Throughout the ages, "gun" has always been the most basic combat weapon in the hands of "soldiers". Along the track of their emergence, development and evolution, people can clearly see the tragic development history of human wars.

The ancestors of guns are Firegate guns, and the changes of rifles: Firegate guns, matchlock guns, revolver guns, flintstones, muskets and gatling guns-renju guns, crossbow rifles, machine guns, semi-automatic rifles, submachine guns and automatic rifles (assault rifles) may eventually be replaced by ideal individual combat weapons in the future.

1, early firearms

1) firearms before the birth of guns.

In A.D. 1 132, a military strategist in the Southern Song Dynasty invented a musket, which is the earliest tubular firearm in the world military history and can be called the originator of modern tubular firearms. By the end of the Southern Song Dynasty (1259), people in Shouchun Prefecture had created a musket, which used giant bamboo as the barrel and fired bullets (including black powder, ceramic tiles, broken iron, stones and so on). ). When detonating, the flame is ejected from the muzzle, and the bullet flies out, scattering and killing the opponent. This is the real origin of modern shotguns.

/kloc-in the 3rd century, gunpowder and metal-tube firearms were introduced into Europe from China, and muskets developed rapidly. /kloc-At the beginning of the 5th century, the Spanish invented the matchlock gun. Later, it was imitated by the Ming dynasty and called the bird spear. It was not until A.D. 1525 that the Italian Leonardo da Vinci invented the flint gun and gradually overcame the influence of climate. More importantly, it simplifies the shooting operation procedure, improves the shooting accuracy, and most importantly, it realizes instant firing at any time, which also lays the foundation for the improvement of firearms.

The invention of the afterloading gun was a major change in firearms in the19th century, which ended the 500-year history of rifle loading bullets from the muzzle with probes and was called "a new era of light weapons and infantry tactics" by some history books.

2, automatic machine guns

2) Gun before the invention of automatic principle

Before the invention of automatic principle, all guns were single-shot guns. 1860, American first revolver. The gun is also a single-shot gun, but it uses multiple barrels, and each barrel is loaded in advance. There is no need to load bullets from the outside when launching, but rely on the barrel to store ammunition. When launching, the bullets in several barrels are fired in turn. On the basis of the revolver gun, the revolver boring gun was invented after improvement-only one barrel was used, and the gun bore was rotated and aimed at the barrel by hand, which could be fired several times in succession, and the firing speed was much faster than that of the manual single-shot gun. In the Russian-Turkish War of 1877, the Turkish army opened fire with 30,000 revolvers, killing more than 30,000 Russian soldiers.

Rotary digging gun will not have the advantage of stopping firing because of misfire or gun jam, but it also has the disadvantages of low bore pressure, low muzzle velocity, short range and relatively large firepower and sound when firing.

Rotary boring guns and barrel guns are still produced and used today, that is, revolvers and multi-barrel machine guns.

However, it was German Paul Mao Se who dominated firearms for decades. He invented the first recoil gun with moving bolt, which opened up a new way for the automatic principle of firearms and became the basis of modern automatic firearms. Mauser guns are widely used all over the world, and China is one of the first countries to adopt and imitate Mao Se rifles.

Ma Keqin, known as the originator of automatic machine guns, opened a new era in the field of light weapons. In the Battle of the Somme, the Germans used the intensive firepower of Maccabee machine guns to annihilate more than 60,000 British troops in one day. The invention of Ma Keqin's automatic principle expanded the thinking for the research of other automatic weapons.

Thomson submachine gun is also the originator of automatic rifle. After the successful development in Ma Keqin, many people began to choose individual soldiers and lighter automatic firearms. Thomson created the great miracle of Thomson submachine gun during World War II, and it is still powerful today. No wonder banks panic and gangsters like to use it so much.

MP44 assault rifle was an advanced equipment in Germany during World War II, which was initially denied by Hitler. But this weapon is produced in secret. When Hitler asked the soldiers what they needed during an inspection, they all replied: MP43 was needed. Hitler made people bring this thing that he didn't even know, and the result was MP43 that he couldn't produce at the beginning. Later, after Hitler's test, MP43 was really good, and later it was changed to MP44 assault rifle. At that time, it was the only automatic weapon that fired bullets from Bolt rifles (the caliber of Bolt rifles was larger than that of automatic weapons (except machine guns)).

3) constantly updated automatic rifles

The first semi-automatic rifle was designed by Mexican general mondragon. The semi-automatic rifle that truly marks the end of the era of direct action rifle and the arrival of the era of automatic rifle is the M 1 Garland rifle developed by American John Nigel Garland. It took 30 years for the gun to be recognized by the US military and mounted side by side, becoming the first mounted rifle, which played an important role in World War II.

Carbine actually belongs to the rifle series. Its barrel is short and light, which can be said to be born because of the needs of cavalry, so some people call it a lance or carbine. pistol

Russian M 19 16 Fedoroff automatic rifle is one of the earliest automatic rifles in the world. One of the great contributions of American Browning automatic rifle is that after half a century, it inspired people to invent a single-soldier light machine gun or class automatic weapon that meets the requirements of modern warfare.

StG44 44, 1944 was named assault rifle, which is the first real assault rifle in the world. Later, the Soviet AK47 Kalashnikov assault rifle also stood out, and the influence of the AK47 rifle far exceeded that of the German StG44.

4) All kinds of assault rifles

Assault rifles are favored by countries all over the world because of their fierce firepower, light weight and small size. More than 90 countries in the world have adopted small-caliber assault rifles, among which the most typical assault rifles are Colt M 16A2 of the United States, AN-94 of Russia, TAR-2 1 of Israel, F2000 of Belgium and CR2 1 of South Africa. Among them, M 16A2 assault rifle is famous for its high firepower density and high precision, and it has made a big splash in the weapon comparison and evaluation of NATO standard bombs. In addition to equipping the US military, it is also sold to more than 50 countries around the world. The Russian-made An -94 assault rifle has an eye-catching backrest containing glass fiber, and adopts a double-row detachable 30-round magazine, which can realize two rounds of point fire, effectively enhancing the utilization rate of ammunition, and the shooting accuracy when standing for two rounds of point fire is higher than that of AK74 assault rifle 13 times. Israel's TAR-2 1 assault rifle adopts the general layout without support, which can flexibly replace barrels of different lengths to meet different requirements, thus forming its own gun family. The F2000 assault rifle has an independent fire control system, and it is said that it can even compete with the American ideal individual combat weapon (OICW).

In short, the evolution of rifles has never stopped. The successor weapon of the assault rifle is an ideal individual combat weapon, but it will take time for the ideal individual combat weapon to completely replace the assault rifle, because there are many key technologies to be broken through.

There are more and more kinds of weapons.

3. Firebolt rifle/single-shot rifle (representative: Remington 700): refers to the rifle that must be thrown by hand, or the rifle that throws the shell by pulling the shell with the bolt/manual rotation. It's called Bolt Rifle/Single-shot Rifle (it needs to be loaded manually, only one bullet can be loaded, Barrett M99 is single-shot).

4. Semi-automatic rifle (representative: Barrett M99): Most pistols are semi-automatic and rifles are semi-automatic. Semi-automatic refers to a semi-automatic rifle/pistol that automatically finishes shell throwing and loading without manual operation (in Chinese, it refers to pulling the trigger and firing without pulling the bolt, because after the bullet is fired, the automatic mechanism of the gun uses gunpowder gas to throw and load the bullet, but this needs to be controlled once and for all. So it's called semi-automatic, of course, if you keep pulling the trigger, it's just one shot)

Second, guns.

Fully automatic rifle/assault pistol (representative: AK47/ Glock 18): Fully automatic refers to a weapon that is completely automatically thrown and loaded, and can be fired continuously with only one control (that is, pulling the trigger). Most assault rifles are fully automatic. Glock 18 pistols are also fully automatic. As long as you keep pressing the trigger, you can keep playing. Semi-automatic means pulling the trigger once at a time and shooting one shot at a time. )

Sniper rifle: (stands for Cheytac M200 to intervene in sniper rifle): Sniper rifle refers to a special weapon with a special telescope (i.e. a sniper mirror) added to a rifle (semi-automatic/crossbow/single shot), which can strike long-distance targets. It's called a sniper rifle. Sniper rifles are divided into: general purpose, killing, anti-equipment, anti-tank/air defense and intervention. Generally speaking, it refers to a sniper rifle with a medium caliber bullet that does not exceed the maximum caliber of a general rifle, and it is almost planned to be 7.62 mm.

The weapon of destruction is a special purpose blocker. This is not much different from the general type, but the caliber is a little larger. AWM(L 1 15A3 is not AWP) is a 0.338 inch (over 8.6 mm) bullet. M200 is a special bullet with an inch of .408 (10.36MM), and its power can be well guaranteed at a distance of 2000m, ranging from .338 to .50.

Anti-equipment is used to destroy valuable affairs or light armour large caliber weapons, all of which are 0.50 inches (12.7MM), such as Barrett M 107, M8A 1.

Anti-tank/air defense sniper rifles have a large caliber, because they are classified as shells when they exceed 20MM, and many bullets exceed 20MM, which blurs many people's ideas. Croatia's RT 20 uses 20MM caliber bullets, which can be used for air defense. XM 109 adopts 25MM bullet, which is modified from 30MM high-explosive bomb of Apache helicopter. It is definitely ready for anti-armor. Of course, 25MM also blurs the concept of many people. This can be said to be a Grenade launcher with much higher range and accuracy.

Third, the role of war.

The Role of Gun Innovation in the Development of Army in19th Century

Guns and weapons19th century, the earliest major technological change that affected land warfare was the invention and application of fire caps. For centuries, the shooting action itself when using hand firearms on the battlefield is the most unreliable of all actions. This phenomenon was eliminated after the appearance of the fire cap. Flintstones fired about one out of every seven bullets, and they had to go blind. The application of fire caps has reduced the number of dud bullets to less than one per 200 rounds.

But the more revolutionary improvement is the cylindrical cone bullet, which makes the high-precision long-range rifle eventually replace the sliding hall gun with poor precision and short range and become the basic weapon of infantry. Before the invention of new bullets, rifles fired slower than muskets because it was difficult to load them. Due to the effect of gunpowder gas on the concave bottom of lead bullet, the bullet has the characteristics of expansion. The bullet is small and easy to load, but it expands after shooting and is tightly embedded in the rifle line of the barrel to obtain the maximum rotation speed and improve the accuracy and range.

If a musket wants to have the same shooting effect as a rifle, 200-step shooting costs twice as much bullets as the latter, 300-step shooting costs five times, and 400-step shooting costs at least 10 times. After more than 400 shooting steps, the musket has completely failed, and the rifle can also shoot large targets such as army formations from 800 yards away. At 1000 yards, the projectile also has enough terminal energy to penetrate four inches of soft pine.

Compared with any successive development of new weapon technology, rifles and conical bullets invented in 1850- 1860 have the most profound direct revolutionary influence. Even the high-explosive bombs, planes and tanks that appeared in the 20th century had less influence on contemporary times than rifles at that time. The main reason is that compared with artillery and cold weapons, the lethality of light weapons has suddenly increased, which means that every infantry with rifles has an artillery with the same effective range and maximum power, but hills or barren hills block the line of sight. In addition, artillery personnel are more vulnerable to infantry attacks.

Another feature of early firearms was breech loading, which was abandoned for a long time. /kloc-the science and technology of the 0/9th century freed it from the predicament of ancient inaction. Traditionally, the difficulty of breech weapon is that the metal part is not tightly filled and bonded, and the gas and flame produced by gunpowder combustion are ejected from the gap of breech. In order to adapt to the development of breech weapons in the19th century, the metal cartridge was finally invented, which integrated the projectile, gunpowder and fire cap. This kind of bullet is made of special soft metal such as copper, which will expand when heated after explosion, and can effectively seal the gas escaping backwards. The breech loading method enables the rifleman to load quickly so as not to stand or be exposed to enemy fire.

/kloc-the new metallurgy, chemistry and ballistics in the 0/9th century have finally made brilliant achievements in the development of artillery, especially heavy weapons. As for perfection, it was in the 20th century. Italy's Cavelli made the first "rifling gun" in 1846, which was also breeched, replacing the rotary rifle with a hovering hexagonal gun bore.

During the Italian War of 1859, it was proved that Charles Louis Napolé on Bonaparte's rifling gun was absolutely superior to Austrian muskets in range and accuracy, but most troops did not rely on muskets until the 1970s. Mainly because the smoothbore gun is cheaper and more reliable than the gun in the test. In fact, because the effective range of the new gun on the battlefield is limited by the gunner's field of vision, it is not really cost-effective to manufacture this new gun unless the observation distance can be greatly increased. In the American Civil War, both the North and the South used rifles and muskets, and both sides also liked the "Napoleon" gun with sliding bronze on the front. This kind of easy-to-use artillery is actually a 12-pound howitzer that has long been out of date in Europe and has a short life in the United States. Bronze is soft, which has always been a serious disadvantage. Only by combining new metallurgical technology with bore ballistics can people make use of the hardness and durability of steel.

The rifle itself is neither a product of new metallurgy nor a product of new ballistics, because the principle of increasing the accuracy and range of rifle line length has long been known. However, the development of line-bore weapons in the19th century largely benefited from the growth of the above two aspects of knowledge. With the improvement of technology and the appearance of metalworking machinery, the boring accuracy can be improved as never before, and rifle lines can be carved on the barrel. For centuries, making pistols has been the task of skilled ordnance division. Every weapon is a personal product, usually a work of art. The basic metal material for gun making is forged iron, and the process used is usually to tie or weld iron bars around the core tube. /kloc-In the 9th century, at Remington Gun Factory in new york, cast iron holes were first used to make barrels with blessing lines. The production equipment line was first developed by Remington Gun Factory, which is based on the principle of universal interchangeability of parts proposed by eli whitney and others at the beginning of this century. Using ballistic science, people tried to systematically test the new barrel weapons in this period, thus quickly accumulating and summarizing the knowledge about the characteristics of projectiles and other aspects.

Guns have undergone a profound technological revolution with combat weapons, with increased range, improved accuracy and accelerated firing rate. Obviously, corresponding reforms are needed in preparation, tactics and logistics support. Napoleon experienced a long period of stagnation, if not retrogression, in the establishment and tactics after developing the establishment of the army and divisions. In the famous conflicts of 18 15 and 1845, that is, the Russian-Turkish war (1828- 1829), the old infantry tactics used are obvious examples. The Russians abandoned Napoleon's tactics and the strategic principle of concentrating their forces. Similarly, French and British troops still insist on military parade training, which is not conducive to combat training.

The changes in the preparation and tactical adaptation of weapons are relatively slow, mostly because new weapons require the battlefield forces to be dispersed, and professional soldiers are understandably afraid that once dispersed, they will get out of control. Of course, the problem is that if a soldier is scattered to the enemy and it is difficult to find it, his commander will naturally find it difficult to observe it. If the middle-level commander fails to change tactical maneuvers to adapt to the clear and identifiable deployment of friendly forces, it will be very difficult and even annoying to cooperate with friendly neighbors. Therefore, if tactics are required to keep up with the development of weapons, it will involve another kind of industrial revolution, namely electricity and electronics.

In the military professional literature at that time, in the upper circles of military command departments of various countries, the discussion on the development of new weapons was quite thorough, and sometimes even fierce. But the main reason is that the battlefield is out of control. In the middle of this century, most professional soldiers did not agree to change the basic establishment and tactics, so the role of cavalry was not affected.

During the period of firearms, most of the troops, brigades and regiments in Europe and America were not basic tactical units, but divisions were standard organizational systems that were easy to manage and maneuver. The word "division" is not used strictly. Generally, it refers to a part of the front line or an infantry or artillery unit larger than a brigade, but it is still vague in scale.

There are division-level laws and regulations in Britain and America. In wartime, regiments can be organized into brigades or divisions at will, and then disbanded after the war. In peacetime, staff officers cannot be retained according to the number needed for expansion, so in wartime, staff officers often lack practical opportunities to perform serious tasks.

However, among the above-mentioned armed forces, there are also divisions and armies in peacetime, and their staffing and staffing are still naive according to modern standards. Although Prussia mainly focused on the establishment of the military level, it also made great progress in the construction of the General Staff. The armies of other countries fought against commanders, thinking that it was the privilege of commanders and war committees. The commander only asks the subordinate commanders for advice, not the staff officers. As Helmut von Mao Qi, the new Prussian Chief of Staff, said in 1864, this practice is no exception among Prussian commanders.

Theoretically, in all existing or expected armies, divisions are synthetic army units, mainly including infantry, artillery, cavalry, and sometimes engineering support units established or temporarily attached. Generally speaking, a division includes two brigades. The issue of operational support varies from country to country, even from division to division. In France and most other European countries, the strength of a combat division is usually no more than 5,000 and no less than 2,500. However, in Russia and Prussia, the strength of this division reached 12000, or even more. Therefore, the strength figures are not reliable. Even in some countries, the number of troops that strive to be fully equipped according to the documents or the establishment will be rapidly reduced due to illness, desertion, falling behind, combat casualties and other reasons, thus falling below the prescribed establishment. The most important conflicts in this period are the American-Mexican War (1846- 1848), the Crimean War (1854- 1856) and the American Civil War (181-kloc).

Gun Europe didn't actually pay attention to the Mexican war. Its main military significance lies in that a few US military officers at that time had a rare high military literacy and decisively defeated the much larger Mexican army.

Most of the lessons of the Crimean war are negative. There have been no drastic changes in weapons, equipment, organization and tactics, or even moderate changes. In fact, the tactical level of both sides is generally poor. At that time, I hardly realized that the weapon defense in the field fortifications was still effective, which was manifested in the siege of Sevastopol. The campaign lasted 12 months, and Britain and France fired 238 shells1042 rounds and 2587 artillery pieces. Large consumption and small achievements did not meet the military requirements at that time, and only aroused the interest of insiders in a short time.