- published: 19 May 2015
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The .30-06 Springfield cartridge (pronounced "thirty-aught-six", "thirty-oh-six") or 7.62×63mm in metric notation, was introduced to the United States Army in 1906 and standardized, and was in use until the 1960s and early 1970s. It replaced the .30-03, 6 mm Lee Navy, and .30 US Army (also called .30-40 Krag). The .30-06 remained the US Army's primary rifle cartridge for nearly 50 years before it was replaced by the 7.62×51mm NATO (commercial .308 Winchester) and 5.56×45mm NATO (commercial .223 Remington), both of which remain in current U.S. and NATO service. It remains a very popular sporting round, with ammunition produced by all major manufacturers.
Much of the rest of the world at the turn of the 20th century was in the process of adopting the pointed spitzer bullet: France in 1898, Germany in 1905, Russia in 1908, and Britain in 1910, so when it was introduced, the .30-03 was behind the times. A new case was developed with a slightly shorter neck to fire a higher velocity, 150-grain (9.7 g) spitzer bullet at 2,700 ft/s (820 m/s).