Weapon Research

Weapons

Now that with this information I can add this knowledge to my artwork. I shall now begin to take my research into weaponary and see how through the ages the human race has continued to create weapons designed entirely to kill.

A weapon is a tool or instrument used in order to inflict damage or bring harm to living beings, artificial structures, or systems. In human society, weapons are used to increase efficiency of activities such as hunting, crime, law enforcement, and warfare.
Weapons are employed individually or collectively. A weapon can be either expressly designed as such or be an item re-purposed through use (example, hitting someone with a hammer). Their form can range from simple implements such as clubs to modern implementations such as intercontinental ballistic missiles and biological weapons. Weapon development has progressed from early wood or stone clubs through revolutions in metalworking (swords, maces, etc.) and gunpowder (guns, cannon), electronics and nuclear technology.
In a broader context, weapons may be anything used to gain a strategic or mental advantage over an adversary on land, sea, air, or even outer space or virtual space.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapons

Prehistoric

Very simple weapon use has been observed among chimpanzees, leading to speculation that early hominids began their first use of weapons as early as five million years ago. These would have been wooden clubs, spears, and unshaped stones—none of which would leave an unambiguous record.

Some of the earliest unambiguous weapons were throwing sticks and spears dated to more than 300,000 years ago. The Schöninger Speere, eight wooden throwing spears from the Lower Paleolithic era, are thought to be the earliest known example of weapons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapons



Ancient and classical

Ancient weapons were evolutionary improvements of late neolithic implements, but significant improvements in materials and crafting techniques created a series of revolutions in military technology:
The development of metal tools, beginning with copper during the Copper Age (about 3,300 BC) and followed shortly by bronze led to the Bronze Age sword and similar weapons.
The first defensive structures and fortifications appeared in the Bronze Age, indicating an increased need for security. Weapons designed to breach fortifications followed soon after, for example the battering ram was in use by 2500 BC.

Although early Iron Age swords were not superior to their bronze predecessors, once iron-working developed - around 1200 BC in Sub-Saharan Africa, iron began to be used widely in weapon production because iron ore was much more readily available than the copper and tin required to create bronze.
Domestication of the horse and widespread use of spoked wheels by ca. 2000 BC, led to the light, horse-drawn chariot. The mobility provided by chariots were important during this era. Spoke-wheeled chariot usage peaked around 1300 BC and then declined, ceasing to be militarily relevant by the 4th century BC.

Ships built as weapons or warships such as the Triremes were in use by the 7th century BC. These ships were eventually replaced by larger ships by the 4th century BC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapons

Middle Ages

Warfare during the middle ages was dominated by elite groups of knights supported by massed infantry. They were involved in mobile combat and sieges which involved various siege weapons and tactics. Knights on horseback developed tactics for charging with lances providing an impact on the enemy formations and then drawing more practical weapons (such as swords) once they entered into the melee. Whereas infantry, in the age before structured formations, relied on cheap, sturdy weapons such as spears and billhooks in close combat and bows from a distance. As armies became more professional their equipment was standardized and infantry transitioned to pikes in conjunction with smaller side-arms (short sword).
In Eastern and Middle Eastern warfare similar tactics were developed independent of European influences.
The introduction of gunpowder from the Far East at the end of this period revolutionized warfare. Formations of musketeers, protected by pikemen came to dominate open battles, and the cannon replaced the trebuchet as the dominant siege weapon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapons

Early Modern

The European Renaissance marked the beginning of the implementation of firearms in western warfare. Guns and rockets were introduced to the battlefield.
Firearms are qualitatively different from earlier weapons because they release energy from combustible propellants such as gunpowder, rather than from a counter-weight or spring. This energy is released very rapidly and can be replicated without much effort by the user. Therefore even early firearms such as the arquebus were much more powerful than human-powered weapons. Firearms became increasingly important and effective during the 16th century to 19th century, with progressive improvements in ignition mechanisms followed by revolutionary changes in ammunition handling and propellant. During the U.S. Civil War various technologies including the machine gun and ironclad warship emerged that would be recognizable and useful military weapons today, particularly in limited conflicts. In the 19th century warship propulsion changed from sail power to fossil fuel-powered steam engines.

The age of edged weapons ended abruptly just before World War I with rifled artillery. This single invention caused a Revolution in Military Affairs and established tactics and doctrine that are still in use today.
An important feature of industrial age warfare was technological escalation. The technological escalation during World War I was profound, producing armed aircraft and tanks.
This continued in the inter-war period (between WW I and WW II) with continuous evolution of all weapon systems by all major industrial powers. Many modern military weapons, particularly ground-based ones, are relatively minor improvements of weapon systems developed during World War II.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapons

Modern

Since the mid-18th century North American French-Indian war through the beginning of the 20th century, human-powered weapons were reduced from the primary weaponry of the battlefield yielding to gunpowder-based weaponry. Sometimes referred to as the "Age of Rifles", this period was characterized by the development of firearms for infantry and cannons for support, as well as the beginnings of mechanized weapons such as the machine gun, the tank and the wide introduction of aircraft into warfare, including naval warfare with the introduction of the aircraft carriers.
World War I marked the entry of fully industrialized warfare as well as weapons of mass destruction (e.g. chemical and biological), and weapons were developed quickly to meet wartime needs. Above all it promised to the military commanders the independence from the horse and the resurgence in maneuver warfare through extensive use of motor vehicles. The changes that these military technologies underwent before and during the Second World War were evolutionary, but defined the development for the rest of the century.
World War II however, perhaps marked the most frantic period of weapons development in the history of humanity. Massive numbers of new designs and concepts were fielded, and all existing technologies were improved between 1939 and 1945. The most powerful weapon invented during this period was the atomic bomb, however many more weapons influenced the world in different ways.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapons

Nuclear age and beyond

Since the realization of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), the nuclear option of all-out war is no longer considered a survivable scenario. During the Cold War in the years following World War II, both the United States and the former Soviet Union engaged in a nuclear arms race. Each country and their allied blocks continually attempted to out-develop each other in the field of nuclear armaments. Once the joint technological capabilities reached the point of being able to ensure the destruction of the entire planet (see Mutually Assured Destruction) then a new tactic had to be developed. With this realization, armaments development funding shifted back to primarily sponsoring the development of conventional arms technologies for support of limited wars rather than nuclear war.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapons

Firearms

A firearm is a weapon that launches one or more projectiles at high velocity through confined burning of a propellant. This subsonic burning process is technically known as deflagration, as opposed to supersonic combustion known as a detonation. In older firearms, the propellant was typically black powder, but modern firearms use smokeless powder or other propellants. Most modern firearms have rifled barrels to impart spin to the projectile for improved flight stability.

History of the firearm

The earliest depiction of a firearm is a sculpture from a cave in Sichuan, China. The sculpture dates to the 12th century and is of a figure carrying a vase-shaped bombard, with flames and a cannonball coming out of it. The oldest surviving gun, made of bronze, has been dated to 1288 because it was discovered at a site in modern-day Acheng District, Heilongjiang, China, where the Yuan Shi records that battles were fought at that time.
The firearm had a 6.9 inch barrel of a 1 inch diameter, a 2.6 inch chamber for the gunpowder and a socket for the firearm's handle. It is 13.4 inches long and 7.8 pounds without the handle, which would have been made of wood.

The Europeans, Arabs, and Koreans all obtained firearms in the 14th century. The Turks, Iranians, and Indians all had firearms no later than the 15th century, in each case directly or indirectly from the Europeans.The Japanese did not acquire firearms until the 16th century, and then from the Portuguese rather than the Chinese.
The development behind firearms accelerated during the 1800s and 1900s. Breech-loading became more or less a universal standard for the reloading of most hand-held firearms and continues to be so with some notable exceptions, such as mortars. Instead of loading individual rounds into weapons, magazines holding multiple munitions were adopted.

Automatic and semi-automatic firing mechanisms meant that a single soldier could fire many more rounds in a minute than a vintage weapon could fire over the course of a battle. Polymers and alloys in firearm construction made weaponry progressively lighter and thus easier to deploy. Ammunition changed over the centuries from simple metallic ball-shaped projectiles that rattled down the barrel to bullets and cartridges manufactured to high tolerances. Especially in the past century has particular attention been devoted to accuracy and sighting to make firearms altogether far more accurate than ever before. More than any single factor though, firearms have proliferated due to the advent of mass production - enabling arms manufacturers to produce large quantities of weaponry to a consistent standard.
That said, the basic principle behind firearm operation remains unchanged to this day. A musket of several centuries ago is still similar in principle to a modern-day assault rifle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearm

Handguns

The smallest of all small arms is the handgun. There are three common types of handguns: single-shot pistols, revolvers, and semi-automatic pistols.
Revolvers have a number of firing chambers in a revolving cylinder; each chamber in the cylinder is loaded with a single cartridge. Semi-automatic pistols have a single fixed firing chamber machined into the rear of the barrel, and a magazine, usually removable, so they can be used to fire more than one round. This is opposed to "double-action" revolvers which accomplish the same end using a mechanical action linked to the trigger pull. The British firearms firm Webley & Scott also made an "automatic revolver" around the turn of the 20th century.

Handguns differ from rifles and shotguns in that they are smaller, lack a shoulder stock are usually chambered for less-powerful cartridges, and are designed to be fired with one or two hands. While the term "pistol" can be properly used to describe any handgun.
The term "automatic pistol" is sometimes used and is somewhat misleading in that the term 'automatic' does not refer to the firing mechanism, but rather the reloading mechanism. When fired, an automatic pistol uses recoil and/or propellant gases to automatically extract the spent cartridge and insert a fresh one from a magazine. Usually the firing mechanism is automatically cocked as well. An automatic pistol fires one shot per trigger pull, unlike an automatic firearm such as a machine gun, which fires as long as the trigger is held down and there are unspent cartridges in the chamber or magazine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearm

Rifles

Rifles are the successors of the smoothbore firearms known as muskets. A rifle has a rifled barrel that fires single bullets. Rifles have a very small impact area but a long range and high accuracy.

They are commonly used for hunting and often to defend a home or place of business. Usually, large game are hunted with rifles.

There are a variety of types of rifles based on the method they are reloaded. Bolt-action and lever-action rifles are manually operated. Manipulation of the bolt or the lever causes the spent cartridge to be removed, the firing mechanism recocked, and a fresh cartridge inserted. These two types of action are almost exclusively used by rifles. Slide-action rifles and shotguns are manually cycled by shuttling the foregrip of the firearm back and forth.

Rifles also come in break-action varieties that do not have any kind of reloading mechanism at all but must be hand-loaded after each shot. Rifles come in single- and double-barreled varieties; however due to the expense and difficulty of manufacturing, double-barreled rifles are rare. Double-barreled rifles are typically intended for African big-game hunts where the animals are dangerous, ranges are short, and speed is of the essence. Very large and powerful calibers are normal for these firearms.

In military use, bolt-action rifles with high-power scopes are common as sniper rifles, however by the Korean War the traditional bolt-action and semi-automatic rifles used by infantrymen had been supplemented by select-fire designs known as "automatic rifles".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearm

Carbines

A carbine is a firearm similar to a rifle in form and intended usage, but generally shorter or smaller than the typical "full-size" hunting or battle rifle of similar time period, and sometimes using a smaller or less-powerful cartridge. Carbines were and are typically used by members of the military in roles that are expected to engage in combat, but where a full-size rifle would be an impediment to the primary duties of that soldier.

Carbines are also common among civilian and law enforcement where similar size, space and/or power concerns may exist. Carbines, like rifles, can be single-shot, repeating-action, semi-automatic or select-fire/fully automatic, generally depending on the time period and intended market. Common historical examples include the Winchester Model 1892, Lee-Enfield "Jungle Carbine", Mauser K98 Kurz, SKS, M1 Carbine and M4 Carbine. Modern U.S. civilian carbines include compact customizations of the AR-15, the Ruger Mini-14, Beretta Cx4, Kel-Tec SUB-2000, bolt-action rifles generally falling under the specifications of a scout rifle, and aftermarket conversion kits for popular pistols including the M1911 and Glock models
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearm

Submachine Guns

A submachine gun is a magazine-fed firearm, usually smaller than other automatic firearms, that fires pistol-caliber ammunition; for this reason submachine guns are also commonly called machine pistols, especially when referring to handgun-sized designs such as the Škorpion vz. 61 and Glock 18C. Well-known examples are the Israeli Uzi and Heckler & Koch MP5 which use the 9×19mm Parabellum cartridge, and the American Thompson submachine gun which fires .45 ACP. Because of their small size and limited projectile penetration compared to high-power rifle rounds, submachine guns are commonly favored by military, paramilitary and police forces for close-quarters engagements such as inside buildings, in urban areas or in trench complexes.

Submachine guns were originally about the size of carbines. Because they fire pistol ammunition, they have limited long-range use, but in close combat can be used in fully automatic in a controllable manner due to the lighter recoil of the pistol ammunition. They are also extremely inexpensive and simple to build in time of war, enabling a nation to quickly arm its military. In the latter half of the 20th century, submachine guns were being miniaturized to the point of being only slightly larger than some large handguns.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearm