.280 Enfield...Ahead of its time

[Tony Williams]

Either way, whether we look at shifting emerging European alliances, or the NATO/ISAF experience in Central Asia, there is a perceived need for a cartridge like the .280 Enfield, which is close to its legacy battle rifle cartridges in performance, but offers more mag capacity in its original form with the smaller case head diameter.

The mag capacity with .280 was the same as with 7.62x51 because the case diameter was the same on all versions. Only the rim diameter was fractionally smaller on the early versions, but it would be hard to spot the difference.