[paisawalla]

I think this is yet another area where large budgets and low accountability creates "innovation" primarily in how to spend public money. Large police and military budgets create incentives for manufacturers to innovate away from the standard and introduce "high performance" proprietary form factors.

In some cases a new round size/weight does actually produce better performance for the desired application. In many cases, IMO, those advantages are academic and achieved in highly controlled environments, i.e. they are nullified by the high variability of other factors, in real world situations. I am just an enthusiast and not any kind of professional though.

[sigstoat]

> Large police and military budgets create incentives for manufacturers to innovate away from the standard and introduce "high performance" proprietary form factors.

extremely few of the calibers out there have ever seen military/LE use, and fewer of them started out with military/LE use.

[paisawalla]

If you're considering the full history of ammunition going back over 100 years, then yes. But if you limit yourself to the most commonly stocked ammo types that you would see in a store today, which would include

- 9mm

- 10mm

- .357

- 40 S&W

- 308 winmag

- 5.56

- 7.62

then no, these are most (all?) cartridges that began life with LE or military application. Even many of the less common ammo types that are still not unusual to see stocked, or seen at the range, like 300 blackout or 6.5mm Creedmore also start life as RFPs from military or LE operators.