c. -15,000 years ago

The principle of the bow and arrow is developed, with yew or elm for the bow and points of flint on the arrows

c. -2500 BC

The treasures found in the royal cemetery at Ur include a depiction of soldiers in copper helmets, armed with battleaxes

c. -1800 BC

In Mesopotamia the new weapon is a light chariot, drawn by two horses

c. -1500 BC

The composite bow, accurate to 200 yards, is used by warriors in Asia fighting from chariots and on horseback

c. -1100 BC

The Phoenicians develop the war galley, with a sharp battering ram in the bow

c. -850 BC

The Assyrians develop the battering ram into a mobile and powerful siege engine

c. -800 BC

The Assyrian army makes good use of the new technology by which iron can be hardened into steel suitable for weapons

c. -340 BC

The Macedonians develop the catapult as a siege engine for the armies of Philip II and Alexander the Great

c. -299 BC

The Roman siege technique is improved by the ‘tortoise’ which protects the attacking force

c. -250 BC

The Chinese develop the crossbow, many centuries before its use in Europe

c. 674

A Muslim fleet attacking Constantinople is deterred by the first known use of the Byzantine secret recipe for ‘Greek fire’

c. 1040

A Chinese manual on warfare includes the earliest known description of gunpowder

c. 1139

Pope Innocent III and the second Lateran council outlaw the crossbow as a weapon causing unacceptable devastation

c. 1200

The longbow, a weapon of great use to English armies, is probably first developed in Wales

Sketch of a Welsh archer still shown with a short bow, 13th century

National Archives, Kew

c. 1298

The English longbow, in one of its early appearances, proves too much for the Scots at Falkirk

c. 1327

The earliest surviving illustration of a cannon is drawn in this year (in a manuscript now in Oxford)

c. 1365

Portable guns are introduced not long after artillery, being mentioned in several European texts of the second half of the fourteenth century

c. 1450

The matchlock, ignited from a smouldering length of rope, becomes the standard form of musket

c. 1450

The French bring two small cannon on to the battlefield at Formigny, where they have a significant effect in achieving the French victory

c. 1453

The Turks terrify Constantinople by lobbing vast stones at the city from a 19-ton bombard of cast iron

c. 1610

A flintlock designed in France (possibly by Marin Le Bourgeoys) becomes the standard firing mechanism for muskets

1688

Sébastien de Vauban’s socket bayonet is introduced in the French army

1775

General Gage sends a detachment of British troops to seize weapons held by American Patriots at Concord

1807

A Scottish clergyman, Alexander Forsyth, invents the percussion cap to help in his pursuit of wildfowl

1846

The self-contained metal cartridge, with a percussion cap in its base, is patented by a Paris gunsmith named Houiller

1848

The Prussian army is the first to adopt a breech-loading rifle, the ‘needle-gun’ developed by gunsmith Johann Nikolaus von Dreyse

1884

US-born British inventor Hiram Maxim demonstrates the first prototype of his machine gun, using the recoil force to eject the spent cartridge and insert a new one

1892

Frederick Lugard’s Maxim machine gun settles a Protestant-Catholic clash in Kampala, the capital of Buganda

1905

The first German submarine, or U-boat, is constructed in a programme to catch up with Britain and France in this area

1906

Britain launches HMS Dreadnought, the first of a massive new class of battleship

1906

In direct response to Britain’s new Dreadnought, Germany increases the production of battleships

1907

President Roosevelt sends a fleet of warships on a goodwill tour of the world that also demonstrates US power

1911

US inventor Isaac Newton Lewis patents a lighter version of the machine gun

1913

The Vickers Fighting Biplane No 1 is unveiled in London at the Olympia Aero Show as the world’s first purpose-built fighter plane

1915

French aviator Roland Garros fires a machine gun through the propeller in his fighter plane, using metal plates to deflect any bullets that hit the propeller

1915

The 225-horsepower Eagle, the first of many Rolls-Royce aero-engines, contributes to the British war effort

c. 1915

Fighter planes are newly armed with machine guns firing between the propeller blades

1915

Dutch aircraft designer Anton Fokker, working for the Germans, vastly improves the Roland Garros technique for firing machine guns through the propellers of fighter planes

1916

Winston Churchill is a firm supporter of a new invention, the tank, encouraging its initial development while still at the Admiralty

1925

A Protocol signed in Geneva probibits the use in warfare of poisonous gas and bacteriological weapons

1936

The prototype of the Spitfire, designed by Reginald Mitchell, has its first test flight

1939

German-born US physicist Albert Einstein writes to President Roosevelt, warning of the potential of an atomic bomb

1942

British engineer Barnes Wallis designs a bouncing and rotating bomb for use against German dams

1942

US physicism J. Robert Oppenheimer is appointed director of the Manhattan Project to develop a nuclear weapon

1942

The German V-2 rocket is successfully tested by Werner von Braun and his team

1942

Enrico Fermi and his team in Chicago achieve the first nuclear chain reaction

1944

The first V-1 flying bombs (or doodlebugs) appear over London, numbering more than 2000 in two weeks

1944

The first V-2 rocket lands on London, killing three people in Chiswick

1944

Japanese pilots fly the first of World War II’s suicide or kamikaze missions

1945

Napalm, used to bomb a crowded part of Tokyo, creates a firestorm in which 80,000 die

1945

A US destroyer is sunk by a baka, a rocket-propelled version of a kamikaze attack

1945

US scientists succeed in exploding an atom bomb at Alamogordo, a test site in the New Mexican desert

1945

An atom bomb is dropped on Hiroshima, destroying four square miles of the city and killing 80,000 people

1945

A second atom bomb is dropped from a US plane, this time over Nagasaki

1946

The first of about 20 US tests of atomic and hydrogen bombs is carried out on Bikini Atoll, in the Pacific

1949

The first Soviet atomic bomb, called by the Americans Joe One, is successfully tested in Kazakhstan

1950

In response to the Soviet atom bomb, President Truman announces a crash programme to develop a hydrogen bomb

1951

The first hydrogen bomb is successfully tested by the US at Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands

1953

The first Soviet hydrogen bomb is successfully tested at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in Kazakhstan

1962

US intelligence reveals nuclear missile bases under construction in Cuba, causing an international crisis

1962

A deal between President Kennedy and Soviet premier Khrushchev defuses the Cuban missile crisis

1972

The SALT 1 treaty is signed by the US and USSR, limiting anti-ballistic missiles

1983

President Reagan proposes a Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI) against nuclear attack

1988

Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein uses chemical weapons against the Kurds of northern Iraq

2005

The Provisional IRA announces a formal end to armed conflict and orders units to dump all their weapons

2006

North Korea test-fires seven missiles, of varying ranges and with varying success

2006

North Korea announces that it has tested a nuclear weapon

2007

China carries out a successful test of a ground-based missile that can destry satellites in orbit

2007

North Korea agrees to begin shutting down its nuclear facilities in return for an ongoing programme of fuel aid

There are a lot of myths and misconceptions surrounding the current M16A1, M16A2, M4, M16A4NATO 5.56 round and its effectiveness on the battlefield. Now before you make a judgment as a soldier or as a firearm enthusiast (a more euphemistic way of saying “gun nut”), consider your sources. Who is it that is telling you the 5.56mm, or .223 if you prefer, is an ineffective round? Is this source an armchair general who has watched Blackhawk Down one too many times; or a Navy Corpsman who has been attached to a MEF fighting in Fallujah and has seen, treated and inflicted these wounds with his own M-4? People look at the .30-06 round from their grandfather’s M1 Garand and the 7.62×51mm round from their dad’s M-14 and compare it to the M-16/M-4’s 5.56 and think; “Wow, this is considerably smaller. Therefore, it must be less effective.”

M16A1, M16A2, M4, M16A4

Now Joe Nichols had it right when he said, “Size Matters.” However, when you are talking about combat cartridges this is not always the case, and I say that hesitantly. When the 5.56 was derived from Remington’s .223 in the late 1950’s, it was meant as a “force multiplier” if you will. By that I mean a soldier could literally carry twice as much ammunition as one who has the older 7.62 for the same weight. They wanted a soldier who could stay longer in the field without re-supply and could literally out-last and out-shoot the enemy in many aspects. The 5.56 is an incredibly fast and flat shooting round compared to the 7.62, but is under half the bullet weight.

So one might ask; ‘How in the world can a smaller bullet be more lethal than a bigger one?” One word: cavitation. Cavitation is the rapid formation and collapse of a substance or material after an object enters it at a relatively high velocity. I guarantee you have seen cavitation before. Next time you are in the pool or on the boat, look at your hand as it passes through the water or the propeller spinning. In both cases you will notice bubbles on the trailing edge of each. You see this because the liquid water falls below its vapor pressure. Without getting into physics and the hydrodynamics behind it, I’ll just leave it at that. When a human body is hit with a 5.56mm 62-grain bullet traveling at 3,100 feet per second; essentially the same thing happens but much, much more violently. For a split second, the cavity created inside the human body by the round from an M-16/M-4 is about the size of a basketball (if hit dead center of mass). The 5.56 creates this massive cavitation by tumbling through the body initiated by inherently unstable flight.

5.56 ballistic test

Other calibers of bullets travel through the body on, more or less of, a straight line after some fragmentation. When the 5.56 round was first designed by Remington, it was meant to tumble through a target, not kill with brute force. It did this not only by the relatively blunt shape, but also by using a rifle barrel with less of a twist. Next time you look at an M-4 or an AR-15, notice it says “5.56 NATO 1:7” on the barrel. This literally translates into; “the bullet will make 1 full rotation for every 7 inches of this barrel.” This was not always the standard twist set for the new NATO round. The first AR-15 made by Armalite, had a 1:14 twist making it a very, very unstable round. One can only imagine the orientation of the entry and exit wounds. Now if you haven’t figured it out already, the less the twist, the more unstable the round is. (1:14 twist is less than 1:7) It is said in “firearm enthusiast” legend that the first tests were done on pig carcasses and that the entry wound could be on the lower right stomach with an exit wound coming out of the back upper left shoulder. It left horrific wounds and terrible internal damage to its intended target, immediately drawing the interest of the US Military, in particular USAF General Curtis Emerson LeMay. That’s right folks, you can thank we in the United States Air Force for the M-16/M-4 legacy (I say this without sarcasm). He thought it was an ideal weapon for his deployed members of the USAF Security Forces for guarding the perimeters of Air Force installations in such places as Korea and Vietnam. Before military trials, Armalite increased the barrel twist to 1:12 to improve accuracy. But when tested in frigid Alaska, accuracy was decreased because of the increased friction from the denser, colder air. Therefore, the barrel twist was eventually increased from 1:12 to 1:9 and eventually to the 1:7 you see it today. Although some bull-barreled AR-15’s and Stoner Sniper Rifles can be found in a 1:9, most issued M-16’s and M-4;s are primarily a 1:7 twist.

This change increased the accuracy of the 5.56 round out past 500 meters, but decreased its lethality when striking a body. Now the real debate begins… How truly deadly is the 5.56? Well, this past April when I was going through Combat Skills Training at Ft. McCoy, Wisconsin, one week was spent in Combat Life-Saving class (CLS). The medics who instructed us had slide show after slide show of combat injuries they have treated over their last three deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. And let me tell you, these were not for the weak stomachs among us. If you are reading this article, I bet you are the same type of person as I to ask, “What calibers caused those wounds?” These men and women have seen the worst injuries of coalition forces and enemy combatants alike. The Geneva Conventions state that medics must provide medical care to all captured enemy personnel when able. Therefore, many Taliban and Jihadist fighters came across their operating rooms. After class one day I asked all of them, “Do any of you doubt the killing power of the 5.56 round?” They all answered with a resounding, “NO.”
I personally don’t like telling war stories but I do enjoy telling hunting stories. I have brought down 180 to 200+ pound deer with a 55 grain .223 FMJ (full metal jacket) with no problem. Yes, I know, the counter argument to that is, “Well that’s not an enemy combatant hopped up on cocaine, khat or adrenaline.” I understand that, but if you saw the exit wound or those on the pictures from the combat medics, you would certainly cease your criticism of the 5.56. However, there are certain design features of the M-16/M-4 that continue to puzzle me.

We have all heard the reports of those rifles failing during combat during Vietnam and even yet today. During the 60’s when it was first introduced, it was hailed as “the self-cleaning rifle.” Of course that was proven to be a myth within the first months of its service. Soon thereafter, cleaning kits, cleaning manuals with attractive cartoon-like characters, and muzzle covers were issued in large numbers. A lot of the first problems the rifle saw were due to using ball powder vs. stick powder. Ball powder burns hotter, faster and dirtier than stick does. This caused the rifle to gum up quicker in the humid atmosphere of Vietnam and mis-feed the rounds. The U.S. Military then switched back to the cleaner burning stick powder and added a forward assist to jam the bolt carrier forward after heat expansion and carbon build-up. The military saw this problem and fixed it fairly early on, so why haven’t they saw the clear flaw in the 100% gas-blowback operation of the firearm? Why haven’t they learned lessons from rifles such as the AK-47, AK-74, G36, SCAR and countless other who have switched to a short stroke gas piston?

gas piston operated

So far rifles such as the HK 416, HK 417, SCAR and MAGPUL Masada have all incorporated this short stroke gas piston in their designs and have all seen massive reductions in carbon build-up, over-heating, and mis-feeds. If this needs any explaining; what this basically does is stop the hot, carbon-filled gasses just rear of the front sight and pushes a pistol-like rod back instead of the gas traveling all the way back to the bolt carrier assembly. It is even possible to convert current uppers to this gas piston system using such kits as those offered by Bushmaster. If the cost benefit is too great for these kits to be installed, why not begin to install them on the floor as they are now? They are 100% compatible with all lowers used by the M-16 and M-4.

So in conclusion, the main flaws of the M-16/M-4 assault rifle system is not necessarily in the round itself, but in one minor design feature of just the upper. This article is meant as a predecessor to a piece in the making on the advantages to switching to a round such as the 6.8 SPC or 6.5 Grendel. The 5.56 round is effective, but could be better. I want to hear your feedback. Tell me why so many people (mostly civilians) think the flaws of the rifle are in the round. I’m looking to you military folks; tell me about your operational experience with it. Airsoft players, armchair generals, and firearm enthusiasts; let’s hear your voice, but don’t comment on its “knock-down power” unless you hunt big game with a .223 or were once in the military and have used it in combat. Next up: A viable future replacement for the 5.56 and the M-16/M-4 combat rifles along with first-hand news from the front on forces already making the switch.

Remember; every rifle and every round can be equally as deadly when put in the right hands. We seek to find the perfect round and the perfect rifle to increase that number of hands.

Source – FutureFirepower

The GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb – the future of ultra-surgical air strikes.

Since the days of the first Gulf War, when it became clear to the world that precision air strikes would be the “go to” option for the opening rounds of nearly any theater scale military operations, the technology of precision guided munitions has increased rapidly.  We have witnessed bombs being guided into their targets by lasers, GPS, and even a human watching through a camera on the nose of the weapon.  Once the concept of precision guidance was no longer a novelty, the virtuous auspices of limiting collateral damage and economic efficiency have led military planners and weapons designers to push the envelope of precision weapon technology even further.

During the Desert Storm era, the smallest precision bombs available packed 500 lb high-explosive warheads, and the 500 pounder was typically used on only the smallest of targets.  They certainly were precise enough on surgical targeting, but the massive explosion and pressure wave still causes widespread devastation to buildings and well, people, that are in the vicinity of the blast.  Now I’m not saying that it’s ever going to be possible to truly eliminate collateral damage, but I believe technology has reached a stopping point concerning precision-guided air-launched munitions.  It’s not as if limiting collateral damage is such a bad thing after all; so I guess we can go ahead and bestow the honorable hallmark characteristic of the next wave of precision munitions:  Efficiency…because accuracy is a given.

Fresh on the block is the new GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb.  The GBU-39 is the first 250 lb class precision guided munition, and is not only intended to allow the pilot to strike more targets per sortie, but also to -you guessed it- limit collateral damage.  A full rack of GBU-39s, 4 bombs total, can easily take the place of one 2000 lb GBU 109 “bunker buster” guided bomb on typical strike platforms such as the F-15C or F-22 Raptor aircraft.  While the 2000 lb GBU-109 penetrator definitely retains its place as a select weapon of choice for large and hardened targets, the GBU-39 SDB surpasses the GBU-109 in many different realms of performance.  For starters, the GBU-39 also has significant stand-off capabilities.  With it’s guidance wings, the bomb can coast into targets from far greater ranges than the GBU-109, from more than 40 nautical miles out.  Likewise, the design of the warhead also allows the Small Diameter Bomb to achieve the same penetration capabilities of it’s much larger 2000 lb counterpart.  All in all, the SMB GBU-39 allows for a great amount of flexibility for whomever is designing strike missions for an urban environment.

Not only does the GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb limit it’s size to only 250 lbs, it also can be fitted with different types of warheads, one of which is specially designed to limit the blast radius and shockwave of the explosion.  This new explosive is called D.I.M.E., short for Dense Inert Metal Explosive.  DIME explosives basically combine a powder of inert metals–inert means that the metal is resistant to chemical reactions–into the explosive, which essentially weighs down the blast.  The explosive ignites, but the metal powder will only fly so far before air resistance and gravity will slow it down.  DIME explosives are proven to limit the blast radius of explosions, but they are also notorious for the effects that they can have on personnel.  Decapitations, dismemberments, and even cancer later down the line caused by the imbedded metal powder are all facts of life when DIME is deployed.  i guess the counter-point is that those folks were at the wrong place at the wrong time, especially under the known threat of air raids.

Fast forward to Israel’s Operation Cast Lead against the Hamas regime in Gaza, and you’ve got the exact scenario where this weapon is intended to be used.  A crowded urban environment, where military targets are amorphous among the civilian landscape, and limiting collateral damage is essential to maintaining some semblance of self-restraint, saw small diameter bombs being deployed in large numbers.  Indeed, reports have come out of Gaza of people suffering the effects of DIME explosives, but the IDF remains deflective about admitting to their use.  The use of the GBU-39 that isn’t debated is the penetrator version being deployed against the smuggling tunnels at the Rafah crossing.  The IDF deployed multiple GBU-39 penetrators along the lengths of the tunnels, essentially burying them in successive sections.