Firing Rate
Rate of fire is the frequency at which a specific weapon can fire or launch its projectiles. This can be influenced by several factors, including operator training level, mechanical limitations, ammunition availability, and weapon condition. In modern weaponry, it is usually measured in rounds per minute (RPM or round/min) or rounds per second (RPS or round/s). There are three different measurements for the rate of fire: cyclic, sustained, and rapid. Cyclic is the maximum rate of fire given only mechanical function, not taking into account degradation of function due to heat, wear, or ammunition constraints. Sustained is the maximum efficient rate of fire given the time taken to load the weapon and keep it cool enough to operate. Finally, rapid is the maximum reasonable rate of fire in an emergency when the rate of fire need not be upheld for long periods. Overview For manually operated weapons such as bolt-action rifles or artillery pieces, the rate of fire is governed primarily ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Weapon
A weapon, arm or armament is any implement or device that can be used to deter, threaten, inflict physical damage, harm, or kill. Weapons are used to increase the efficacy and efficiency of activities such as hunting, crime, law enforcement, self-defense, warfare, or suicide. In broader context, weapons may be construed to include anything used to gain a tactical, strategic, material or mental advantage over an adversary or enemy target. While ordinary objects – sticks, rocks, bottles, chairs, vehicles – can be used as weapons, many objects are expressly designed for the purpose; these range from simple implements such as clubs, axes and swords, to complicated modern firearms, tanks, intercontinental ballistic missiles, biological weapons, and cyberweapons. Something that has been re-purposed, converted, or enhanced to become a weapon of war is termed weaponized, such as a weaponized virus or weaponized laser. History The use of weapons is a major driver of cult ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Maxim Machine Gun
The Maxim gun is a recoil-operated machine gun invented in 1884 by Hiram Stevens Maxim. It was the first fully automatic machine gun in the world. The Maxim gun has been called "the weapon most associated with imperial conquest" by historian Martin Gilbert, and was heavily used by colonial powers during the "Scramble for Africa". Afterwards, Maxim guns also saw extensive usage by different armies during the Russo-Japanese War, the First and Second World Wars, as well as by insurgent groups in contemporary conflicts. The Maxim gun was greatly influential in the development of machine guns, and it has multiple variants and derivatives. Design The Maxim gun featured one of the earliest recoil-operated firing systems in history. Energy from recoil acting on the breech block is used to eject each spent cartridge and insert the next one. Maxim's earliest designs used a 360-degree rotating cam to reverse the movement of the block, but this was later simplified to a toggle lock. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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M1917 Browning Machine Gun
The M1917 Browning machine gun is a heavy machine gun used by the United States armed forces in World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War; it has also been used by other nations. It was a crew-served, belt-fed, water-cooled machine gun that served alongside the much lighter air-cooled Browning M1919. It was used at the battalion level, and often mounted on vehicles (such as a jeep). There were two main iterations: the M1917, which was used in World War I and the M1917A1, which was used thereafter. The M1917, which was used on some aircraft as well as in a ground role, had a cyclic rate of 450 rounds per minute. The M1917A1 had a cyclic rate of 450 to 600 rounds per minute. Design and development In 1900, John Moses Browning filed a patent for a recoil-powered automatic gun. Browning did not work on the gun again until 1910, when he built a water-cooled prototype of the 1900 design. Although the gun worked well, Browning improved the design slightly. Brownin ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cooking Off
Cooking off (or thermally induced firing) is unfired weapon ammunition exploding prematurely due to heat in the surrounding environment. The term is used both for detonation of ammunition not loaded into a weapon, and unintended firing of a loaded weapon due to heating. A fast cook-off is a cook-off caused by fire. A slow cook-off is caused by a sustained thermal event less intense than fire. A cooked-off round may cause a sympathetic detonation of adjacent rounds. Insensitive munitions are designed to be less vulnerable to accidental firing induced by external heat. Artillery Inherent design flaws in early 17th century Swedish leather cannons led to the gun tube overheating which prematurely ignited the gunpowder, injuring the loader. Muzzle-loading cannon on merchant and naval vessels of the Age of Sail would fire if the vessels caught fire while the guns were loaded. Examples include the merchantman and . After the cooking off of artillery shells in the G5 howitzer ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Water Jacket
A water jacket is a water-filled casing surrounding a device, typically a metal sheath having intake and outlet vents to allow water to be pumped through and circulated. The flow of water to an external heating or cooling device allows precise temperature control of the device. Applications Water jackets are often used in watercooling. They are also used in laboratory glassware: Liebig, Graham, and Allihn condensers. Water jackets were used to cool the barrels of machine guns until several years after the First World War, but modern machine guns are air-cooled to conserve weight and hence increase portability. In a reciprocating piston internal combustion engine the water jacket is a series of holes either cast or bored through the main engine block and connected by inlet and outlet valves to a radiator. Equipment such as tissue culture Tissue culture is the growth of tissues or cells in an artificial medium separate from the parent organism. This technique is also called mi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Thermal Shock
Thermal shock is a type of rapidly transient mechanical load. By definition, it is a mechanical load caused by a rapid change of temperature of a certain point. It can be also extended to the case of a thermal gradient, which makes different parts of an object expand by different amounts. This differential expansion can be more directly understood in terms of strain, than in terms of stress, as it is shown in the following. At some point, this stress can exceed the tensile strength of the material, causing a crack to form. If nothing stops this crack from propagating through the material, it will cause the object's structure to fail. Failure due to thermal shock can be prevented by: # Reducing the thermal gradient seen by the object, by changing its temperature more slowly or increasing the material's thermal conductivity # Reducing the material's coefficient of thermal expansion # Increasing its strength # Introducing built-in compressive stress, as for example in tempered ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Semi-automatic Rifles
A semi-automatic rifle is an autoloading rifle that fires a single cartridge with each pull of the trigger, and uses part of the fired cartridge's energy to eject the case and load another cartridge into the chamber. For comparison, a bolt-action rifle requires the user to cycle the bolt manually before they can fire a second time, and a fully automatic rifle fires continuously until the trigger is released. History The first design of a recoil-operated semi-automatic rifle is attributed to Ferdinand Mannlicher, who unveiled the design in 1885 based on work begun in 1883. Other non-gas operated semi-automatic models were the Model 85 and Mannlicher Models 91, 93 and 95 rifles. The designs were deeply flawed and never made past the conceptual/prototype stage due to issues inherent to the black powder used in their cartridges (based around the Austrian 11×58mmR M/77), such as insufficient velocity and excessive fouling; automatic firearms would only become feasible after smoke ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Attack Helicopter
An attack helicopter is an armed helicopter with the primary role of an attack aircraft, with the offensive capability of engaging ground targets such as enemy infantry, military vehicles and fortifications. Due to their heavy armament they are sometimes called helicopter gunships. Attack helicopters can use weapons including autocannons, machine guns, rockets, and anti-tank missiles such as the AGM-114 Hellfire. Some attack helicopters are also capable of carrying air-to-air missiles, though mostly for purposes of self-defense against other helicopters and low-flying light combat aircraft. A modern attack helicopter has two primary roles: first, to provide direct and accurate close air support for ground troops; and second, the anti-tank role to destroy grouped enemy armor. Attack helicopters are also used as protective escort for transport helicopters, or to supplement lighter helicopters in the armed reconnaissance roles. In combat, an attack helicopter is proj ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Minigun
The M134 Minigun is an American 7.62×51mm NATO six-barrel rotary machine gun with a high rate of fire (2,000 to 6,000 rounds per minute). It features a Gatling-style rotating barrel assembly with an external power source, normally an electric motor. The "Mini" in the name is in comparison to larger-caliber designs that use a rotary barrel design, such as General Electric's earlier 20 mm M61 Vulcan, and "gun" for the use of rifle ammunition as opposed to autocannon shells. "Minigun" refers to a specific model of weapon that General Electric originally produced, but the term "minigun" has popularly come to refer to any externally powered rotary gun of rifle caliber. The term is sometimes used loosely to refer to guns of similar rates of fire and configuration, regardless of power source and caliber. The Minigun is used by several branches of the U.S. military. Versions are designated ''M134'' and ''XM196'' by the United States Army, and ''GAU-2/A'' and ''GAU-17/A'' by the U.S. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Machine Guns
A machine gun is a fully automatic, rifled autoloading firearm designed for sustained direct fire with rifle cartridges. Other automatic firearms such as automatic shotguns and automatic rifles (including assault rifles and battle rifles) are typically designed more for firing short bursts rather than continuous firepower, and are not considered true machine guns. As a class of military kinetic projectile weapon, machine guns are designed to be mainly used as infantry support weapons and generally used when attached to a bipod or tripod, a fixed mount or a heavy weapons platform for stability against recoils. Many machine guns also use belt feeding and open bolt operation, features not normally found on other infantry firearms. Machine guns can be further categorized as light machine guns, medium machine guns, heavy machine guns, general purpose machine guns and squad automatic weapons. Similar automatic firearms of caliber or more are classified as autocannons, rat ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Machine Pistols
A machine pistol is an autoloading pistol capable of fully automatic fire. The term can also be used to describe a stockless handgun-style submachine gun. The term is a calque of ''Maschinenpistole'', the German word for submachine guns. Machine pistols were developed during World War I and originally issued to German artillery crews who needed a self-defense weapon that is lighter than a rifle but more powerful than a standard semi-automatic pistol. This concept would eventually lead to the development of the personal defense weapon or PDW. Today, machine pistols are considered special-purpose weapons with limited utility, with their original niche being filled with either the PDW, carbines, or simply more modern semi-automatic sidearms. Contributing to their already-fringe use, without a shoulder stock and training, machine pistols can be difficult to control for all but the best shooters. The Austrians introduced the world's first machine pistol, the ''Steyr Repetierpi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Submachine Guns
A submachine gun (SMG) is a magazine-fed, automatic carbine designed to fire handgun cartridges. The term "submachine gun" was coined by John T. Thompson, the inventor of the Thompson submachine gun, to describe its design concept as an automatic firearm with notably less firepower than a machine gun (hence the prefix " sub-"). As a machine gun must fire rifle cartridges to be classified as such, submachine guns are not considered machine guns. The submachine gun was developed during World War I (1914–1918) as a close quarter offensive weapon, mainly for trench raiding. At its peak during World War II (1939–1945), millions of SMGs were made for use by regular troops, clandestine commandos and partisans alike. After the war, new SMG designs appeared frequently.Military Small Arms Of The 20th Century. Ian Hogg & John Weeks. Krause Publications. 2000. p93 However, by the 1980s, SMG usage decreased. Today, submachine guns have been largely replaced by assault rifles, whic ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |