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ASSAULT AND THEIR AMMUNITION: HISTORY AND PROSPECTS

© Anthony G Williams, Editor IHS Jane's : Ammunition

Last amended November 2016 (major re-write)

Introduction

First, I need to define what I mean by an "assault ", as there are various definitions around. The one I use is:

"A standard military rifle, capable of controlled, fully-automatic fire from the shoulder, with an effective range of at least 300 metres".

This raises various questions, including: "what do you mean by effective range?". This is sometimes held to be where there is a 50% chance of the average soldier hitting a human target with a single aimed shot, but in more general terms could be expressed as the range within which aimed fire is likely to hit or suppress the enemy – suppression meaning to deter the enemy from effectively fighting back or moving position, something which is achieved by near misses.

Another obvious question is: "what do you mean by controlled?". There is no agreed definition, but the implication is that for automatic fire to be useful, the average infantryman should be able to keep short bursts of fire on a human target at short range, with a useful percentage of the bullets scoring hits. Controllability is affected by gun design – the shape of the , the type of gun , the use of muzzle brakes or suppressors, and especially the weight of the gun – but the above definition of "" has some clear implications for the ammunition such weapons are chambered for.

First, it excludes weapons designed around cartridges (i.e. machine and sub-machine guns - SMGs) as they only generate around 500 joules (J) muzzle energy (ME) and cannot meet the range requirement. Second, it excludes the traditional "full power" (FP) military rifle/MG cartridges such as the .303" (7.7 x 56R) British, the .30-06 (7.62 x 63) US, the 7.92 x 57 German, the 7.62 x 54R Russian and the 7.62 x 51 NATO (typically firing 10-12 g bullets at muzzle velocities (MV) of 750- 850 m/s and developing around 3,000-4,000 J), as these are so powerful that the they generate is virtually uncontrollable by the average soldier using fully- fire from the shoulder. Ammunition developing MEs and recoil somewhere between the SMG and FP types is needed (ME and recoil are separate calculations, but broadly linked). The history of assault rifles is very much focused on the development of the ammunition which they use.

It took some time for suitable ammunition to become available. Early efforts towards light automatic weapons saw pistols such as the C96 (7.63 x 25) and P08 Luger (9 x 19 Parabellum) modified to produce derivatives with detachable stocks, usually only capable of semi-automatic fire but a few with a burst-fire option. These were relatively fragile and expensive to make, however, so the future in short- range automatics lay with the much simpler blowback SMG. The first of these in 2 service (if you discount the curious twin-barrel Villar Perosa) was the Bergman MP18 in 9 x 19, which was the ancestor of the MP 38/40, the Gun, the PPSh and so on. An honourable mention also to the Thompson, developed separately in the USA from 1916 onwards for their .45 Auto (11.5 x 23) . An oddity was the Pedersen Device of 1918, which replaced the bolt in the US Springfield Rifle with a semi-automatic mechanism to fire small .30 cal (7.62 x 20)