What defines a "Battle Rifle"?

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Quiet

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What is the definition of a "Battle Rifle"?
I always assumed that it was a semi-automatic military service rifle that does not use a reduced power cartridge, but I noticed that a post about the FN49 got moved to Milsurp.

There's a lot of interesting battle rifles beyond the M14/M305. Theres the FN49, FN-FAL, AR10, M1 Rifle, BM-59, Johnson, AG42, AVS, SVT-38, SVT-40, MAS44, MAS49 & 49/56, Gew 41, G43/K43, HK91/G3/CETME, Stgw 57, Type 64, ZH 29... Any more I forgot?
 
K98, Lee-Enfields, Springfield 1903/1903A3, Moisin-Nagant, Arisaka, M-16, etc, etc. Battle rifles are not just semi-autos. Any rifle issued to the PBI is a battle rifle.
 
There were so many posts at the time that they had to put the M14S/M305 into the main battle rifle forum, which it took over.
 
I would say any rifle that is made, specifically to be used in all weather conditions, by day and by night in all terrains, which has ease of loading, and immediate actions drills. A rifle that is intended to be used for sustained firing but light enough to be carried and operated by a single soldier.
 
Quiet said:
But the Norinco 305 is?
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A Modern Chinese Reproduction of the Springfield M14, just like the KKW Mauser .22 rifle made by Norinco (A Modern Chinese Reproduction of the Mauser Trainer) . Is it a Battle Rifle or a Wanna-Be Battle Rifle? That is the question?
 
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In my mind, the term "battle rifle" refers primarily to a set of technological features that represent their place in the evolution of firearms and the evolving role of the military service rifle.

They are semi-automatic rifles that represent the transition period between the standard bolt action military rifles of the world wars and the widespread acceptance of the assault rifle concept. They are a compromise that reflects the struggle between the proponents of the the marksmanship tradition versus the proponents of massed firepower. What I find interesting is how much development was going on during that period and the wide variety of designs and combinations of features that were being experimented with.

The earlier rifles such as the M1 and SVT-40 were designed more like their bolt-action contemporaries. They were long, heavy, had conventional wooden stocks, low capacity fixed magazines designed to be re-charged with clips and were expensive to produce with many intricate machined parts. They were designed to be used in conjuction with existing supplies of older bolt-action rifles designs of the same caliber.

In the immediate post-war period, true assault rifles were already in existence but conservatively designed battle rifles adopted some of their characteristics.
The communist-aligned designs in production such as the SKS, rasheed and VZ52 still retained conventinal wood stocks, semi-auto only capability and the low capacity fixed magazines but utilized the reduced power assault rifle cartridges.
In the West, the move was towards high firepower with large capacity detachable magazines and basically useless full-auto capability because they remained chambered for heavy-recoiling full-powered rifle cartridges. The M14, FN-FAL, G3, Stgw-57 represent this category of battle rifle.

All of the battle rifle designs became obsolete and eventually replaced by higher-capacity select-fire assault rifles chambered in 7.62x39 or 5.56.

Thats my view of what the battle rifle was. I tend to consider commercial copies in the same general evolutionary category as the parent military design.
 
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