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A fully powered cartridge, also called full-power cartridge or full-size cartridge, is an umbrella term describing any rifle cartridge that emphasizes ballistic performance and single-shot accuracy, with little or no thought to its weight or recoil. They often have a caliber comparable to or greater than 7.5 mm (0.30 in) and a maximum effective range of at least 800 m (870 yd), [1] and are intended for engaging targets (large game animals) beyond 300 m (330 yd). However, cartridges with calibers as narrow as 6.5 mm (0.26 in) have been described as being a full-power rifle cartridge.[ by whom? ][ citation needed ] The term generally refers to traditional cartridges used in machine guns and bolt action and semi-automatic service rifles and select fire battle rifles prior to, during, and immediately after the World Wars and into the early Cold War era, [2] and was a retronym originally made to differentiate from intermediate-power rifle cartridges that gained widespread adoption into military service after World War II.
Most modern full-power rifle cartridges have their origin in the late 19th century and early 20th century with the advent of smokeless powder. Examples include the 6.5×55mm Swedish, 7×57mm Mauser, 7.5×55mm Swiss, 7.5×54mm French, 7.62×51mm NATO, 7.62×54mmR, .30-06 Springfield, .303 British, 7.65×53mm Mauser, 7.7×58mm Arisaka, 7.92×57mm Mauser, and 8×50mmR Lebel. [3] [4] The US military's Next Generation Squad Weapon Program selected the 6.8×51mm Common Cartridge in 2022 for testing in a new carbine, new light machine guns and possibly in converted general-purpose machine guns. This does not guarantee actual widespread future issue of the brass-steel hybrid cased 6.8×51mm Common Cartridge.
Despite the ubiquitous adoption of assault rifles and intermediate-power rifle cartridge cartridges as the standard weapon infantry weapon system, full-power rifle cartridges are still widely used today in battle rifles, designated marksman rifles (DMRs), sniper rifles, general purpose machine guns (GPMGs), and conventional hunting rifles. [5]
In the first half of the 20th century, the practice of civilian sportsmen experimenting and modifying existing cartridges to suit different ballistic needs, known as "wildcatting", really took off, and the result was the number of newly available cartridges exploded from a couple of dozen to well over one hundred. Having dozens of different cartridges all with unique dimensions was a headache for rifle manufacturers, and still wanting to reach the widest consumer market possible, they had to find a way to economically produce rifles that could be adapted to accept every chambering on the market. While barrels could be custom-made affordably, actions required more time, complex machining, and were thus expensive to make, so it made sense to produce the rifle action's dimensions so that a few standardized lengths could reliably use most (if not all) of the cartridges on the market. [6]
The so-called "standard length" cartridges are traditional rifle cartridges with a cartridge overall length (COL) between 2.81 to 3.34 in (71.4 to 84.8 mm), which is best exemplified by the .30-06 Springfield. Most of today's long-action cartridges had their cases designed around .30-06 Springfield's case dimensions, such as the .270 Winchester, .280 Remington, .35 Whelen, .264 Winchester Magnum, and 7mm Remington Magnum, as well as much newer cartridges like the .26 Nosler and .28 Nosler. [7]
The .308 Winchester debuted in 1952 and its militarized version, the 7.62×51mm NATO, was adopted by the U.S. military in 1954 for the new M14 rifle. By the 1960s, it had displaced the .30-06 Springfield as the popular cartridge in both the hunting fields and in the battlefields. With a much shorter COL of 2.8 in (71 mm) and using the improved propellants available in the 1950s, it could do nearly everything traditional military rifle cartridges did, such as the .30-06 Springfield, but was cheaper to make, lighter in weight, more compact in size, and had lower recoil energy. More importantly, while the .30-06 has produced roughly a dozen wildcat cartridges, only the .270 Winchester and the .25-06 Remington enjoyed widespread commercial support; in contrast, the .308 Winchester served as the parent case for the wildcat .243 Winchester, .260 Remington, 7mm-08 Remington, .338 Federal, and .358 Winchester, all five of which are used by hunters to this day. The result was a new series of short-action cartridges, typically with a COL between 2.3 to 2.8 in (58.4 to 71.1 mm), that tend to use bullets of different calibers, rather than using a wide variety of the same caliber to achieve the same ballistic effect. [6]
The success of short-action cartridges led to the original and longer "standard length" cartridges to be retronymously named long-action cartridges. The intermediate cartridges, which later gained ubiquity over the short-action cartridges as the mainstream service ammunition for both military assault rifles and civilian modern sporting rifles, have a COL averaging around 2.36 in (59.9 mm), much less than 2.8 in (71 mm), and are thus also sometimes referred to as the super short-action or "mini-action" cartridges. [8]
Service cartridges are cartridges the service rifles of armies were or are chambered for.
The 7.62 mm caliber is a nominal caliber used for a number of different cartridges. Historically, this class of cartridge was commonly known as .30 caliber, the equivalent in Imperial and United States Customary measures. It is most commonly used in hunting cartridges. The measurement equals 0.30 inches or three decimal lines, written .3″ and read as three-line.
The Arisaka rifle is a family of Japanese military bolt-action service rifles, which were produced and used since approximately 1897, when it replaced the Murata rifle family, until the end of World War II in 1945. The most common models include the Type 38 chambered for the 6.5×50mmSR Type 38 cartridge, and the Type 99 chambered for the 7.7×58mm Type 99 cartridge, which is comparable in power to a modern .308 Winchester round.
The Fabrique Nationale Model 1949 (often referred to as the FN-49, SAFN, or AFN is an autoloading battle rifle designed by Belgian small arms designer Dieudonné Saive in 1947. It was adopted by the militaries of Argentina, Belgium, the Belgian Congo, Brazil, Colombia, Egypt, Indonesia, Luxembourg, and Venezuela. The selective fire version produced for Belgium was known as the AFN.
The 7×57mm Mauser is a first-generation smokeless powder rimless bottlenecked rifle cartridge. It was developed by Paul Mauser of the Mauser company in 1892 and adopted as a military cartridge by Spain in 1893. It was subsequently adopted by several other countries as the standard military cartridge, and although now obsolete as a military cartridge, it remains in widespread international use as a sporting round. The 7×57 Mauser was a popular stalking cartridge and sporting rifles in this chambering were made by the famous British riflemakers, such as John Rigby, Holland and Holland, Westley Richards and others. British cartridge nomenclature designated caliber in inches, and the cartridge was known as the .275 bore after the measurement of a 7 mm rifle's bore across the lands. The cartridge is sometimes erroneously referred to as the ".275 Rigby", However, the original John Rigby & Sons never referred to the cartridge by that name, nor did any of UK gun trade; the Rigby association is a misconception attributed to modern American gun writers.
6.5×55mm Swedish, also known simply as 6.5×55mm, 6.5x55 SE, 6.5x55 Swede, or in its native military as 6.5 mm patron m/94, meaning "6.5 mm cartridge model 94", referring to 1894, is a first-generation smokeless powder rimless bottlenecked rifle cartridge. The cartridge has most users in the Scandinavian countries, where it is known as the 6,5×55 or just "the 6,5".
The 7mm-08 Remington is a rifle cartridge that is almost a direct copy of a wildcat cartridge developed around 1958 known as the 7mm/308. As these names would suggest, it is the .308 Winchester case necked down to accept 7 mm (.284) bullets with a small increase in case length. Of cartridges based upon the .308, it is the second most popular behind only the .243 Winchester. However, the .308 is more popular than both. In 1980, the Remington Arms company popularized the cartridge by applying its own name and offering it as a chambering for their Model 788 and Model 700 rifles, along with a limited-run series within their Model 7600 pump-action rifles during the early 2000s.
The 6.5×52mm Carcano, also known as the 6.5×52mm Parravicini–Carcano or 6.5×52mm Mannlicher–Carcano, is an Italian military 6.5 mm rimless bottle-necked rifle cartridge, developed from 1889 to 1891 and used in the Carcano 1891 rifle and many of its successors. A common synonym in American gun literature is "6.5mm Italian." In American parlance, "Carcano" is frequently added to better distinguish it from the rimmed hunting cartridge 6.5×52mmR. Ballistically, its performance is very similar to that of the 6.5×54mm Mannlicher–Schönauer.
Remington Rolling Block is a family of breech-loading rifles that was produced from the mid-1860s into the early 20th century by E. Remington and Sons. The action was a medium strength action and developed some head space issues with the new smokeless powders coming into use by the late 1890s. A heavier #5 style action was produced for the later smokeless cartridges, but they still had issues with some ammunition.
The 6.5×50mmSR Arisaka is a semi-rimmed rifle cartridge with a 6.705 mm diameter bullet. It was the standard Japanese military cartridge from 1897 until the late 1930s for service rifles and machine guns when it was gradually replaced by the 7.7×58mm Arisaka.
The 7.5×57mm MAS or 7.5×58mm mle 1924c was a short-lived French rifle cartridge that was introduced in the mid-1920s to replace the 8×50mmR Lebel, although it itself was soon replaced with the 7.5×54mm French round, that served the French for decades to come until France, along with the rest of NATO, adopted the standard NATO calibers, 5.56×45mm NATO and 7.62×51mm NATO.
The 7.5×54mm French, 7.5 French, or 7.5 MAS is a rimless bottlenecked rifle cartridge. It was developed by France as an update to the 7.5×57mm MAS mod. 1924 cartridge. It replaced the obsolete 8×50mmR Lebel round used during World War I, and served as the French service cartridge until superseded by the 5.56×45mm NATO and 7.62×51mm NATO cartridges in the 1970s and 1980s.
An intermediate cartridge is a rifle/carbine cartridge that has significantly greater power than a pistol cartridge but still has a reduced muzzle energy compared to fully powered cartridges, and therefore is regarded as being "intermediate" between traditional rifle and handgun cartridges.
The .257 Roberts, also known as .257 Bob, is a medium-powered .25 caliber rifle cartridge. It has been described as the best compromise between the low recoil and flat trajectory of smaller calibers such as the 5 mm and 6 mm, and has more energy, but is harder recoiling, similar to larger hunting calibers, such as the 7 mm and 7.62 mm.
The 6.5mm Remington Magnum is a .264 caliber (6.7 mm) belted bottlenecked cartridge introduced in 1966. The cartridge is based on a necked down .350 Remington Magnum which on turn is based on a shortened, necked down, blown out .375 H&H Magnum case. The cartridge was one of the first short magnum cartridges.
The 6.5×54mm Mannlicher–Schönauer also known as 6.5×54 Mannlicher–Schönauer Greek or simply 6.5 Greek is a 6.5 mm rimless rifle cartridge used in the Mannlicher–Schönauer rifle. It is the direct descendant of the 6.5×53mmR rimmed cartridge from the 1891 Mannlicher rifle, designed to function smoothly through the Schönauer's rotary magazine. 6.5 mm bullets are typically known for their high ballistic coefficients and sectional density, which gives them great stability in flight, resistance to wind deflection, and high penetrating power. It, along with the Mannlicher–Schönauer rifle, was first introduced in Paris at the 1900 World's Fair.