How fast did weapons and ammo technology really advance and when did it happen?

BallisticsGuy

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Bisley match top scores from 1871-2019. Scores are the top shooter scores from the top scoring teams from each year.

Look what happens in 1919. People haven't been back from the war for a whole year and there was just a global flu pandemic that killed MILLIONS. At the same time as all that was going on, people were doing what people do: inventing.

Analysis:
After WW1 the big changes arrived on the market including a revolution in metallurgy, new chemistry leading to improved propellants and hugely more precise manufacturing techniques which relied less on humans and more on machines to get it right. After 1920 there's a long period of people learning how to use these new tools and to improve them even further. After 1960, there are only decimal points to refine. To this day there's not been a 100% clean score by a whole team but it'll happen in the next 10 years as computerization of manufacture and improved measuring resolution imprint their mark on technology.

This is why in 1900 talking about accurate predictable firing of rifles at small targets beyond naked eye range was discussed on the same level as magic. After WW1 it started to look like it wasn't just possible but things like sniping took on a menacing new level of power because it had come to pass. By the 1960's it was no longer silly to think of long range + small target precision engagement with rifles... heck, it was being done every day in Viet Nam. It was a little bit silly still for a couple more decades for the average Joe to think they might be able to do it. Not because it was impossible and not because it was so improbable as to be totally ludicrous but because it was really hard to do and normally really expensive to get there.

By the 1990's manufacturing technologies started seeing computerization infecting every facet of how things are made at large output scales and even at small scales with newer CNC machines that a small business could manage to get hold of and full computerization of processes in larger operations. After 2010 even newer computational technologies yet like AI, big data, on-demand scaling of computational clusters, machine learning and new electronic sensor technologies that are more and more precise enable more and more consistency while dropping the costs to what the common man can afford. Nowadays any yokel with about 600 bucks on them can put together a rifle that can reasonably be expected to hit a target of a size and distance that's not really visible to the naked eye.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Screen Shot 2020-03-28 at 9.05.49 AM.png


Now let's everyone put on our thinking caps and see if we can identify and then quantify other technological revolutions that have happened in the last 150 years and see if there is possibly an underlying relationship which might not otherwise be obvious.
 
When you focus on target shooting the consistency improves tremendously in 1920 and finally starts almost flatlining 80 years later. However, the bullets used by the hunter didn't improve until John Nosler invented the Nosler Partition bullet and started producing it for hunters who reload. Powder used was still primarily military grade in IMR 4831 and 4350. In good hunting round development I have always felt the bullet must be produced first with the appropriate propellant to follow. I believe that the flatlining we see in your illustration is in direct contrast to the bullet development during that period of time.
 
When you focus on target shooting the consistency improves tremendously in 1920 and finally starts almost flatlining 80 years later. However, the bullets used by the hunter didn't improve until John Nosler invented the Nosler Partition bullet and started producing it for hunters who reload. Powder used was still primarily military grade in IMR 4831 and 4350. In good hunting round development I have always felt the bullet must be produced first with the appropriate propellant to follow. I believe that the flatlining we see in your illustration is in direct contrast to the bullet development during that period of time.
Very astute observation. That might suggest that now that we're seeing such a long running surge in bullet technology advancement that the powder advancements we've seen more recently (new energetic compounds, adding de-coppering agents, better temperature stability, etc...) that we should see the rules/scoring/courses of fire of some games change in response and I would predict that if we don't see those changes then we'll prime the pump for every game to end up being a money race with negative consequences for participation numbers and an ever increasing dominance by selected teams of factory sponsored shooters. Kind of like what happened to NASCAR over the years.
 
Very astute observation. That might suggest that now that we're seeing such a long running surge in bullet technology advancement that the powder advancements we've seen more recently (new energetic compounds, adding de-coppering agents, better temperature stability, etc...) that we should see the rules/scoring/courses of fire of some games change in response and I would predict that if we don't see those changes then we'll prime the pump for every game to end up being a money race with negative consequences for participation numbers and an ever increasing dominance by selected teams of factory sponsored shooters. Kind of like what happened to NASCAR over the years.
You couldn't have said it better, as this is not only my observation but, conclusion as well.
 
The phone:) Shooting apps,GPS,digiscope for long shoots,ties to other shooting solutions.
 
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I think the quality of metal work and barrels has been great for 40+ years, but what really made the avg gun more accurate is the quality of stock to gun fit in the last 10 years and the lawyer triggers where replaced with much better triggers more so in last 6 years or so. Thats why $350 gun now shoot sub MOA
 
Thank you for your research and documentation . Very interesting reading .
In my opinion , from a hunter's , and steel-clanger's perspective , I think that the development of laser rangefinders with internal ballistics computers is the most recent noticeable step forward in long range shooting .

DMP25-06
 
#1 Smokeless Powders led to the largest advancements in the last 200 Years. Also of honorable mention are early Springfield 30-06 Hot Loads with M1 Ball targeting well over 1000 Yards, only duplicated by hand-loaders today. Varying Country's and umpteen platforms were at a similar level of technology at the time. The US Army was slow to adopt mainstream Sniper Tech often Exaggerated in Hollywood Movies about Vietnam. Any Conflict produces Propaganda Touting Hero's and accomplishments. IMO there is little accuracy and truths for the average layman. Yet one can read about real Snipers which in reality were rare and accomplished little more than Civil War Era Marksman. The largest hurdle in the Gun Industry "Technology" is shaking out of date Tech. For example Consumers today widely purchase products lackluster in performance compared to many WW1 Cartridges.
 
Along these same lines Formula 1 race cars are now ruled by $$$. The change since 1990 when a competent mechanic could build a competitive car to now when it takes a 300 million a year team to be sort of competitive. The technology is amazing but about as attainable as space flight. Who would have thought that a motor could turn 24,000 rpm?
I don't want gun control by ridiculous pricing to be the wave of the future.

When you see what Barrett and Sig get for the new military weapons it is worrying.
 
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So, to collate we have the following as atomic groups. It has to be said that there are innumerable feedback loops among the several broad categories. It might be useful to ignore feedback loops but I think that just like with any complex developmental process, decoupling any part of it for the sake of argument is likely to lead to large misunderstandings.

Location technologies (GPS, powerful laser rangefinders, digital mapping)
Metallurgy (steels, aluminum alloys, exotic alloys, improved cast-ability)
Machining technology (multi-axis CNC, ultra precision computerized measuring/dimensioning)
External ballistics engines (digital ballistic calculators, newer ballistic models, novel mathematical functions)
Computation engines (portable digital personal computers)
Powder technology (new energetic materials, sensitizers/desensitizers, copper removers)
Bullet (and bullet development) technology (shapes, materials, computerized drag modeling, high definition Doppler radar)

I will go so far as to assert that the particle physics discoveries of the 1890's with Dalton's discovery of the electron up to about 1917 with Bohr's atomic model fueled a decades long renaissance in chemistry which has persisted to today but after an initial burst of innovation has slowed pretty remarkably, as one would expect. Gunpowder, primers, alloys and such improved directly as a result but I don't think that this was the real powerhouse that gave us a doubling of scores around 1920.

I would futher assert that machining technology generally is the keystone to all the others being pushed very far at all because it is the only thing in the chain that shows true evolutionary progress. By that I mean that one generation of machine tools is used to literally make the next which normally would be expected to produce growing imprecision over the decades through tolerance stacking (which is why mutationists are laughed at in the study of biological evolution) but because the machine tools that are made by earlier machine tools actually benefit from ancillary developments of other technologies like high precision measuring tools so the child machine tool has inherited mutations ( what we would call improvements in hindsight) over previous generations which increase its fitness. Feedback loops like this are very powerful things in nature.

Those 2 things alone would be enough to see us get to where we were in the 1960's but it wasn't until computers got cheap enough in the latter part of the 1970's that they started invading every facet of life that we finally crossed the tipping point of technology-sourced consistency that meant that Joe Sixpack (or Joe Exotic depending on taste and proclivities) would be able to run off to Walmart and scoop up a rifle and scope for less than a week's pay, then go out and shoot farther than he can see with the naked eye with enough accuracy and repeatability to make old timers shake their fists in the air and mutter about how it used to cost him a month's pay to get a rifle that was 1/3 as capable.

That'd be fine except for 2 things. First, machining precision isn't an all or nothing game. Sample size matters. You don't have to make EVERY part perfect, just at least 1. The other is that I think @Gone Ballistic is really right: Historically bullets appear to get markedly better and then powders and guns themselves catch up or at least move forward. No better bullets, no need to innovate anything else since bullets are the thing that has to be the most perfect.

You are now free to hurl the chairs about.
 
So, to collate we have the following as atomic groups. It has to be said that there are innumerable feedback loops among the several broad categories. It might be useful to ignore feedback loops but I think that just like with any complex developmental process, decoupling any part of it for the sake of argument is likely to lead to large misunderstandings.

Location technologies (GPS, powerful laser rangefinders, digital mapping)
Metallurgy (steels, aluminum alloys, exotic alloys, improved cast-ability)
Machining technology (multi-axis CNC, ultra precision computerized measuring/dimensioning)
External ballistics engines (digital ballistic calculators, newer ballistic models, novel mathematical functions)
Computation engines (portable digital personal computers)
Powder technology (new energetic materials, sensitizers/desensitizers, copper removers)
Bullet (and bullet development) technology (shapes, materials, computerized drag modeling, high definition Doppler radar)

I will go so far as to assert that the particle physics discoveries of the 1890's with Dalton's discovery of the electron up to about 1917 with Bohr's atomic model fueled a decades long renaissance in chemistry which has persisted to today but after an initial burst of innovation has slowed pretty remarkably, as one would expect. Gunpowder, primers, alloys and such improved directly as a result but I don't think that this was the real powerhouse that gave us a doubling of scores around 1920.

I would futher assert that machining technology generally is the keystone to all the others being pushed very far at all because it is the only thing in the chain that shows true evolutionary progress. By that I mean that one generation of machine tools is used to literally make the next which normally would be expected to produce growing imprecision over the decades through tolerance stacking (which is why mutationists are laughed at in the study of biological evolution) but because the machine tools that are made by earlier machine tools actually benefit from ancillary developments of other technologies like high precision measuring tools so the child machine tool has inherited mutations ( what we would call improvements in hindsight) over previous generations which increase its fitness. Feedback loops like this are very powerful things in nature.

Those 2 things alone would be enough to see us get to where we were in the 1960's but it wasn't until computers got cheap enough in the latter part of the 1970's that they started invading every facet of life that we finally crossed the tipping point of technology-sourced consistency that meant that Joe Sixpack (or Joe Exotic depending on taste and proclivities) would be able to run off to Walmart and scoop up a rifle and scope for less than a week's pay, then go out and shoot farther than he can see with the naked eye with enough accuracy and repeatability to make old timers shake their fists in the air and mutter about how it used to cost him a month's pay to get a rifle that was 1/3 as capable.

That'd be fine except for 2 things. First, machining precision isn't an all or nothing game. Sample size matters. You don't have to make EVERY part perfect, just at least 1. The other is that I think @Gone Ballistic is really right: Historically bullets appear to get markedly better and then powders and guns themselves catch up or at least move forward. No better bullets, no need to innovate anything else since bullets are the thing that has to be the most perfect.

You are now free to hurl the chairs about.

Wow, great post.

I wish that guys like you would post more
 
Wow, great post.

I wish that guys like you would post more
2 things... 1, Not everyone agrees but, thank you very much for the kind compliment! and 2, I'm just assuming that that was not sarcasm. It must be known that I do not have the natural facility for detecting sarcasm as they don't use it on my home planet.
 
2 things... 1, Not everyone agrees but, thank you very much for the kind compliment! and 2, I'm just assuming that that was not sarcasm. It must be known that I do not have the natural facility for detecting sarcasm as they don't use it on my home planet.

No my friend, no sarcasm intended!

With so much crap and opinion posted here, it's great to hear from someone who uses facts and knows what he's talking about
 
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