A Century of Infantry Firepower: Guns Carried and Crewed from the Hotchkiss M1909 to the M250

The Hotchkiss M1909 was a light machine gun built by the French firm Hotchkiss et Cie, gas operated and air cooled, weighing about 12 kilograms and firing from a 30-round strip. It served British and French forces through both World Wars and was adopted by several other countries, with notable use mounted on tanks and with mounted cavalry in the Sinai and Palestine campaign of 1915 to 1917.

The Polish wz. 35 was a 7.92mm bolt-action anti-tank rifle fed from a four-round box magazine, designed by Jozef Maroszek and used in the 1939 Polish campaign. It was a top-secret project, kept hidden well enough that neither German nor Soviet intelligence knew of it before the war, and it later served with several Axis armies.

The French MAS-38 submachine gun was designed in the 1930s, after a small arms program begun between 1918 and 1922 and slowed by the cost of the Maginot Line. About 1,958 were built at Saint-Etienne before May 1940, and thousands more were made under German occupation and after the war.

The AA-52, or Arme Automatique Transformable Modèle 1952, was one of the first French firearms of the post-war era, built at Saint-Etienne and later adapted to the NATO 7.62x51mm cartridge. It lost the helicopter role to the Belgian FN MAG, yet large stocks keep it in use as a vehicle-mounted weapon.

Designed in Italy in 1959 by Domenico Salza, the BM59 took the American M1 Garand and rechambered it for the 7.62x51mm NATO cartridge, adding a detachable magazine and selective fire. It was also built under license in Indonesia and Nigeria and has stayed in service with some forces since its introduction.

The Mk 19 is a 40x53mm belt-fed automatic grenade launcher, developed during the Vietnam War as a fully automatic successor to the hand-cranked Mk 18. George M. Chinn is credited as its designer at the Naval Ordnance Station in Louisville, and it has been in United States service since 1968 and with about thirty other countries.

The Croatian RT-20, developed by Metallic in Rijeka in the mid-1990s, takes its name from Ručni Top 20, or Hand Cannon 20mm. It is a bolt-action bullpup holding a single 20mm round that must be reloaded after every shot, among the most powerful anti-materiel rifles in use by any country.

The Barrett M99, introduced in 1999, is a single-shot .50 BMG anti-materiel rifle in a bullpup layout, offered as a cheaper alternative to the maker's other rifles. It was marketed mainly to long-range target shooters, and in 2001 one shooter set a world record at 1,000 yards with a five-shot group of 4.09 inches.

The CheyTac Intervention is a bolt-action sniper and anti-materiel rifle built in the United States since 2001 and chambered for the purpose-built .408 or .375 Cheyenne Tactical cartridges. It is made for long-range precision, with sub-minute-of-angle accuracy to about 2,286 meters.

The M250 is a belt-fed light machine gun made by SIG Sauer for the United States Army under the Next Generation Squad Weapon program, chambered in 6.8x51mm and meant to replace the M249. It entered service in 2022, began fielding to combat units in March 2024 and was formally type classified in May 2025.