Early assault rifles repeatedly failed on the accuracy-recoil-caliber tradeoff

Evidence

By the end of WWI, it was clear that infantry needed a new weapon. Engineers endeavored to combine the portability of a rifle with the rapid-fire capabilities of existing machine guns. The first of what would become the “assault” rifle, the Russian Fedorov Avtomat, never went into mass production because the cartridges it used, pistol ammunition, were too low-powered to be accurate beyond a few hundred feet. The French Chauchat fared better, with roughly 250,000 rifles produced by the end of the war. But this gun used ammunition that was too powerful, making the recoil uncontrollable during automatic fire. The French Ribeyrolle 1918, the Danish Weibel M/1932, and the Greek EPK soon followed, all using newly developed intermediate-caliber ammunition and thus balancing the need for accuracy at several hundred yards with the need for minimal recoil and control. But these weapons were cumbersome and heavy, as was the American M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR). By 1942 the Germans introduced the MKb 42 (H) and the Stg 44. — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 503

Categorization

• XREF: The accuracy-power-control tradeoff mirrors animal weapons’ cost-benefit balancing act. — connects to: Bigger weapons usually fail because their costs outweigh their benefits; Balancing selection normally curbs weapon size until some lineages escape into runaway arms races — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 22

Related

• Weapon evolution is judged by competition among designs, not human survival (similarity 0.81)
• Bigger weapons usually fail because their costs outweigh their benefits (similarity 0.80)
• Ambush predators evolve large weapons because they strike rather than chase prey (similarity 0.79)
• Weapon size in animal species is under stabilizing selection, not open-ended directional selection (similarity 0.79)
• Balanced selection keeps most animal weapons modest rather than extreme. (similarity 0.79)
• Natural selection usually favors modest weapon size because cost offsets benefit (similarity 0.78)
• Balancing selection normally curbs weapon size until some lineages escape into runaway arms races (similarity 0.78)
• Markets and battlefields select among rifle designs like natural selection acts on weapons (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Bigger weapons usually fail because their costs outweigh their benefits #exemplifies (0.60)
• Balancing selection normally curbs weapon size until some lineages escape into runaway arms races #exemplifies (0.55) — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 22