The M16 rifle is a family of military rifles adapted from the ArmaLite AR-15 rifle for the United States military. The original M16 rifle was a 5.56×45mm automatic rifle with a 20-round magazine.
The 5.56×45mm NATO is a rimless bottlenecked intermediate cartridge family developed in the late 1970s in Belgium by FN Herstal. It consists of the SS109, L110, and SS111 cartridges. On 28 October 1980, under STANAG 4172, it was standardized as the second standard service rifle cartridge for NATO forces as well as many non-NATO countries. Though they are not entirely identical, the 5.56×45mm NATO cartridge family was derived from and is dimensionally similar to the .223 Remington cartridge designed by Remington Arms in the early 1960s.
A flechette is a pointed, fin-stabilized steel projectile. The name comes from French fléchette, meaning "little arrow" or "dart", and sometimes retains the acute accent in English: fléchette. They have been used as ballistic weapons since World War I. Delivery systems and methods of launching flechettes vary, from a single shot, to thousands in a single explosive round. The use of flechettes as antipersonnel weapons has been controversial.
A grenade launcher is a weapon that fires a specially designed, large-caliber projectile, often with an explosive, smoke, or gas warhead. Today, the term generally refers to a class of dedicated firearms firing unitary grenade cartridges. The most common type are man-portable, shoulder-fired weapons issued to individuals, although larger crew-served launchers are issued at higher levels of organization by military forces.
A needlegun, also known as a needler, flechette gun or fletcher, is a firearm that fires small, sometimes fin-stabilized, metal darts or flechettes. Theoretically, the advantages of a needlegun over conventional projectile firearms are in its compact size, high rate of fire, and extreme muzzle velocity. The needle presents less frontal area than a bullet, producing less drag and thus more effective range than a wider projectile of the same mass and velocity. There have been experiments to make guided flechettes that can home in on targets.
The M14 rifle, officially the United States Rifle, Caliber 7.62 mm, M14, is an American selective-fire battle rifle chambered for the 7.62×51mm NATO cartridge. It became the standard-issue rifle for the U.S. military in 1957, replacing the M1 Garand rifle in service with the U.S. Army by 1958 and the U.S. Marine Corps by 1965. The M14 was used by the U.S. Army, Navy, and Marine Corps for Basic and Advanced Individual Training from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s.
The Objective Individual Combat Weapon or OICW was the next-generation service rifle competition that was under development as part of the United States Army OICW program; the program was eventually discontinued without bringing the weapon out of the prototype phase. The acronym OICW is often used to refer to the entire weapons program.
The M203 is a single-shot 40 mm under-barrel grenade launcher designed to attach to a rifle. It uses the same rounds as the older stand-alone M79 break-action grenade launcher, which utilizes the high-low propulsion system to keep recoil forces low. Quite versatile and compatible with many rifle models, the M203 was originally designed for the U.S. M16 and its carbine variant, the M4. The launcher can also be mounted onto a C7, a Canadian version of the M16 rifle; however, this requires the prior removal of the bottom handguard.
The Heckler & Koch G11 is a non-production prototype assault rifle developed from the late 1960s–1980s by Gesellschaft für Hülsenlose Gewehrsysteme (GSHG), a conglomeration of companies headed by firearm manufacturer Heckler & Koch, Dynamit Nobel, and Hensoldt Wetzlar. The rifle is noted for its use of caseless ammunition.
The M79 grenade launcher is a single-shot, shoulder-fired, break-action grenade launcher that fires a 40×46mm grenade, which uses what the US Army calls the High-Low Propulsion System to keep recoil forces low, and first appeared during the Vietnam War. Its distinctive report has earned it colorful nicknames, such as "Thumper", "Thump-Gun", "Bloop Tube", "Big Ed", "Elephant Gun," and "Blooper" among American soldiers as well as "Can Cannon" in reference to the grenade size; Australian units referred to it as the "Wombat Gun". The M79 can fire a wide variety of 40 mm rounds, including explosive, anti-personnel, smoke, buckshot, flechette, and illumination. While largely replaced by the M203, the M79 has remained in service in many units worldwide in niche roles.
A rifle grenade is a grenade that uses a rifle-based launcher to permit a longer effective range than would be possible if the grenade were thrown by hand.
The .30-06 Springfield cartridge, 7.62×63mm in metric notation, and called the .30 Gov't '06 by Winchester, was introduced to the United States Army in 1906 and later standardized; it remained in military use until the late 1970s. The ".30" refers to the caliber of the bullet in inches, .300 and the "06" refers to the year the cartridge was adopted, 1906. It replaced the .30-03, 6mm Lee Navy, and .30-40 Krag cartridges. The .30-06 remained the U.S. Army's primary rifle and machine gun cartridge for nearly 50 years before being replaced by the 7.62×51mm NATO and 5.56×45mm NATO, both of which remain in current U.S. and NATO service. It remains a very popular sporting round, with ammunition produced by all major manufacturers.
The Steyr ACR was a prototype flechette-firing assault rifle built for the US Army's Advanced Combat Rifle program of 1989/90. Although the Steyr design proved effective, as did most of the weapons submitted, the entire ACR program ended with none of the entrants achieving performance 100% better than the M16A2, the baseline for a successful ACR weapon.
The Advanced Combat Rifle (ACR) was a United States Army program, started in 1986, to find a replacement for the M16 assault rifle. Under the stress of battle the average soldier with an M16 may shoot a target at 45 meters, but hit probability is reduced to one out of ten shots on target by 220 meters. Because of this, the ACR program was initiated in the late 1980s to create a weapon that could double the hit probability. The ACR program was preceded by older programs such as the Special Purpose Individual Weapon. The program ended in 1990 after an expenditure of approximately US$300 million.
The two most common assault rifles in the world are the Soviet AK-47 and the American M16. These Cold War-era rifles have been used in conflicts both large and small since the 1960s. They are used by military, police, security forces, revolutionaries, terrorists, criminals and civilians alike and will most likely continue to be used for decades to come. As a result, they have been the subject of countless comparisons and endless debate.
The Heckler & Koch HK CAWS is a prototype automatic shotgun—designed as a combat shotgun—co-produced by Heckler & Koch and Winchester/Olin during the 1980s. It was Heckler & Koch's entry into the U.S military's Close Assault Weapon System program.
The Colt ACR was Colt's entry in the U.S. DoD Advanced Combat Rifle program, which concluded with the result that none of the entrants achieved enough of an improvement over the M16 to be worth the cost.
The AAI CAWS is a prototype automatic shotgun—designed as a combat shotgun— produced by the AAI Corporation during the 1980s. It was AAI's entry into the U.S military's Close Assault Weapon System program.
The AAI ACR was a prototype flechette-firing assault rifle built for the US Army's Advanced Combat Rifle program of 1989/90. Although the AAI design proved effective, as did most of the weapons submitted, the entire ACR program ended with none of the entrants achieving performance 100% better than the M16A2, the baseline for a successful ACR weapon.
