Rifle

In the actual sense of the word, a "rifle" is a weapon with a spiral grooved barrel that imparts a spin on a projectile to obtain better levels of accuracy than a smooth-bore weapon. In the Halo sense of the word, a rifle can have several different meanings.

When regarding human weapons, there are a few forms of the word "rifle" used. An "assault rifle" is a kind of firearm, that may or may not be fully-automatic (and may posses a fire selector), that fires a round between a pistol or battle rifle. A "battle rifle" fires a large full-size rifle round, and is usually, but not always, semi-automatic, and often have a long full-size barrel. A "sniper rifle" fires a multitude of ammunition, almost exclusively in semi-automatic, in the goal of achieving high levels of accuracy, and typically longer ranges than assault or battle rifles.

Regarding Covenant weapons, a "rifle" is used not to describe the technicals of the weapon itself, but in the role it plays on the battlefield. For example, the plasma pistol and plasma rifle, while similair, are used in two different ways. Basically, a rifle is larger than a pistol, often requiring two hands to use (except while dual-wielding), but is smaller than a heavy weapon like a brute shot or fual rod weapon. This applies to the plasma rifle, Brute plasma rifle, and beam rifle. The Covenant carbine is also considered a rifle, and the Brute spiker (sometimes called a "spike rifle") can fit into this list as well.

There are twelve appearances of "rifle" in the Halo universe:

United Nations Space Command

Assault Rifles

HMG series

HMG-38 Rifle - an older rifle no longer used by the UNSC, presumably an assault rifle

MA series

MA2B Assault Rifle - a stripped-down variant MA5B assault rifle
MA3 Assault Rifle - an earlier version of the MA-series assault rifles
MA5B Assault Rifle - the most common MA-series rifle, featured in Halo: Combat Evolved.
MA5C Assault Rifle - newer version of the MA5B rifle, featured in Halo 3.
MA5K Assault Rifle - uncommon MA-series rifle wielded by special operations groups such as the SPARTAN-IIIs

Battle Rifles

BR55 Battle Rifle - two-handed firearm firing in 3-round bursts featured in Halo 2
BR55HB SR Battle Rifle - an updated version of the BR55 for Halo 3

Nonlinear Rifles

Anti-Vehicle Model 6 Grindell/Galileian Nonlinear Rifle (W/AV M6 G/GNR) - shoulder-mounted anti-vehicular directed laser weapon featured in Halo 3

Sniper Rifles

SRS99C-S2 AM Sniper Rifle - long-range two-handed projectile weapon
SRS99D-S2 AM Sniper Rifle - Halo 3-variant of the SRS99C-S2 AM Sniper Rifle

Covenant

Particle

Particle Beam Rifle - long-range two-handed weapon, analogous to the UNSC SRS99C-S2 AM Sniper Rifle

Plasma

Plasma Rifle - one-handed plasma-operated weapon typically wielded by Sangheili (Elites)
Brute Plasma Rifle - variant of the standard plasma rifle wielded by Brutes.

References

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