There are many types of weapons and ammunition used by armed forces across the world. However, they can be broken down into a few basic categories:
Individual and light support weapons: These include assault weapons such as rifles which can also feature an underslung grenade launcher, or a sidearm pistol.
Sniper rifles: These fulfil a vital role on the battlefield in terms of intelligence-gathering, target identification and eliminating high-value targets. They fire rounds that are accurate between 600m and 2000m. The most powerful and accurate of these are semi-automatic sharpshooter rifles.
Belt-fed machine guns: These range from lightweight to heavy large calibre machine guns which can be deployed on a tripod in the field or mounted on a vehicle.
Combat Shotgun: A semi-automatic, tubular magazine-fed weapon that fires a 12-gauge (18.4mm) cartridge. Firing solid shot its range is around 130m while buckshot range is around 40m.
Mortars: Indirect fire weapons which are capable of accurate, high explosive, smoke and illuminating rounds out to a range of around 5600m.
Grenade machine guns: These combine the fast rate of fire of assault rifles or machine guns with the fragmentation fire power of mortar ammunition. They can deliver an accurate and continuous fire of grenades against enemy personnel and lightly armoured vehicles.
Guided weapons: These include anti-tank weapons which are designed to destroy light-armoured vehicles as well as tanks. Its integrated sight allows the operator to acquire a target, lock-on to it, fire and ‘forget’, meaning that as soon as the missile is launched the firer can acquire another target or move position.
The Next-generation light anti-tank weapon (NLAW): This is said to be the first short-range, easy to use anti-tank missile that strikes from above. It also has night vision capability and is designed to be used and accurate in all climates, atmospheric conditions and environments.