I appreciate that the SD may be the best current application of an integral silencer on the market right now, but certainly, it would be easier and better to base such a weapon on a heavy subsonic round? Isn’t this how the new Russian ones do it?
Badass thing about the SD is that is makes standard NATO 9mm subsonic. There’s no need for special ammo. Ordinary 9mm is everywhere. So, logistically, its superior.
[Cheesy Flashback]I made the mistake once of taking an SD to a New Year’s Party. Duh!!! I doesn’t make a sound. I only fired one mag before I saw how boring the fucker is on New Year’s. So I busted out a K and Glock 18.
…sweet, sweet noise!![/CF]
Couldn’t agree more. The M-14 is arguably an M1 Garand derivative anyway (It’s basically an M1 rechambered to 7.62x51 NATO with a 20-rnd detachable magazine and a selective fire option), and the SKS… well, they’re just nothing special, historically speaking.
An Bob, the UK Military are indeed using the SA-80, which is widely regarded to be complete crap… at least, the first ones were. Like the M-16, they had some teething trouble, but the newer ones are supposed to be a perfectly capable infantry weapon.
The Australian and NZ armed forces are using the Steyr, which is also regarded as being “plastic crap”. Most of the soldiers I’ve spoken to insist they’d rather have the old L1A1 SLR back, FWIW.
“Battle rifle” to most people usually means “Main Battle Rifle” which is a specific subcategory of firearms - full caliber, semiautomatic, detachable magazine, perhaps some other qualifiations. Stuff from the M14/G3/FAL kind of tree.
Seems like a more generalized “combat rifle” or something is more what we’re discussing here.
Btw, the M1 carbine isn’t a rifle. It’s, well, in US terminology of the time, a carbine. An overpowered pistol round in a larger package. Sort of trying to bridge the gap between rifles and SMGs the other way - instead of scaling down a rifle round, it’s scaling up a pistol round.
As far as the AK goes, I think people often feel the need to create false dichotomies for comparison or understanding. This is one such case - you’ll hear “sure, the AK is more reliable, but the M16 is more accurate” - as if it was like designing a computer RPG character, and you only had a set number of points, and had to allocate them as you wanted, and so, if one was lacking in one department, it must be equally boosted in another.
In any case, AKs really get a bad rap. Most of the people who insult the AK as a poorly made, inaccurate peasant rifle haven’t actually examined and fired one. There are many many manufacturers, and I’m sure the quality varies dramatically, but every AKM/AK74 I’ve ever dealt with is nowhere near the shoddy, inaccurate weapon they’re portrayed to be. It’s possible that actual AK47s (90% of what people would call an AK47 is actually an AKM or AK74) were of poor quality.
Most decently manufactured AKM/AK74s will fire within 3 MOA or better. High quality ones will shoot 1.5 MOA or better/ As a rule of thumb, that’s roughly a 3" deviation at 100 yards. People often compare this to AR-15 “race guns”, which are customized for accuracy and competition, which can get into the 1.5 MOA and lower range - but these are not analogus to standard military issued M16s. The M16 generally is marginally more accurate, and the 5.56 has more favorable ballistics in terms of accuracy at range, and there’s a longer sight radius, and so has a longer effective range. But the degree to which they differ is far smaller than the popular conception. The AK isn’t an inherently inaccurate design - the ones made in machine shops in ethiopia, or something, probably aren’t stunning pieces of manufacturing - but a good military factory turned out high quality rifles.
When you move the comparison to more modern terms, comparing the AK-74 to the M4, the AK-74 ties or comes out ahead in pretty much every category except for ergonomics and sight radius. Accuracy is comparable, the AK-74 is moderately more reliable, and full auto controllability actually strongly favors the 74.
In what way is the M1 Carbine not a rifle? A carbine is simply a shortened version of a full-size infantry rifle (traditionally designed for cavalry use), and a rifle is any firearm, with a rifled barrel, designed to be fired from the shoulder with two hands. Therefore the M1 Carbine is most certainly a rifle, as well as being a carbine.
The only real difference, category-wise, between the M1 Carbine and a Mosin-Nagant M44 or the Lee-Enfield No 5 Mk I is that the M1 Carbine used an inadequate oversized pistol round instead of a full-sized rifle cartridge. It would still be a carbine if it had been chambered in .30-06.
Oh, and whilst we’re here, the word “Carbine” is pronounced “Car-Byne”, not “Car-Bean”. Drives me mad when I watch shows on The Hitler… er, History Channel and they keep talking about “Carbeans”…
Merriam-Webster disagrees w/ you on the pronunciation:http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/audio.pl?carbin01.wav=carbine
In most countries, a carbine is just a shortened version of a regular rifle. In the US terminology, at the time, carbine was a special class of weapon meant to more or less try to fill the same gap an assault rifle did. It’s not a rifle because it didn’t fire a rifle round. Your definition of rifle includes submachine guns.
Must be an American thing then, because I’ve never come across a Brit, Aussie, or Kiwi who pronounces it that way. “Carbean” sounds wrong and nothing will ever convince me otherwise.
Indeed it does- “Machine-carbine” is a (now outdated) British English term for what we now call Submachine-guns.
Let’s put it another way- if a .22 longarm can be called a rifle, I fail to see why a PPSh-41 or a Sten Gun doesn’t qualify as well.
Of course, when most people (myself included) say “rifle”, we’re thinking of a shoulder-fired longarm firing a full-size round- but if we’re going to play semantics, the M1 Carbine is also a rifle, and a case can also be made for SMGs being technically “rifles” as well.
On the other hand the most popular version of the Winchester Model 94 is a carbine, and it fires the full-sized .30-30 round. The carbine has a 20" barrel, vs. the 24" or 26" barrel (I’ve forgotten which, and my firearms are packed away) and have different stocks. So in the U.S. a ‘carbine’ is ‘a shortened version of a regular rifle’.
The CAR-15 was a short-barrelled (14.5") version of the M-16 or (16") AR-15. The XM177 had 10" or 11.5" barrels.
You are correct. The US army has also used “carbine” by it’s common meaning, which is why I added “of the time” to my statement. I suppose you could call oversized pistol round carbines as a special class of carbine- but I wanted to point out that that the M1 carbine wasn’t what is typically called a carbine - a shortened, lightened version of a standard battle rifle - but rather a design intended to fill the gap between submachine guns in rifles. In practice, while assault rifles are closer to rifles than submachine guns, the M1/M2/M3 carbines were more submachine gun than rifle. Well - technically the M1 was semiauto, but you get my point.
As many previous posters have said we’re not comparing like with like,but all weapon traits are some sort of a trade off.
The SLR/FN was a lovely weapon with range,accuracy (when used properly)and good knockdown power,the KDP ensured less ammunition used but the ammo carried on the squaddie equipment was heavy and the size meant less rounds fitted in his webbing /pack.The size and weight of the 7.62 also increased the burden of the logistic services resupplying the infantry.The rifle itself was comparitively heavy increasing fatigue on prolonged service.
The SLR also had a hefty recoil which often caused poorly motivated soldiers to hold the butt OFF of their shoulder when firing to stop it hurting ;with a major loss of accuracy.
The FN and HKg3 s automatic function was pretty much useless ;as firing heavy rounds in that mode from the shoulder would spread them all over the landscape anywhere except where they were aimed . Even firing a light rounded SMG on auto will cause the untrained or unwary to let the weapon fire upwards and to the side.You CAN actually fire a proper heavy machine gun of the tripod variety from the shoulder(not from the hip) but I would only recommend it as a last resort.
The AK47is a good ,sound weapon ,but those of Chinese manufacture quite often didn’t have interchangable parts due to being hand crafted with sloppy tolerances so you couldn’t cannabalise several knackered weapons to make one working item.
Given the choice Ipersonally would still prefer an M16.
The SA80 is quite simply crap ,for what you get its heavy ,not much UMPH!unsuitable for left handed squaddies due to its cartridge ejection and the joke when it was first issued was “How do you field strip an SA80?” "Just drop it and it;ll fall to bits"If you used the carrying handle for actually carrying ,the sights were rendered useless.
To be fair though many of its stoppage problems in Afghanistan were caused by zealous troops OVER cleaning the working parts and causing excessive wear,a problem U.S. troops of the "gung ho "mind set had with M16s in Vietnam.(And yes I AM aware that they also suffered from men with the opposite outlook who never cleaned their gats ever because they were supposidly self cleaning)
The assault rifle light rounds are designed to cause wounding rather then kill so as to keep the casualties buddies occupied(as well as lowering their morale ,a comrade killed outright causes less distress AT THAT TIME) and to increase the burden on the medical services.The rounds on hitting are supposed to bounce around internally causing more damage.
And finally before I put my anorak on,get my plastic bottle of weak orange drink and go train spotting an example of pragmatic weapon design that Ireally admire!Israeli soldiers in the thirsty climate of the middle east were forever using handy parts of their rifles to take the caps off of bottles despite repeatedly being ordered not to cos of the damage being caused so the I.D.I. started making galails with intergal bottle openers. Niceone Israel!
The idea that assault rifle rounds were designed to wound rather than kill is a myth - a retroactive justification if anything. The real reason was covered earlier in your post - logistics and combat load.
Isn’t the “Top Battle Rifle” rather like the “Top Laptop”? Depending on who’s using it and what they’re using it for, the appropriate solution will vary hugely.
If you have well-trained professional troops with a decent supply chain and logistics, something like an AR-15 (or possibly better, an AR-18) is the thing, but if you are out in the arse end of nowhere with no training or support, then an AK is a better choice.
I can’t find it now, but I have seen an article about some custom-made M4s that the special forces people had made to take AK magazines and ammo. Apparently in Tora Bora they found themselves running out of ammo and having to use AKs, so they took the precaution of ordering some weapons that could use picked up enemy ammo but with familiar AR mechanicals and ergonomics, just in case they encountered similar situations in future. So apart from anything else, the best rifle needs to use ammo you can supply easily.
It’s quite possible, however AR varients chambered in 7.62 are available already. Kind of an oddball, but I remember seeing someone at the range once with one.
The thing about these rifles was that they took stock AK mags. And with a bit of coffee and it getting dark outside, it seems my google-fu improves.
The Knights Armaments SR-47.
Interesting. That’s one bad arsed looking rifle in your link. I guess that could be the winner of this thread, an AR that chambers and fires AK. Best of both worlds perhaps?
Dunno, according the obligatory wiki link they are a bit too fussy to deal with crappy third-world ammo. I suppose if you were to base it on an AR-18 action it would probably work better. It’s perhaps worth noting that US special forces have ditched the AR action completely in favour of a custom-build system from those fine folks at FN - the SCAR. Mix-and-match components, pick-a-caliber, a smorgasbord of options to facilitate shooting your enemies in the teeth with optimum efficiency.
Huh? No. I don’t think anyone has made the case that it’s the ammunition that’s the deciding factor.
Well I tried. 
there have been lots of interesting posts and worthwhile points on this debate. There have been some early omissions in my opinion, and i would like to bring them up.
No links to earlier posts, but the Spencer was mentioned. I’d substitute the Henry Rifle. The action was more reliable, and it lead to what may be the most famous rifle ever, the lever action Winchester. The loading was different, but the lineage is undeniable.
The other quibble is listing the 1853 Enfield. There has never been a rifle more uncomfortable to shoot, and yes, I have fired originals. The 1855 Harpers Ferry is so much better in ergonomics that there is no comparison. The sight picture is so easy to pick up that you might hit something, with the Enfield you’d never get lucky, and more than five shots hurts your back and neck.
For modern stuff, I’ll carry my Panther Arms .308 into any bad situation. AR-15 on steroids! OOOhrah!