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 smoothbore weapon, such as a musket or a shotgun. In the Halo universe sense of the word, a rifle can have several different meanings.

Summary

When regarding human weapons, there are a few forms of the word "rifle" used. An "assault rifle" is a select-fire weapon that fires an intermediate rifle round. A "battle rifle" fires a large full-size rifle round and is usually, but not always, semi-automatic and often has a long full-size barrel. A "sniper rifle" can fire various high-caliber ammunition variants, and are almost exclusively semi-automatic. Their goal is to achieve high levels of accuracy and lethality, and have longer ranges than assault or battle rifles.

Regarding Covenant weapons, a "rifle" is used not to describe the technical nature of the weapon itself, but in the role it plays on the battlefield. For example, the plasma pistol and plasma rifle, while similar, are used for two different purposes. A rifle is larger than a pistol, often requiring both hands to use, but is smaller than a heavy weapon, such as the Brute shot or fuel rod cannon. This applies to both the plasma rifle and the beam rifle. The Covenant carbine is also considered a rifle and the spiker can fit into this list as well.

There are currently 30 known rifle variants in the Halo universe.

United Nations Space Command

Assault rifles

Assault rifles are military service weapons that fire intermediate rifle cartridges; merging the light machine gun's firepower with the submachine gun's compact design.

MA Series

MA5 series

Battle rifles

Battle rifles are military service weapons that fires a full-power rifle cartridge; providing greater effective range, penetration, and stopping power than assault rifles.

Carbines

Carbines are shortened light-weight versions of full rifles, firing the same ammunition at a lower velocity due to a shorter barrel length.

Marksman rifles

Marksman rifles are military service weapons that fires a anti-personnel/magnum-caliber rifle cartridge; used to fill the "marksmanship gap" between the battle rifle and the sniper rifle.

Nonlinear rifles

Recoilless rifles

Sniper rifles

Sniper rifles are military service weapons that fires anti-material/anti-vehicular rifle cartridge; used when accurate, long-range, and lethal force is needed.

Covenant Empire

Projectile

Particle

Plasma

Deleted material


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