.280 Enfield...Ahead of its time

[stanc]

I've been re-reading Dugelby's EM-2 Concept and Design and the only reason which the US gave for rejecting the EM-2 rifle was that it wasn't ambidextrous. Well, there are lots of different ways to achieve ambidextrous bullpups, so they could have designed their own.

Well, if it was that easy, then the Brits should have designed the EM-2 to be ambidextrous.

Personally, I doubt that was the real reason for the US rejection. The US Army just doesn't seem to like the bullpup concept...for rifles, anyway. The M60 GPMG was a semi-bullpup.

Garand did develop a bullpup in the same time frame as the EM-2, but it didn't go anywhere, either.

The plain fact is that just as there was only one way to achieve the US Army's requirement for a 2,000 yard performance matching the .30'06 in a lightweight automatic weapon (i.e. by reducing the calibre), there was also only one way to achieve the requirement for a rifle with such long-range performance that was also compact enough to replace an SMG (i.e. a bullpup).

Any serious attempt to meet the US Army's requirements inevitably led to a reduced-calibre bullpup - nothing else stood a chance of ticking all the boxes. If they didn't want to drop below .30 cal and didn't want a bullpup, they should have come up with a different set of requirements.

Hey, I agree with all that. I just disagree that the .280 British was the answer. It wasn't the best option then (as you noted, the .270 British w/high-BC bullet would've been much better), and there are better alternatives now.

I also am not enamored of short, fat cartridges for machine guns, if only because it makes a belt of linked rounds longer than necessary.