Friday, November 21, 2008

Military rifles

George asks, in comments:
What about military rifles? The usual battle rifle has the barrel surrounded with stock on the bottom and handguard on the top, all being bound together with rings to hold the handguard to the stock fore-end.

If I read you right, the battle rifles have built-in in-accuracy.


No, not really. Military rifles aren't known for their dead-eye accuracy. Most armies are happy if their military rifles shoot into three or four inches at 100 yards. That degree of accuracy is fine if all you want to do is put a hit on a man-sized target at 300 yards, which is the limit of fire for most infantry-type engagements. Military rifles have to be dead-nuts dependable and GI proof.

That's not to say that you can't take a standard military rifle of any of the various countries and get outstanding accuracy out of it. Our old Model 1903A3 was known to be a truly accurate piece, and the M1 Garand has fine accuracy. It's military cousin, the M14 is an accurate piece when in the hands of a good rifleman.

Most military rifles have okay accuracy. What is needed most in a military rifle is rock-solid dependability. Look at the rifles used by the (0ld) Warsaw pact nations. You find that the SKS, the Moisin, the Kalashnikov, weren't particularly accurate firearms, but they were magnificent military rifles.

1 comment:

Old NFO said...

Excellent point! It really is realiability over accuracy for the normal troop. When you want accuracy, you are getting into EXPENSIVE and very care intensive weapons. An M-1/M-14/AK dropped in the dirt can be hosed off and away you go. Do that with a sniper rifle, you've got hours of cleaning/resighting/re-zero to do.

Now having said that, there are 03A3s, M-1s, and M-14s that are dead nuts accurate out of the box... kinda like the old 1 of 1000 Winchesters, no body knows why, but they are.