Rate of Fire - Overview

Overview

Note that both generation of heat (leading to weapon failure) and exhaustion of the weapon's ammunition mean that most automatic weapons are unlikely ever to sustain their cyclic rate of fire for a full minute; thus, it is technically incorrect and potentially misleading to describe RPM as "the number of rounds a weapon can fire in one minute."

For manually operated weapons such as bolt-action rifles or artillery pieces, the rate of fire is governed primarily by the training of the operator or crew, within some mechanical limitations. Rate of fire may also be affected by ergonomic factors. For rifles, ease-of-use features such as the design of the bolt or magazine release can affect the rate of fire. For artillery pieces, a gun on a towed mount can usually achieve a higher rate of fire than the same weapon mounted within the cramped confines of a tank or self-propelled gun. This is because the crew operating in the open can move more freely and can stack ammunition where it is most convenient. Inside a vehicle, ammunition storage may not be optimized for fast handling due to other design constraints, and crew movement may be constricted.

For automatic weapons such as machine guns, the rate of fire is primarily a mechanical property.

Over time, weapons have attained higher rates of fire. A small infantry unit armed with modern assault rifles and machine guns can generate more firepower than much larger units equipped with older weapons. Over the past century, this increased firepower is due almost entirely to the higher rate of fire of modern weapons.

A good past example of growth in rate of fire would be the enormous advantage of the Maxim machine gun, which provided accurate and steady fire. This was due to technological advances in the field of material cooling.