Service rifle

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The service rifle (also known as standard-issue rifle) of a given army or armed force is that which it issues as standard to its soldiers. In modern forces, this is typically a highly versatile and rugged assault rifle suitable for use in nearly all theatres and environments. Service rifles are also often selected for their upgradability (e.g. the addition of underslung grenade launchers, sights, flashlights, laser sights, etc).

Although certain weapons issued to special forces units are rarely considered 'service weapons' in the truest sense, certain specialist rifles and submachine guns are categorized as such if issued as per standard operating procedures upon entering special environments or scenarios. These may include urban warfare (FIBUA/MOUT) and jungle warfare environments.

Most armies also have service pistols/side arms.

1 History
- 1.1 Future?
2 List of service rifles of national armies
- 2.1 Service rifle gallery
3 See also

[edit] History

Originally, rifles used in combat were not standard-issue weapons like the service rifles of today. Rifles were for specialist marksmen only, whilst the ordinary infantry were issued less accurate smoothbore muskets which had a higher rate of fire, with bore diameters as high as 19 mm, or 0.75 inch. By the middle of the 19th century, however, rifles were becoming more and more common on the battlefield, with the muskets being phased out. Originally, these combat rifles were single-shot muzzleloading weapons, but as technology advanced through the 18th and 19th centuries, so too did the technique of loading rounds. First, breech-loading firearms, like the Prussian Needle gun of the mid-18th century came to prominence, which then evolved into repeating weapons, such as the bolt-action Mosin-Nagant rifle used by Imperial Russia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and the Soviet Union in the Second World War. By this time almost all prominent armies in the world had some sort of standard service rifle in service.

During the Second World War, there was yet another leap forward in rifle design which was to influence service rifles even today. That is, the use of a fired cartridge's gas emissions to automatically rechamber rounds into the breech once a bullet had been fired, as well as expelling the old cartridge. These weapons were known as gas-operated firearms. Some of the earliest examples of these were most prominent in the Second World War, and were usually semi automatic, such as the American-made M1 Garand, first brought into service with the United States in 1936. These "battle rifles", as they were called, usually fired a "full-sized" (as opposed to an intermediate) rifle cartridge, such as the .30-06 Springfield or .303 British. Another type of commonly-issued rifle which was to become well known during this time was the assault rifle, a (usually) fully-automatic rifle firing a lighter "intermediate" cartridge, as opposed to the full-sized cartridges used by battle rifles. The first of these was the Sturmgewehr 44, used by Nazi Germany in the later stages of the Second World War. This weapon was to serve as the precursor to other assault rifles such as the Soviet AK-47 the American M-16 and the German G3, which today supersede battle rifles as the service rifle of choice for militaries the world over.

[edit] Future?

This article or section is not written in the formal tone expected of an encyclopedia article.
Please improve it or discuss changes on the talk page. See Wikipedia's guide to writing better articles for suggestions.

It is unclear where the service rifle will head next in terms of technological development. One possible path is often seen to be the use of electrically based weapons, such as railguns, coilguns and electronically-fired caseless ammunition, such as in Metal Storm technology. However, each of these are not without their flaws. Coilguns, though they can be automatically loaded like modern rifles, usually must charge a capacitor of some sort before firing, resulting in a lengthy pause between shots. Railguns, despite being very powerful weapons with extremely high projectile velocities, are as of right now quite primitive, and the highest-velocity weapons are very large and cumbersome. Both of these weapons would most likely be used for other, more specialised roles, such as for sniping or artillery, not general service.

Metal Storm technology is another firearms technology adaptable to a rifle. This technology, though very fast-firing, reliable and physically incapable of jamming (in theory, making it ideal for frontline combat) has its own flaws in that the ammo capacity is limited by the length of the barrel of the weapon, and the varied barrel lengths between the first and last shot fired may result in altered accuracy.

Perhaps the most likely advancement in service rifle technology in the near future would be the adoption of caseless ammunition for service rifles; an example of an attempt to implement this is the Heckler & Koch G11. This would make ammunition for rifles not only cheaper (due to a lack of ammunition casings), but also much lighter. This also means that the rifle itself would become lighter and much more reliable, due mainly to the simplification of the internal mechanics. Also, as there are no rounds to eject, this means that a soldier leaves little evidence of their presence if they have been firing from an isolated area, due to a lack of ejected casings littering the ground, as well as making the weapon ambidextrous by default, also, because of he fact that there are no spent casses, there is no need of an ejector, meaning that less dust and others can enter in the gun.