Originally Posted by
KineticDiplomat
I have to agree with Mike G here. Every now and again someone will go run a Picatinny test on musket or blackpowder rifle, clamping it in place with a bench and adjusting it to a perfect angle for a given range, and find out it can hit targets at far, far beyond the historical record. They will typically conclude "aha, they must have shot farther than we thought" or "it was just dumb leaders who didn't realize you could shoot that far."
They almost inevitability look stupefied when they hear that soldiers who shoot reasonably frequently, using easy to handle weapons with very flat trajectories and low recoil, smokeless powder with consistently manufactured rounds, often with a combat optic, firing from a prone position on a range, are far from guaranteed to hit a man sized target at 300 meters. And that many support troops, who despite being undertrained by modern standards, still fire far more practice rounds than a redcoat or civil war draftee, can struggle to consistently hit beyond 150 meters or so.
The next step is they blame modern weapon design, usually on the idea "well, the US/Russians/Whoever designed them to fight at under two hundred meters and optimized for that." Which, while true, ignores the actual ballistics. Which is to say the comparatively small rounds of modern assault rifles do tend to have a substantially degraded flight after six hundred meters or so (whereas you can expect a modern hunting caliber to reliably go out much further), but that within those six hundred meters they have trajectories that are very easy to shoot. Because no one wants to mess with working on range holds and bullet drop mechanics in a firefight; they want shooting to be "get ight picture, squeeze trigger, the same way at 100 meters as it is at 300". Compared to the NATO 5.56 or RU 7.62x39, blackpowder weapons look like you're lobbing a catapult.
The final argument usually goes: "but formations were BIG targets", which is true. But most people don't miss left-right. They miss under-over. A problem which is definitely exacerbated by fat slow bullets on loping trajectories. And formations are still man height, though they do have a larger hazard area for near overshoots can create a beaten zone which hits rear ranks.