History: How did it develop to be the way it is?

The ancestor of the rifle was the musket, which began to make an appearance around 500 years ago. This was a huge, heavy, smoothbore weapon employing gunpowder to drive a heavy lead ball down a tube with very modest accuracy. But it would penetrate a wall never mind a suit of armour and this is what essentially changed warfare away from the knights and horses era. Because even if you were a knight, with the latest thing in armour worth the equivalent of $500,000 today, you could still get hurt. The musket came into favour because, though it fired slower than a longbow of similar power, any group of people could be trained to use it in a few weeks rather than the years of training required to use a longbow effectively.

The SA80 Assault Rifle – the standard issue to the British Army – and a poor choice in my opinion. (Gaz Faulkner © UK Crown Copyright, 2009, MOD)

About 250 years ago the technology arrived which would allow engineers to cut a series of twisting grooves along the inside length of a barrel. These grooves, called ‘rifling’, gave a spin to the bullet like a gyroscope and made the weapon far more accurate. These grooves also gave the name ‘rifle’ to a weapon employing them. By the late 1700s and early 1800s the rifle was spreading to the military, from being a gentlemen’s sporting gun, through issue to ‘Special Forces’. Sounds amazing having Special Forces in Napoleon’s time doesn’t it? Famous amongst these were the ‘Rifle Regiments’ of the British Army such as the ‘Light Infantry’ and the ‘Green Jackets’. Eventually the rifle proved so superior to muskets that it was issued as standard to all infantry soldiers. Cavalry kept pistols or carbines, short rifles, for the same reason ‘tankies’ and truck drivers carry short weapons today – they are easier to handle or stow on your vehicle and are not used very often.

The rifle began the last 150 years as a muzzle-loading, flintlock weapon firing three rounds per minute at a maximum effective range of 100 yards in dry weather only. It progressed through a heavy, bolt-action weapon able to fire 10–20 rounds per minute out to an accurate range of over 1,000 yards during the two world wars. By 50 years ago it had developed to a light, automatic weapon capable of firing 13 rounds per second to an effective range of 300 yards.

The modern rifle: By the end of World War II the generals of most countries had come to the conclusion that it was no longer necessary to be able to put a bullet through both sides of a helmet at 1,000 yards because the long distance sniping of trench warfare was over. They figured that by reducing the accuracy and hitting power of the issue rifle it could be made shorter, lighter and to fire lighter ammunition with an automatic fire capability. The idea was that this would make each infantryman a source of greater firepower. See the advantages of this later when we look at localized superiority of firepower.

Generally, it takes a heavier weapon to fire a more powerful round and a longer weapon to be more accurate. Designing a less accurate and less powerful rifle, which was shorter and lighter with a higher rate of fire, was expected to make the infantry soldier more effective in battle because they could carry and fire more rounds. This new package became known as the ‘Assault Rifle’.

The United States was already using the M1 Carbine by the end of World War II and this was a step in the direction of an assault rifle, being short, light and semi-automatic. Just after the war the Russians brought in the ‘Assault Kalashnikov 1947’ or AK47 assault rifle. This was followed by the M16 or ‘Armalite’ assault rifle brought in by the US Army which had all the required features.

The British were slow to change to an assault weapon. In 1957 they brought in the Self Loading Rifle, or SLR, a semi-automatic version of the Belgian FN FAL (Fusil Automatique Lèger – Light Automatic Rifle) that was half way between the old style ‘long rifle’ and an assault rifle. It was still long and heavy and it still fired heavy ammunition but it was semi-automatic rather than bolt action. As the saying goes, the generals are always planning to fight the last war.

I used an SLR, or FN – the automatic version – through much of my career and remain rather prejudiced in its favour because the FN fires the 7.62mm x 51mm ‘Long’ cartridge and when you hit someone with a round from an FN they go down and stay down. The effective range of an SLR was 600 yards but it weighed nearly double the weight of most assault rifles and the ammunition was almost exactly double the weight of the NATO standard 5.56mm x 45mm or Russian 7.62mm x 39mm ammunition.

A selection of FN FAL (Fusil Automatique Lèger) Light automatic rifles produced by the Belgian armaments manufacturer Fabrique Nationale de Herstal. This was half way to the modern assault rifle and one which I used with great success throughout my career. (Cody)

For all its faults in terms of weight and length, when you hit someone with a 7.62mm FN round travelling at 838 metres (916 yards) per second they stay hit because of the immense kinetic energy in a large calibre high-velocity bullet. They go down like a tin plate at the fair ground every time, even if you only wing them, due to the massive blow of the round. This is a good thing when, for example, you meet opposition in a surprise encounter as you don’t want them shooting at you after you hit them and before they go down. But both the rifle and the ammunition are a pain to carry.

In 1980 the British brought in the awful SA80 which fires the same 5.56mm x 45mm ammunition as the M16. To begin with there were terrible problems with stoppages and the rifle was loathed by the soldiers. To some extent the problems have been overcome but the rifle is still an inadequate weapon which cannot be fired left-handed and in my opinion can only have been bought by the British Army as a result of corruption. When there are so many good rifles out there such as the AK47, the M16, the Heckler-Koch G36, Dimarco and so on, why would you buy a really bad one?

Operation: How does it work?

Almost all assault rifles are reloaded automatically, after each round is fired, by the gas from the last round. Gas-operated reloading is where a hole in the barrel near the muzzle bleeds off some of the gas propelling the bullet and uses it to drive a piston back towards the breech which in turn operates the shell-extraction and reloading cycle. Each time a round is fired, the gas drives the piston to force back the breech and working parts against a spring to extract the empty case and then allows them to come forward under spring pressure to load a fresh round into the chamber.

Almost all modern automatic rifles function on the gas-operated reloading principle because the blow-back principle used with pistols and sub-machine guns does not work well with high power cartridges and the recoil principle used with heavy machine guns such as the Browning results in a relatively slow cyclic rate of fire. The cyclic rate of fire is how fast the mechanism fires rounds when set to automatic and the trigger is held down.

So far as I am aware, all modern assault rifles have a fire selector switch which allows the user to choose between semi and full automatic fire. Semi automatic is where a round is fired each time the trigger is pressed and it must be released and pressed again to fire a second round. Full automatic is where the rounds continue to fire repeatedly at a cyclic rate of around 650 rounds per minute until the magazine is empty or the trigger is released.

Skill: How do you use the weapon to maximum efficiency?