Assault Rifles and Their Technology.

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Assault Rifles and Their Technology.

The assault rifle is now established as the standard infantry arm within virtually every national defence force around the world. It has come a long way in design and technology terms since the first hesitant attempts to produce such a weapon were made during and just after the Great War of 1914-1918. Those early attempts usually foundered on two rocks -- over-powerful ammunition and complexity, the latter leading to excessive weight and unreliability.

The modern assault rifle is a highly reliable and accurate selective fire weapon, producing both single-shot and fully automatic fire; some designs can also produce limited burst fire. These assets multiply the potential firepower of the individual soldier by a significant degree, both in the attack and in defence, while imposing no additional weight, bulk or handling burdens on the end user.

Getting to such a stage has not been straightforward. The history of the assault rifle is strewn with wrong turnings, false assumptions and downright bad decisions. Thankfully, the current situation has settled down to the stage where very few new advancements, other than yet more hopefuls and short of the arrival of revolutionary technologies, now seem likely to occur, despite the large number of models currently on offer. The assault rifle is now at the same design refinement stage that the bolt action service rifle displayed just before its demise.

Outlines

Today's assault rifle is gas-operated, with the mechanism locked at the instant of firing by a rotary multi-lug bolt. Some older designs, such as the Heckler & Koch series, employ alternative locking methods, but it is noticeable that the latest H & K G36 family has adopted the universal rotary bolt. Refined to its present standard by the late Eugene Stoner, the rotary locking bolt is unlikely to be replaced by anything better, even though the methods of making that bolt operate are likely to differ in detail.

The ammunition question has also settled down following a prolonged period of argument and trials, pursued by yet more trials. Two ammunition families dominate the current scene, the Western 5.56 x 45 mm and the Eastern Bloc 5.45 x 39 mm. That does not mean that assault rifles utilise only these calibres. Rifles firing what must historically become regarded as one of the biggest selection mistakes in recent small arms history, namely the 7.62 x 51 mm Nato cartridge, are with us still and are likely to remain so for many years to come. The Eastern Bloc equivalent, the less powerful 7.62 x 39 mm M1943 cartridge, probably the most widely produced and utilised small arms cartridge of all time, seems destined to remain in use indefinitely, along with assault rifles to fire it.

The intermediate power cartridge, epitomised by the 7.62 x 39 mm, is what makes the assault rifle concept work. Accepting that overwhelming numbers of infantry encounters take place at ranges of less than 400 metres (according to exhaustive combat analysis) means the need for more powerful rifle ammunition no longer remains. It then becomes possible, using intermediate power cartridges, to deliver automatic fire from the shoulder with reasonable accuracy. This is not really possible with full power cartridges, such as the 7.62 x 51 mm, as the recoil forces and stresses on the rifle and user are simply too great to both for accurate fire control and human comfort.

One factor noticeable in recent years is that bull...

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