Ammunition sheets

Ammunition

Detailed profiles of the most widespread military and civilian cartridges: history, ballistics, pros/cons and weapons that adopt them.

14 cartridges

Full power

American full-power cartridge that served through two world wars: grandmother of the 7.62 NATO.

Full-power NATO standard cartridge: backbone of medium machine guns and precision rifles.

Next-generation U.S. Army cartridge with bi-metallic hybrid case: 80,000 psi to defeat modern body armor.

The most widespread pistol caliber in the world: NATO standard for handguns and submachine guns.

Heavy subsonic pistol caliber born for the Colt 1911: a symbol of American stopping power.

Magnum pistol cartridge developed for the Desert Eagle: the upper limit of what a semi-automatic pistol can handle.

NATO standard intermediate caliber: light, high-velocity, dominant in Western assault rifles since the 1980s.

Soviet answer to 5.56 NATO: bullet with destabilizing hollow tip, in service since 1974 with the AK-74.

Warsaw Pact intermediate caliber: the AK-47 round, the most produced rifle cartridge in history.

Chinese intermediate caliber developed to depend on neither NATO nor Warsaw Pact standards.

AR-15 cartridge optimized for suppressors and short barrels: same lower as 5.56, energy similar to 7.62×39.

Magnum caliber born in the 1980s for precision shooting beyond 1500 m.

Evolution of .338 Lapua optimized for heavy VLD bullets: the platform chosen for the new U.S. medium machine gun.

NATO standard anti-materiel cartridge: from WWI to today, the round of the heavy caliber.