A fully powered cartridge, also called full-power cartridge or full-size cartridge, is an umbrella term describing any rifle cartridge that emphasizes ballistic performance and single-shot accuracy, with little or no thought to its weight or recoil. They often have a caliber comparable to or greater than 7.5 mm (0.30 in) and a maximum effective range of at least 800 m (870 yd),[1] and are intended for engaging targets (largegame animals) beyond 300 m (330 yd). However, cartridges with calibers as narrow as 6.5 mm (0.26 in) have been described as being a full-power rifle cartridge.[by whom?][citation needed] The term generally refers to traditional cartridges used in machine guns and bolt action and semi-automatic service rifles and select firebattle rifles prior to, during, and immediately after the World Wars and into the early Cold War era,[2] and was a retronym originally made to differentiate from intermediate-power rifle cartridges that gained widespread adoption into military service after World War II.
In the first half of the 20th century, the practice of civilian sportsmen experimenting and modifying existing cartridges to suit different ballistic needs, known as "wildcatting", really took off, and the result was the number of newly available cartridges exploded from a couple of dozen to well over one hundred. Having dozens of different cartridges all with unique dimensions was a headache for rifle manufacturers, and still wanting to reach the widest consumer market possible, they had to find a way to economically produce rifles that could be adapted to accept every chambering on the market. While barrels could be custom-made affordably, actions required more time, complex machining, and were thus expensive to make, so it made sense to produce the rifle action's dimensions so that a few standardized lengths could reliably use most (if not all) of the cartridges on the market.[6]
The so-called "standard length" cartridges are traditional rifle cartridges with a cartridge overall length (COL) between 2.81 to 3.34 in (71.4 to 84.8 mm), which is best exemplified by the .30-06 Springfield. Most of today's long-action cartridges had their cases designed around .30-06 Springfield's case dimensions, such as the .270 Winchester, .280 Remington, .35 Whelen, .264 Winchester Magnum, and 7mm Remington Magnum, as well as much newer cartridges like the .26 Nosler and .28 Nosler.[7]
The .308 Winchester debuted in 1952 and its militarized version, the 7.62×51mm NATO, was adopted by the U.S. military in 1954 for the new M14 rifle. By the 1960s, it had displaced the .30-06 Springfield as the popular cartridge in both the hunting fields and in the battlefields. With a much shorter COL of 2.8 in (71 mm) and using the improved propellants available in the 1950s, it could do nearly everything traditional military rifle cartridges did, such as the .30-06 Springfield, but was cheaper to make, lighter in weight, more compact in size, and had lower recoil energy. More importantly, while the .30-06 has produced roughly a dozen wildcat cartridges, only the .270 Winchester and the .25-06 Remington enjoyed widespread commercial support; in contrast, the .308 Winchester served as the parent case for the wildcat .243 Winchester, .260 Remington, 7mm-08 Remington, .338 Federal, and .358 Winchester, all five of which are used by hunters to this day. The result was a new series of short-action cartridges, typically with a COL between 2.3 to 2.8 in (58.4 to 71.1 mm), that tend to use bullets of different calibers, rather than using a wide variety of the same caliber to achieve the same ballistic effect.[6]
The success of short-action cartridges led to the original and longer "standard length" cartridges to be retronymously named long-action cartridges. The intermediate cartridges, which later gained ubiquity over the short-action cartridges as the mainstream service ammunition for both military assault rifles and civilian modern sporting rifles, have a COL averaging around 2.36 in (59.9 mm), much less than 2.8 in (71 mm), and are thus also sometimes referred to as the super short-action or "mini-action" cartridges.[8]
List of Full power cartridges
Service cartridges
Service cartridges are cartridges the service rifles of armies were or are chambered for.
