.416 Barrett
| .416 Barrett | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Type | Rifle | |||||||
| Place of origin | United States | |||||||
| Production history | ||||||||
| Designer | Chris Barrett and Pete Forras | |||||||
| Designed | 2005 | |||||||
| Specifications | ||||||||
| Bullet diameter | .416 in (10.6 mm) | |||||||
| Neck diameter | .465 in (11.8 mm) | |||||||
| Shoulder diameter | .732 in (18.6 mm) | |||||||
| Base diameter | .797 in (20.2 mm) | |||||||
| Case length | 3.27 in (83 mm) | |||||||
| Overall length | 4.58 in (116 mm) | |||||||
| Case capacity | 200 gr H2O (13 cm3) | |||||||
| Ballistic performance | ||||||||
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The .416 Barrett or 10.6×83mm centerfire rifle cartridge is a proprietary bottlenecked centrefire rifle cartridge designed in 2005. It is an alternative to the .50 BMG in long-range high-power rifles. It was designed in response to a request for a medium/heavy rifle/cartridge combination that was issued from Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane Division in late 2004. Its metric size is 10.6×83mm.
The Barrett .416 cartridge was designed by Chris Barrett, son of Ronnie Barrett, with the help of Pete Forras. The bullet was designed using some NACA low-supersonic-drag equations to design the shape.
The cartridge was designed as an improvement to the .50 BMG cartridge, a common machine-gun and rifle cartridge. It is similar to a wildcatted .50 BMG case, shortened to 3.27 inches (83 mm) and necked down to accept a .416 caliber, 398-grain (25.8 g) projectile; it is however of proprietary dimension. Because the two cartridges, the .50 BMG and .416 Barrett, have identical base dimensions, all that is needed to convert a rifle to use one or the other cartridge is a relatively quick barrel swap.
The Barrett Model 99 was initially the only commercially available rifle using the cartridge. In 2009, Zel Custom Manufacturing released the Tactilite .416 Barrett upper for AR-style rifles and there is now a range of options available from several manufacturers: Bohica Arms now have a bolt-action, single-shot AR-15 upper receiver conversion available in .416 Barrett, Noreen rifles makes a rifle in .416 Barrett, as does Desert Tactical Arms - and Barrett themselves now also has a .416 Barrett option for its semi-automatic M82A1.
The use of a lighter, narrower bullet results in a significantly higher muzzle velocity and superior ballistic performance to the .50 BMG, and the .416 Barrett is claimed to retain more energy than the .50 BMG at distances over 1,000 yards. Barrett claims that this cartridge is capable of propelling a 398 gr solid brass boattail spitzer bullet out of the 32-inch (810 mm) barrel of a Model 99 single-shot rifle at 960 m/s (3150 ft/s), giving it a ballistic coefficient of .720, and keeping the projectile supersonic out to 1,737 metres (1,900 yards).
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