Ammunition is a generic military term meaning (the assembly of) a projectile and its propellant. It is derived through French from the Latin munire, to provide. Ammunition for rifles and handguns are usually bullets, while large caliber guns such as artillery fire shells. The ammunition for shotguns is called shot.
The design of the ammunition is determined by its purpose; anti-personnel ammunition is often designed to break up or tumble inside the target, in order to maximize the damage done. Anti-personnel shells contain shrapnel and are designed to explode in mid-air, so its fragments will spread over a large area.
(add some info about other types of ammunition)
Popular types of military rifle and machine-gun ammunition include 5.45mm[?], 5.56mm and 7.62mm caliber. Main battle tanks use KE-penetrators to combat other MBTs and armoured fighting vehicles, and HE-Frag (High Explosive-Fragmentation) for soft targets[?] such as infantry.
(Below is an outdated text from 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica. It should be rewritten and moved to a history page IMHO.)
The components of ammunition intended for rifles and ordnance may be divided into (a) explosives and propellants, (b) projectiles of all kinds, and (c) cartridges. The military classification of explosives differs somewhat from that of the Explosives Act 1875, but, broadly speaking, they are divided into two
groups. The first of these comprises explosives in bulk,
made-up cartridges for cannon, and filled quick-firing
cartridges; Group II contains small-arm cartridges, fuzes,
primers, tubes, filled shells (fuzed or unfuzed), &c. Each
group is subdivided, and arrangements are made for storing
certain divisions of Group I in a magazine in separate
compartments. All the divisions of Group II are, and the
remaining divisions of Group I (comprising wet gun-cotton, picric
acid and Q.F. cartridges) may be, stored in ammunition stores.
These general conditions apply to the storage of ammunition in
fortresses[?]. Here the positions for the magazine and ammunition
stores are so chosen as to afford the best means of protection
from an enemy's fire. Huge earth parapets cover these
buildings, which are further strengthened, where possible,
by traverses protecting the entrances. For the purpose of
filling, emptying and examining cannon cartridges and shell,
a laboratory is generally provided at some distance from the
magazine. The various stores for explosives are classified
into those under magazine conditions (viz. magazines,
laboratories and cartridge stores) and those with which these
restrictions need not be observed (viz. ammunition and shell
stores). The interior walls of a magazine are lined and
the floors laid so that there may be no exposed iron or
steel. At the entrance there is a lobby or barrier, inside
which persons about to enter the magazine change their clothes
for a special suit, and their boots for a pair made without
nails. In an ammunition or shell store these precautions need
not be taken except where the shell store and the adjacent
cartridge store have a common entrance; persons entering may
do so in their ordinary clothes. A large work may have a
main magazine and several subsidiary magazines, from which the
stock of cartridges is renewed in the cartridge stores attached
to each group of guns or in the expense cartridge stores and
cartridge recesses. The same applies to main ammunition stores
which supply the shell stores, expense stores and recesses.
The supply of ammunition may be divided roughly into (a)
that for guns forming the movable armament, (b) that for
guns placed in permanent positions. The movable armament will
consist of guns and howitzers of small and medium calibre,
and it is necessary to arrange suitable expense cartridge
stores and shell stores close to the available
positions. They can generally be constructed to form part
of the permanent work in the projected face of traverses
or other strong formations, and should be arranged for a
twenty-four hours' supply of ammunition. These stores are
refilled from the main magazine every night under cover of
darkness. Light railways join the various positions. The
guns mounted in permanent emplacements are divided into
groups of two or three guns each, and usually each group
will require but one calibre of ammunition. A cartridge
store, shell store and a general store, all well ventilated,
are arranged for the especial service of such a group of
guns. In the cartridge store the cylinders containing the
cartridges are so placed and labelled that the required
charge, whether reduced or full, can be immediately selected.
In the shell store also for the same reason the common shell
are separated from the armour-piercing or shrapnel. Each
nature of projectile is painted in a distinctive manner
to render identification easy. The fuzes, tubes, &c., are
placed in the general store with the tools and accessories
belonging to the guns. The gun group is distinguished by
some letter and the guns of the group by numerals; thus,
A/1 is number one gun of group A. The magazine and shell stores
are also indicated by the group letter, and so that mistakes,
even by those unaccustomed to the fort, may be avoided,
the passages are pointed out by finger posts and direction
boards. For the immediate service of each gun a few cartridges
and projectiles are stored in small receptacles -- called
cartridge and shell recesses respectively -- built in the
parapet as near the gun position as practicable. In some
cases a limited number of projectiles may be placed close
underneath the parapet if this is conveniently situated
near the breech of the gun and not exposed to hostile fire.
In order to supply the ammunition sufficiently rapidly for
the efficient service of modern guns, hydraulic, electric
or hand-power hoists are employed to raise the cartridges
and shell from the cartridge store and shell store to the
gun floor, whence they are transferred to a derrick or
loading tray attached to the mounting for loading the gun.
Projectiles for B.L. guns above 6-inch calibre are stored in
shell stores ready filled and fuzed standing on their bases,
except shrapnel and high-explosive shell, which are fuzed only
when about to be used. Smaller sizes of shells are laid on
their sides in layers, each layer pointing in the opposite
direction to the one below to prevent injury to the driving
bands. Cartridges are stored in brass corrugated cases
or in zinc cylinders. The corrugated cases are stacked in
layers in the magazine with the mouth of the case towards
a passage between the stacks, so that it can be opened and
the cartridges removed and transferred to a leather case
when required for transport to the gun. Cylinders are
stacked, when possible, vertically one above the other.
The charges are sent to the gun in these cylinders, and
provision is made for the rapid removal of the empty cylinders.
The number and nature of rounds allotted to any fortress
depends on questions of policy and location, the degrees
of resistance the nature of the works and personnel
could reasonably be expected to give, and finally on
the nature of the armament. That is to say, for guns of
large calibre three hundred to four hundred rounds per gun
might be sufficient, while for light Q.F. guns it might
amount to one thousand or more rounds per gun. (A. G. H.)
Supply of ammunition in the field.
With every successive improvement in military arms there has
necessarily been a corresponding modification in the method
of supplying ammunition and in the quantity required to be
supplied. When hand-to-hand weapons were the principal
implements of battle, there was, of course, no such need,
but even in the middle ages the archers and crossbowmen had
to replenish the shafts and bolts expended in action, and
during a siege stone bullets of great size, as well as heavy
arrows, were freely used. The missiles of those days were,
however, interchangeable, and at the battle of Towton (1461)
the commander of the Yorkist archers, by inducing the enemy
to waste his arrows, secured a double supply of ammunition
for his own men. This interchangeability of war material
was even possible for many centuries after the invention of
firearms. At the battle of Liegnitz in 1760 a general
officer was specially commissioned by Frederick the Great
to pack up and send away, for Prussian use, all the muskets
and ammunition left on the field of battle by the defeated
Austrians. Captured material is, of course, utilized whenever
possible, at the present time, and in the Chino-Japanese War
the Japanese went so far as to prepare beforehand spare parts
for the Chinese guns they expected to capture (Wei-Hai-Wei,
1895), but it is rare to find a modern army trusting to
captures for arms and ammunition; almost the only instance
of the practice is that of the Chilean civil war of 1891,
in which the army of one belligerent was almost totally
dependent upon this means of replenishing stores of arms and
cartridges. But what was possible with weapons of comparatively
rough make is no longer to be thought of in the case of
modern arms. The Lee-Metford bullet of .303 inch diameter
can scarcely be used in a rifle of smaller calibre, and
in general the minute accuracy of parts in modern weapons
makes interchangeability almost impossible. Further, owing
to the rapidity with which, in modern arms, ammunition is
expended, and the fact that, as battles are fought at longer
ranges than formerly, more shots have to be fired in order
to inflict heavy losses, it is necessary that the reserves
of ammunition should be as close as possible to the troops
who have to use them. This was always the case even with
the older firearms, as, owing to the great weight of the
ammunition, the soldier could carry but few rounds on his
person. Nevertheless it is only within the past seventy years
that there has grown up the elaborate system of ammunition
supply which now prevails in all regularly organized
armies. That which is described in the present article is the
British, as laid down in the official Combined Training
(1905) and other manuals. The new system designed for stronger
divisions, and others, vary only in details and nomenclature.
