When we talk about "upgrades" to military systems over time we generally see weight added and not taken away. From Bradley Fighting Vehicles to Chinook helicopters this seems to be the general trend in Army equipment.
With small arms it seems to be similar, at least post WWII (prior to WWII weapons were clearly getting smaller and lighter such as Gew98 to K98).
If you go M16 to M16A1 to M16A2 to M16A4 it's a steady increase in weight per upgrade. From M4 to M4A1 SOPMOD is also an increase. (The M4 is a weird case where it was sold to the military as a modification of an existing system, then defended in patent court as a novel product, so I'm considering it a new adoption instead of a weight reduction of the M16).
The M14 to EBR gained weight.
What we gained with each weight increase is a range advantage over the previous version (A1 to A2) or an accuracy increase (A2 to A4). In the case of the M4 you don't gain range, but we gained reliability in terms of heat mitigation.
Even foreign upgrades to the M1 Garand added weight (Italian BM59 added a fraction of a pound).
The only exceptions to this that I can think of are ComBlock "paratrooper" AKs where the wood stock was replaced with lighter folding stocks, although that didn't do anything for accuracy.
Now with the weight increases, we've also seen a price decrease (in small arms, definitely not the BFV or Chinook). It seems to be easier to build a more reliable heavier rifle than a lighter less accurate rifle once you are modifying a production line than setting one up.
Does anyone know of a standard infantry rifle in use by any NATO member (or what we generally think of as "western" such as Switzerland, Finland, or Sweden) that did not gain weight over time?
Jimro
With small arms it seems to be similar, at least post WWII (prior to WWII weapons were clearly getting smaller and lighter such as Gew98 to K98).
If you go M16 to M16A1 to M16A2 to M16A4 it's a steady increase in weight per upgrade. From M4 to M4A1 SOPMOD is also an increase. (The M4 is a weird case where it was sold to the military as a modification of an existing system, then defended in patent court as a novel product, so I'm considering it a new adoption instead of a weight reduction of the M16).
The M14 to EBR gained weight.
What we gained with each weight increase is a range advantage over the previous version (A1 to A2) or an accuracy increase (A2 to A4). In the case of the M4 you don't gain range, but we gained reliability in terms of heat mitigation.
Even foreign upgrades to the M1 Garand added weight (Italian BM59 added a fraction of a pound).
The only exceptions to this that I can think of are ComBlock "paratrooper" AKs where the wood stock was replaced with lighter folding stocks, although that didn't do anything for accuracy.
Now with the weight increases, we've also seen a price decrease (in small arms, definitely not the BFV or Chinook). It seems to be easier to build a more reliable heavier rifle than a lighter less accurate rifle once you are modifying a production line than setting one up.
Does anyone know of a standard infantry rifle in use by any NATO member (or what we generally think of as "western" such as Switzerland, Finland, or Sweden) that did not gain weight over time?
Jimro