2000 yards for a medium machine gun, not a rifle round. Also it was hoped; this seems to be a layout of priorities for a future design, not statement of what the current design is capable of. And yes it is likely the factor that led to the .270 being discarded. Any idea if the Taden Gun bullet was designed for longer ranges? The flat based S-12 bullet is clearly inappropriate for 1000 yards, let alone 2000.
Lots of unsupported statements here. The document referenced is an appendix to the Ideal Calibre Panel, which resulted in the development of the .270 (not the .280). Note that in the document it says that a 2,000 yard maximum range for the MMG will, they hope, allow a unified round. It is very likely, judging from context, that this led to the selection of Brig. Dixon's .280 over the .270. The .280 had a much heavier boattailed bullet (the S-12 load came later) in the 130-140 gr range (they tried multiple types).
I get the impression that the end result (at 1950 when the NATO tests started) is not something that matched what is laid out in the above page. Not having the book it's from to get an idea of the context of the quote, it's hard to actually discuss the document. Do you by any chance have the original British documents around the .280 development?
Hmmm, yes, it's tricky to have all the context without the relevant literature. Might be best to hold off your conclusions until you've read it.
I have many of the original documents, but not all in whole. I have the entire Ideal Calibre Panel report, which basically sketches out the .270.
Also the development of the .280 also needs to be understood in the context of US demands for performance, which went from a round that improved on the 7.92 Kurz (the round tested in 1950 by the US) to one trying to compete with the performance of the 7.62x51. So yeah it was a family, but largely driven by US demands for increased long range performance, which was the opposite for the lower powered version intended for the EM-2.
No, the .280 predated the joint US-UK effort. It was intended to improve on the 7.92 Kurz, yes - and one of the primary ways it would do that is by giving passable MMG performance. It's quite obvious that this was in the minds of those surrounding its development, as Brig Barlowe apparently thought the .280 would be a superior MMG round to the T65 as early as 1947!
The M1 Ball was invented after the testing in the link (says it was done in 1927) and relied on a redesigned bullet and improved military powder, which was effectively a different round that the stockpiles on hand by the 1930s.
Again, you're picture lacks a tremendous amount of context. .30-06 heavy ball loads were in development from 1919 on. .30 M1 Ball was standardized on October 24, 1925. So the real comparison was always between the .276 and M1 Ball.
Based on what you're saying the .276 was only considered because of the notion of only a 7mm or less round being viable for a self-loading rifle. As soon as it was proved otherwise they stuck with what they had instead. That doesn't necessarily speak to the advantage of the .30-06 cartridge, but again on production (easier to change the bullet and powder of a round already in production than totally overhaul the production system and have billions of unusable or less usable round in the midst of the Great Depression and budget cuts).
Production is everything. It is extremely difficult to change streams with ammunition. Nobody wanted to get rid of the .30 cal if they could help it; the .276 just wasn't considered enough of an advantage. MacArthur gets blamed for torching the .276, but he was just formalizing a decision that the Infantry Board had already made.
The page you posted seems to be a document laying out an idea for a round before it was developed, rather than the concepts evolving during the development of the round. Also the 2000 yards requirement was for a medium machine gun, not for a rifle.
Read it. It says it would be good for the MMG and all other small arms to use the same round. And yes, it's a part of the document that resulted in the creation of the .270. It seems it was felt that the .280 would provide better performance for the MMG so the (IMO technically superior) .270 was stillborn.
A flat based bullet used for the EM-2 and the 1950 NATO testing was clearly inappropriate for ranges up to 800 yards, especially with the powder loading they used; it is rather obvious that where the .280 ended up, with slightly more powder load than the 7.92 Kurz and a heavier flat based bullet, that it was optimized for ranges 500m or less.
Hey, do you realize that all early .30 T65 projectiles were flat-based too? And they could be as light as 113gr!
The US tests bore that out, assuming they weren't rigged, like they did when trying to prove the M16 inadequate. If you read the report they used Mann barrels for testing the accuracy that were adapted from existing .30 cal barrels. There's quite a bit in the set up they could have modified improperly. British testing did not support US results.
I doubt the US tests were rigged. Studler, for his faults, was actually a class act (albeit also a thorn in the side of the British). I don't think he'd stand for that kind of corruption if he was aware of it, and he tended to be very detail oriented.
Once Studler left, you started seeing evidence of test rigging.
Frankly, even British and Belgian tests show the British .280 loads were of substandard quality. It was primarily the FN-made loads that performed well, and the S-12 bullet - though sleek - was not really suitable for the military requirements of the time.
The primary problem appears to have been issues with the concentricity of the steel-cored projectiles. Even the US had this problem with their .30 T65. The FAL, too, appeared to exhibit some kind of differential influence on the rounds in the magazine, causing groups to walk. Aberdeen testers apparently got good accuracy results by single-loading the rifles.
Two different calibers, though that is only if you ignore the .45 caliber weapons used in WW2 and the fact that the .30 carbine round was different in every way than the .30-06 other than the caliber of the bullet.
The goal was always one caliber. Three was considered suboptimal.