A recent article by NAVYLOOKOUT claimed that the elderly .50 Browning Machine Gun cartridge "is one of the few rifle cartridges that can boast a ballistic coefficient of 1.0" (the undefined coefficient is G1),which is technically true as there are high ballistic coefficient bullets available for that cartridge but their increased length and weight reduces muzzle velocity resulting in inferior performance at typical combat ranges but superior performance in the extreme long range target shooting competitions for which they are designed,which is why most military projectiles have a far lower ballistic coefficient but higher muzzle velocity resulting in external ballistics inferior to those of the Three Eights Inch Machine Gun proposed herein,which shall also be lighter and faster firing than the Browning Machine Gun.
The article also claims that "if we fire enough shells toward the predicted intercept point, one or some of them will, statistically, wind up being close enough to be effective. This argues for smaller caliber projectiles that can be fired quickly and in large numbers." but a missile flying at twice the speed of sound moves over two hundred yards in the time it takes a 57mm Bofors Mark 3 gun to fire a single shot and thus the firing of each round is a discrete event and since a smaller calibre projectile has a lower sectional density for any given form factor it decelerates more quickly,takes longer to cover any distance and consequently suffers more drop due to gravity requiring a higher trajectory with a longer flight path and longer time of flight,allowing the target more time to manoeuvre away from the point of detonation,a problem exacerbated by the smaller effective radius of the smaller shell,resulting in a lower kill probability,thus the conclusion that "if we’re trying to shoot down an anti-ship missile, we need small, light, very rapid fire guns" is the very opposite of the truth.
