What are the recent calibres?

P

Pond James Pond

New member
Particularly, but not limited to, handguns if there are some interesting stories to tell, but what are the more recent commercially available calibres out there?

I mean calibres for which big name manufacturers provide guns for.

I ask this because I recently learnt that the 9mm was actually developed long before its more famous guns used in WWII, and things like the 10mm, recently featured in a thread, had seemed like a relatively new release when in fact it goes back over 30 years!!

So have there been any more recent offerings that have made it into the commercial arena, or are predicted to?
 
223WSSM
50 S and W
6.5 creedmore
17 HMR
Winchester short mags
remington utra mags
ruger compact mags
458 lott
6.5-284 norma

mostly repetitive junk not really needed
 
Depends what you call recent, recent as in last 10 years, or last 50?

Quite a few of the popular hunting rounds were invented after WW2, I'd call that recent. But then you get the list above and the likes of 204 Ruger and 50 Beowulf, they are comparatively very very new cartridges.

Although in the cases of 260 Rem and 7mm 08, they are both pretty new cartridges, but have probably existed in wildcat form for quite a while.
 
In handgun calibers, the .45GAP and .500 S&W Magnum are the only things that springs to mind. The .40 S&W, .357 Sig, and even the 10mm were also developed within the not-so-distant past, but they've all been around for quite a while, now.
 
In handguns, don't forget about the .460 S&W Magnum.

The FN 5.7x28mm* can also arguably be included; although it was initially designed and introduced in the early 1990's, IIRC FNH did not make any attempt to market civilian-friendly (i.e. non-AP) rounds or the accompanying commercial guns until the early 2000's.

If rifles count, I'd argue that the most successful recent rifle cartridge is the .300 AAC Blackout / .300 Whisper. Another contender is the 6.8 Remington SPC.

*Let's not discuss this cartridge further; I don't want to rehash the Seven Obligatory Things That Must Be Mentioned In Every 5.7x28 Thread yet again. :p
 
(posted without looking at other responses first...)

357 Sig
40 S&W
10mm
45 GAP
50AE

That's all I can come up with from memory - now time to check my score!
 
If rifles count, I'd argue that the most successful recent rifle cartridge is the .300 AAC Blackout / .300 Whisper. Another contender is the 6.8 Remington SPC.
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That is ironically backwards. The .300 Blackout is just the .300 Whisper of the 1980's, and that was based on the .30/5.56 wildcat that early 3Gun shooters were attempting to introduce as a dodge around rules allowing only .30. The intent was to exclude the M16 as it was in very low regard. Once accepted, tho, it came to dominate the sport for very good reasons.

But the .30/5.56 - .300 Whisper languished for nearly 30 years. In the meantime the 6.8 and 6.5 were separately created, the first by Special Forces and the AMU, the second as a long range precision shooting wildcat adopted by Alexander Arms and re-engineered. If anything, the first is just a .30 Remington necked down to .270, the second the 7.62x39 necked down to .264.

AAC picked up the .300 Whisper ten years after both had been introduced and established on the market. They are both much more successful as barrels, bolts, and ammo are widely available, and both are highly popular with hunters and shooters who go after live game.

The .300 BO isn't considered a good long distance round, with similar ballistics to the .30-30 or 7.62x39 because it begins losing a lot of velocity and dropping. Not too many talk about it for hunting use, what does come up is building pistols with wrist braces for PDW use or suppressed at close range, it's actual intended purpose by AAC. And that means adding an $800 surcharge for the suppressor.

While it may be inexpensive to assemble and lots of threads talk about building one, there is very little traffic yet about using them in the field. It's a range toy, not much considered for actual hunting and defense when the other two cartridges have been selling purpose built rifles for a decade already.

The .300BO also has to compete against it's origins - and there are those who hunt with 5.56 out to 400m, whereas the .300BO is limited to 250. While it may be a topic of hot interest at the moment, overall, the history as a wildcat is old, extensive, and marked with a lot of disinterest by the general public and those who would have used it in the AR if it was any good. The 5.56 in cheap military surplus does their job better.

There is the largest obstacle with bringing out a new cartridge these days, the middle ground is pretty full of existing and well rounded ones that pretty much fit all the normal working niches. What we see in the lists above are at the extremes, or for unusual purposes, either magnums or sub -.22's, suppressed or limited range. A newer cartridge has to actually do something better - like have 50% more power than the traditional round in the same gun, or double the effective range.

Being a cheap wildcat doesn't make it a great cartridge, which is why so many fall by the wayside and stop being produced.
 
carguychris said:
If rifles count, I'd argue that the most successful recent rifle cartridge is the .300 AAC Blackout / .300 Whisper. Another contender is the 6.8 Remington SPC.
tirod said:
That is ironically backwards.
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There's a reason I said most successful rather than best, and deliberately worded my post ambiguously. :) FWIW I didn't intend to suggest that .300 AAC Blackout is in any way superior to 6.8 SPC.

My assertion is based solely on a very non-scientific survey of local gun shop clerks regarding which cartridge sells better and which they personally like better, in that order. IOW it's based on local market conditions and I expect there's a lot of personal bias involved.

I'm considering building an AR, but I don't know much about the non-5.56 rounds, and I don't want to invest in something that's going to disappear next week- hence the informal survey.

One of these surveys was answered with a lengthy diatribe explaining why I need to forget about both and proceed directly to .458 SOCOM. :rolleyes:

BTW I actually agree with you on the technical merits, but I don't intend to start a lengthy thread jack re: AR cartridges.

YMMV and caveat emptor.
 
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Cartridge development is at a standstill

Has been for decades. Remington introduced their Electronic ignition system a decade back. FAIL
Caseless was introduced, but hasn't caught on. FAIL
Gyrojet ammo was developed and failed. Well, because it was worthless.
The .30-06 has been king of the hill for over a hundred years now. I don't know what it will take to change that.
 
.32 NAA
.25 NAA
.400 Corbon

And, lest we forget; the .257 Special (I was just reading about Magnum Wheel Man's squirrel gun; most impressive :cool:.).

Oops, that last one isn't (yet, anyway) commercially available.

W.
 
I have NO BUSINESS entering this one, cause I'm barely a rifle guy! :p

Nosler recently brought out the ".26 Nosler" rifle round.

The .17 HMR is not really very old, and it spawned the .17HM2, or "Mach 2." While the .17HMR is (roughly) a .22 Magnum case necked down to .17 caliber, the .17HM2 is a smaller version, instead (roughly) necked down from the .22LR.

In handguns, the newest would indeed have to be the .22TCM, for which there is only one handgun available (see footnote), the .22 MicroMag from Rock Island Armory. Imagine a slightly lengthened 9mm case... necked down in to a stubby bottleneck rock that contains a stubby .22cal jacketed slug. The bullet is similar in weight to the very familiar .224" rifle slugs, but it's quite different in shape/profile. I believe (and will be corrected by someone swiftly here on TFL! :D) that you can expect ballistics that approach, but don't quite match the FN5.7x28 round. But perhaps the true genius in the .22 MicroMag pistol is that it's a 1911 pistol (mostly!) that utilizes a double stack magazine. And with merely a barrel swap and a quick extractor swap (both of which are included in the purchase of gun), now you are shooting a double-stack 9mm chambered 1911 pistol.

*The RIA MicroMag pistol is the only handgun chambered for this round but the creator of the round and the entire idea is an American designer named Fred Craig who will also build custom .22TCM pistols in his own shop that will be a cut above the production guns.

The .327 Federal is fairly recent and it's simply a lengthened .32 H&R Mag that runs basically TWICE the peak pressure. In fact, the .327 Federal runs a higher pressure than almost -ALL- known handgun-specific calibers except for the .454, .460 and .500 Magnum monster calibers. The .327 runs a max of .45k PSI while most handgun rounds run from a low of 17k PSI (.38 Spl) to a high of 37.5k (10mm Auto) and most "high performance" handgun rounds (9mm, .40 S&W, .357/.41/.44 Mag) run 35-36k PSI.

I have argued a bit in the past that the .327 Federal is a -modern- version of the .30 Carbine. It uses a rimmed, straight wall case, a bullet of VERY similar weight and very similar diameter, it runs just 5k PSI higher and it utilizes handgun-specific bullets instead of rifle slugs. It produces similar velocity & energy figures and it's -FAR- easier to work with in a handgun.
 
Many of the new rounds are really just experimental rounds wildcatters had been working on for years. The big companies see a niche where they can sell a few guns and adopt the ideas others have been experimenting with.
 
Yep, what jmr40 said... good example is the .300-.221 Fireball, not commercialized as the .300 AAC Blackout, mentioned above as new.

So, do you mean something on the order of, SAAMI-spec'd and a commercial success occurring within the last 25 years, regardless of prior wildcatting? Something like that?

Someone mentioned .17 Hummer. Don't forget .17 Mach 2 (rimfire), .17 WSM (rimfire), .17 Mach IV (centerfire), .17 Hornady Hornet (centerfire), and .17 Remington Fireball (centerfire). I believe all of those just became commercially-successful (if they are - arguably), within the last 20 years.
 
Mr Pond, let me note here and now for all you newcomers---whippersnappers we call 'em here in the States--- thirty years in the gun/ammunition line is all of maybe three weeks ago as we speak. The guns and cartridges introduced in 1873 were great then and are doing quite excellently now as we speak !
The next milestone here might be the 30-'03 , now known as the 30'06., but it is a copy of the German 7.9MM rifle cartridge etc etc etc etc etc...................etc. I could go on and own but suggest you but this book;
CARTRIDGES OF THE WORLD.
And so it goes...
 
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