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Modern Intermediate Calibers 013: The .17 Caliber Remington Family
Up to this point we’ve looked at calibers ranging from 5.56mm to 7.62mm, but today we’re going to look at something smaller… A lot smaller. The smallest caliber size that is feasible for a given...
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Modern Historical Intermediate Calibers 014: The 4.85x49mm British
On Saturday we looked at one British “contender” which could have in some alternate reality become the NATO standard round, and today we’re going to look at another: The 4.85x49mm. After the United...
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Modern Intermediate Full Power Calibers 015: The 7.62x51mm NATO
Shouldn’t “Modern Full Power Calibers” be its own series? No, because then there would only be two episodes! So instead, we’re rolling today’s two most popular full power .30 cal rounds into the series...
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Modern Intermediate Calibers 016: The 5.8x42mm Chinese
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...
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Modern Historical Intermediate Calibers 017: The 7.92x33mm Kurz
Many would consider this next round to be the first intermediate cartridge ever, and while that isn’t really true, it is one of the most influential rounds of all time, and perhaps the most influential...
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Modern Intermediate Full Power Calibers 019: The Russian 6x49mm Unified
What happens when you take the two concepts of a traditional, full-power rifle and machine gun round, and a small-caliber, high-velocity round, and smash them together? You get one of the most extreme...
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Modern Historical Intermediate Calibers 020: The 7.62x45mm Czech
After World War II, the nations of the world retired to lick their wounds and rebuild, but their arms engineers also began thinking about the next war. The war have brought forth a storm of new...
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New Ammo for British Troops: UK Develops More Effective 5.56mm and 7.62mm...
It’s not just the Yanks that are getting improved ammunition: Our friends across the pond have developed their own firepower upgrade for 5.56mm and 7.62mm weapons alike. Jane’s has a modest article on...
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Future Firearms Ammunition Technology 001: Aluminum Cased Ammunition –...
The metallic cartridge case was invented in the 1840s, and – starting in the 1860s – its military application brought with it a host of of advantages for the soldier: Now, ammunition was...
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Future Firearms Ammunition Technology 002: Polymer-Cased Composite Ammunition...
In the last installment, we talked about the growing need throughout the 20th Century to reduce the weight of the cartridge case, to lighten the burden of the soldier. Experiments in aluminum have thus...
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Future Firearms Ammunition Technology 005: Caseless Ammunition – Lightening...
Previously, we discussed trying to lighten the soldier’s load by making the cartridge case out of different materials, including aluminum and compositing the case out of polymer and metal. Yet,...
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Modern Intermediate Calibers 021: The US Army Marksmanship Unit’s .264 USA
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...
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Where to Draw the Line? Managing the Weight of Next Generation Universal...
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...
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What Is a Caliber System, and How Does It Affect Ammunition Design?
In a previous post about the sometimes ambiguous meaning of the word “caliber”, we discussed how the word had mutated through the centuries, picking up different definitions and connotations along the...
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Modern Historical Intermediate Calibers 023: The 6.35/6.45x48mm Swiss GP80
Information on this round and the weapons designed to fire it is scarce, so the details in this article may be at times incorrect. Just letting you know. -NF Before the SIG SG 550 was adopted by the...
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Modern Historical Intermediate Calibers 024: The 4.6x36mm HK/CETME
Today we’ll be looking at a round with one of the strangest-looking projectiles ever designed for a military weapon: The joint Heckler & Koch-CETME 4.6x36mm round designed for the HK36 en-bloc clip...
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Modern Personal Defense Weapon Calibers 001: Introduction, and the 5.7x28mm FN
At this point, we’ve talked about 25 different intermediate and full power calibers as part of a series comparing different types of modern small arms ammunition. However, one subject not yet...
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Modern Personal Defense Weapon Calibers 002: The 4.6x30mm HK
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...
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Modern Historical Personal Defense Weapon Calibers 003: The 7.65x35mm MAS, a...
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...
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Modern Intermediate Calibers: Trade-Offs – Introduction
Looking at the 24 different calibers we’ve covered as part of the Modern Intermediate Calibers series, some patterns begin to emerge. We see that larger rounds with heavier bullets weigh more, and have...
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CIP – The European Equivalent of SAAMI
I have no doubt that the majority of our readers know about SAAMI (Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers’ Institute), which sets the ammunition standards, cartridge and chamber drawings etc. These...
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BREAKING: Federal Premium Ammunition Lays Off 110 Workers at Anoka Federal...
The post-election gun industry downturn has hit Federal Premium Ammunition, which laid off a significant number of its employees earlier this month. 110 of the roughly 1400 workers at the company were...
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.277 Wolverine Cartridge is now in the Public Domain
Many of you may have read the title and asked: “What in the world is a .277 Wolverine?”. So first, let’s see what cartridge it is. In a nutshell, it is a wildcat cartridge based on .223 Rem or 5.56...
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RG-037 or 7.62x28mm Cartridge: Soviet Version of the .300 Blackout Concept
RG-037 (a.k.a 7.62x28mm) was an experimental Soviet cartridge developed in 1983. Its parent cartridge is the 5.45x39mm. The RG-037 has similar dimensional relation to 5.45x39mm as the .300 Blackout has...
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Unsafe Cartridge Combination You Never Thought About
Have you ever thought that 7.62x39mm and .243 Winchester can be a pair of cartridges that are dangerous if mixed? Of course, any cartridge is dangerous if not used in a gun it is chambered for and...
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.20 Nosler – a New Cartridge that is Not Yet Announced?!
SAAMI has accepted cartridge and chamber drawings of a couple of new cartridges. Both are Nosler cartridges. One is the recently announced .22 Nosler, which we covered in a separate article. And the...
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The Original 6.5mm Cartridge of the Fedorov Avtomat
Vladimir Fedorov (sometimes written as Fyodorov) was a famous Russian/Soviet firearms designer mostly known for his automatic rifle (Fedorov Avtomat) which is arguably the world’s first issued assault...
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Modern Personal Defense Weapon Calibers 013: The .22 TCM and .22 TCM 9R
It has been a little while since we visited the subject of modern personal defense weapon calibers, so to start it off again we’ll be taking a look at a new high velocity round that is only a few years...
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Modern Personal Defense Weapon Calibers 014: The .223 Timbs (7.62x25mm...
What do you get when you take the venerable speedster 7.62 Tokarev, and load it with a muzzleloader-style sabot and 50gr .22 cal projectile? You get one of the most interesting pistol, submachine gun,...
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Are Long Range Infantry Calibers Just Marketing Smoke and Mirrors?
With the recent push for small arms ammunition with increased range, power and capability, are military customers in danger of being taken for a ride by industry marketeers working to sell rifles in...
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The AR-15’s Creedmoor? .224 Valkyrie vs. .22 Nosler and 6.5 Grendel (Modern...
Let’s start off with a question: What is the best round for the AR-15? At the Big 3 East conference this week, a new caliber was unveiled for the AR-15. Called the “.224 Valkyrie”, it is based on the...
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Update: Russian 9.6x53mm LANCASTER Cartridge
Earlier we reported about the first leaked images of the new Russian 9.6x53mm Lancaster cartridge. Recently, Molot published a video explaining the features and showing the details concerning this new...
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Indonesian PINDAD 7.62x45mm Cartridge
While doing a research for another article and looking for different information, I visited Indonesian Pindad’s website. Their small arms page shows the different models of their SS-1 and SS-2 rifles...
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IS LEVEL IV UNBEATABLE? Armor, Caliber, and the Problem with Tungsten
In the coming decades, it is likely that one of the biggest challenges facing small arms ammunition designers will be solving the problem of how to deal with advanced body armors. The problem is...
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.224 Valkyrie Will Get a 100gr Bullet – Federal Premium Releases Official...
Ammunition maker Federal Premium recently released its full bundle of press info on their new .224 Valkyrie round, coming on the heels of teasers released at Big 3 East. The .224 Valkyrie is a high...
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.300 Blackout vs. 9x39mm: Russia’s Subsonic Brute [Modern Intermediate...
Today’s Modern Intermediate Calibers will handle something a little different. While virtually all rounds we have looked at so far were designed primarily for supersonic use, today we will be taking a...
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9x39mm: AR-15 for Moose? [Modern Intermediate Calibers 026.2]
Previously, we compared the Russian 9x39mm subsonic sniper round to its Western counterparts, including the .300 AAC Blackout and the .45 ACP. As it stands now, the 9x39mm is a subsonic round only – no...
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The Home Team Advantage: Ammunition, Compatibility, and Why Change Is Bad
If we can make a round that is significantly better than the existing 5.56mm or 7.62mm ammunition, shouldn’t the military just bite the bullet and switch, to the benefit of the servicemen and women in...
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“It’ll Never Happen”– Until It Does! Caseless Ammunition, and Looking Back –...
Caseless: The ammunition designer’s holy grail, and the engineer’s worst nightmare. It would obsolete the cartridge case overnight, resulting in cheaper, lighter, and more compact ammunition. Weapons...
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New Polymer Cased Ammunition Introduced by True Velocity
Texas company True Velocity, LLC, has released the first images of their advanced lightweight polymer composite cased ammunition design via Instagram. Training company BAT Defense sent out an image of...
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LSAT Cased Telescoped Ammunition, and the Problem of Cookoff (Brief Thoughts...
In the comments section of my recent Brief Thoughts article regarding caseless ammunition, there was a discussion about whether the cookoff issues of caseless would also be problem for LSAT-style...
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US Army’s NGSAR to Be Chambered for 6.8mm MAGNUM Round?
Is the US Army pushing for a new high-powered 6.Xmm caliber with their new NGSAR program? Recently, the listing for the NGSAR industry day in December was updated with a document describing in part the...
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.224 VALKYRIE Barrels Released by JP Enterprises
Those eagerly awaiting the market for the new .224 Valkyrie round have something to celebrate. Gunmaker JP Enterprises recently announced that they are now offering three different barrels for the new...
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M855A1 EPR Officially Adopted By US Marine Corps
The United States Marine Corps has finally officially announced its adoption of the 5.56mm M855A1 EPR round, developed in the late 2000s by the US Army, marking an important step towards ammunition...
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PICRA Family of Cartridges from Czech Republic
Browsing through the CIP cartridge standards while doing a research, I noticed several cartridges named PICRA. The name was unknown to me and apparently, it is unknown to many others too. So I thought...
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Army Chief of Staff Milley Says Next Rifle Will Have Much More Range, Be More...
At an AUSA breakfast conference yesterday, US Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley gave us a hint at exactly what the US Army’s next rifle could look like, and the focus was on extended range...
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[SHOT 2018] Federal’s .224 Valkyrie Hits the Ground Running – 4 Years in the...
What did we see at Range Day? Valkyries, Valkyries everywhere. Federal’s pint-sized long distance runner has already outstripped the market purchase of its direct competitors in the high performance...
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5.6x60mm Experimental Soviet Cartridge
In this article, we’ll take a look at an experimental Soviet cartridge (5.6x60mm) and an interesting technological failure of the manufacturing process. This article is based on one written by Nikolay...
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[SHOT 2020] New 27 Nosler Cartridge Joins the Nosler Family of Cartridges
At SHOT Show 2020, Nosler announced a new .270 caliber addition to their cartridge family – the 27 Nosler. In their press release, Nosler describes this cartridge as an offering “that redefines...
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Hornady Announces a New Contender in the Caliber Wars: 6mm ARC
Hornady Manufacturing, widely regarded as one of the top ammo companies in the industry, has made quite a splash with their June 3, 2020 announcement. TFB recently hinted at a new SAAMI accepted...
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