small arms round ever designed using computer-calculated parametric analysis, and it was also probably the first American rifle round designed from the outset for [Read More…]
The 6x35mm TSWG, also commonly called the 6x35mm KAC, is a round shrouded in mystery. Apparently designed by Knight’s Armament Company for the interagency counterterrorist program cryptically named the “Technical Support Working Group” alongside the [Read More…]
In the late 1950s, after the first public demonstrations of the AR-15 and its new small caliber, high velocity cartridge, the Soviet Union took notice of the radical developments in military .22 caliber rounds in the United States. By 1959, four years before the [Read More…]
Since we know that gunshot wounds follow physical laws – Newtonian mechanics, specifically – we can use physical quantities to describe what happens to a bullet when it enters a fleshy target. In a previous post, we were introduced to three physical [Read More…]
Rifleshooter continues his series on velocity versus barrel length with different rifle cartridges (.300 Winchester Magnum, .223 Remington/5.56×45, and .308 Winchester/7.62×51), this time with a rifle chambered in 7mm Remington Magnum: Test Protocol Ballistic [Read More…]
The flight of a rifle bullet may seem to be a simple thing – it flies through the air at high speeds, steadily losing velocity and energy until it either impacts the dirt or simply falls out of the sky. In fact, though, there is a lot of complex fluid dynamics to [Read More…]
Following up on their test of 5.56mm and .300 Winchester Magnum ammunition velocities through different barrel lengths, Rifleshooter.com has posted a velocity vs. barrel length examination of .308 Winchester. One of the most well-balanced and versatile .30 caliber [Read More…]
Is the M16A4 worth the extra weight and length it brings? Howard of LooseRounds has weighed in with an article relating some of his experiences with the rifle. His conclusion is as follows: I have often told people that the M4 is a jack of all trade, but master of [Read More…]