12.7×108mm

The 12.7×108mm is a Soviet heavy machine gun and anti-materiel cartridge developed from 1934, conceived as an answer to two contemporaries: Germany’s 13.2mm TuF anti-tank rifle round and the American .50 Browning Machine Gun cartridge, 12.7×99mm. It occupies the same role as the NATO .50 BMG round it parallels, differing mainly in a slightly longer case, larger case capacity and a different bullet shape and weight, and it remains in service across former Soviet states and several other countries, including China, Iran and North Korea.

Its service roles have run from vehicle-mounted and anti-aircraft heavy machine guns to heavy sniping rifles, and its loadings have included armour-piercing incendiary alongside dedicated sniper loadings.

As a round developed for Soviet military service, the 12.7×108mm has never been assigned a C.I.P. or SAAMI dimensional standard, and no free technical drawing equivalent to those civilian standards was found for it. Every case dimension and load figure on this page is drawn from Wikipedia’s own infobox, uncited there, and recorded as estimated; two of its three published loads state only a velocity range rather than a single figure, and the midpoint of each range is recorded here with the range itself noted alongside it.