A lightweight FN-FAL chambered in 6.5 mm would be sweet.
A lightweight FN-FAL chambered in 6.5 mm would be sweet.
Just a little larger, if you please, to prevent hydrostatic lock of water in the barrel when immersed, and to provide a bullet with a little better stopping power. The Swedes never carried their 6,5mm M95 Mauser action rifles into battle, but the Finns used some in their 4-month civil war of 1918, during the 1939 *Winter War* [Talvisota] that followed the invasion of Finland by a million and a half Soviet troops, a half-million of whom were still alive to return home and lick their wounds once the Finnish Army and Civil Guard riflemen were done with them. The 6.5mm Swedish rifles were not thought to have particularly good stopping power, and something a bit larger was called for, though the m/1921 Swedish Browning Automatic Rifles were highly perized- as mine is.
The original 7mm/.280 cartridge developed for the British EM-2 and used in some of the early British FN-FALs during the development of their L1A1 version seems just the ticket; and the later .280/30, based on the bolt face/cartridge case rim dimensions of the US .30-06 and 7,62 NATO cartridge could be even better. But the NATO development was forced on the allies by US Army Ordnance, and it will do. That .280 [.276 true bullet diameter] loading remains a possibility not fully explored, and a SAW in that chambering would be an effective machine as well. The American .276 Pedersen cartridge originally intended to give John Garand's rifle design a 10-shot magazine capacity offered similar ballistics, though with a longer, .30-06 length cartridge meant to cycle through the Garand rifle's action. Shorten that case somewhere between the length of the 39mm Soviet M43 AK47 cartridge and the 51mm length of the 7,62 NATO round, and you'd be in business. The British .280/30 was 44mm long, just short enough to be usable in actions that handle the 5,56x45mm cartridge of the M16 or the Czech Vz58 7.62 cartridge.... -archy-/-