Battle rifle

A battle rifle is a military service rifle that is fed ammunition via a detachable magazine and fires a full-powered rifle cartridge.[1] The term "battle rifle" was created largely out of a need to better differentiate the intermediate-power assault rifles (e.g. StG-44, AK-47, M16, AUG) from full-powered automatic rifles (e.g. FG 42, FN FAL, M14, H&K G3) as both classes of firearms have a similar appearance and share many of the same features such as detachable magazines, pistol grips, etc.[2]

Cold War battle rifles
Belgian FN FAL
West German Heckler & Koch G3 (Norwegian AG-3 shown)
American M14

This term may also describe older military full-powered semi-automatic rifles such as the Fedorov Avtomat, M1 Garand, SVT-40, Gewehr 43, FN Model 1949, and the MAS-49.[3][4] Before the 1980s and 1990s, the term was not well defined and was used as a general description for all types of military rifles.

List of battle rifles
Main article: List of battle rifles

See also

References
  1. Charles Karwan (December 1999). "Military Guns Of The Century". Guns Magazine. Archived from the original on 2012-07-12.
  2. Zabecki, David T. (28 October 2014). Germany at War: 400 Years of Military History [4 volumes]: 400 Years of Military History. ABC-CLIO. p. 644. ISBN 978-1-59884-981-3. Since World War II, Battle Rifle is the term given to standard infantry weapons that fire full-sized rifle cartridges in either semiautomatic or automatic mode.
  3. Tilstra, Russell C. (21 March 2014). The Battle Rifle: Development and Use Since World War II. McFarland. pp. 2–6. ISBN 978-1-4766-1564-6.
  4. Taylor, Chuck (1996). Fighting Rifle. Boulder, Colorado: Paladin Press. p. 4. ISBN 978-0-87364-297-2.
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