Recently, more and more often on the screens you can see crossbows, which are armed with heroes of films, the action of which takes place in our time, and sometimes in the future. It is noteworthy in all this disgrace that almost always directors or screenwriters, I do not know whose fault it is, endow this weapon with the most incredible abilities, fully equating it in characteristics with modern long-range sniper rifles and at the same time making it completely silent. In general, the topic of discussing a crossbow for the army has long been brewing, but without Hollywood inventions. And although I am not a master in crossbow sports, I had a chance to try out such a weapon with my own hands, so I think I will pull the topic, but if something is controversial or I am mistaken in something, then we will be happy to talk about the crossbow in comments.
Perhaps it's worth starting with the place the crossbow found among the throwing weapons. Initially, the crossbow was a weapon that was shunned by people who considered themselves in the upper class, so the crossbow was born as a weapon of the "rabble". Oh, and it was in vain that they refused the crossbow at that time. Judge for yourself. Good archers were trained literally from childhood, and the reason here is not only in the wisdom of archery, but to a greater extent in the fact that pulling an effective bow was not an easy task from the point of view of physical strength. The bow itself was far from being a highly accurate weapon in combat and was most often used for shooting across areas, and not at specific single targets. The crossbow was a less long-range weapon, less rapid-fire, but it easily pierced the heavy armor and shields of the knights. Now imagine a situation when you are a knight, you were trained from childhood to wield a sword, a spear, save beautiful maidens and terrify dragons. And so you left your castle on a white horse to perform feats, and at that time, from behind the bushes, a crossbow bolt and a grimy commoner flew into you, who, I apologize, is not even trained to wipe his ass with straw, takes your sword, armor, horse, and the beautiful maiden remains to grow old in the high tower. But I, of course, exaggerate this, whatever one may say, and the crossbow was a rather expensive weapon even when its shoulders were made of wood, although after a couple of exits "on the road" such a thing completely paid for itself.
No matter how high-born persons tried to remove themselves from this weapon of commoners, the high combat effectiveness of crossbows against the enemy protected by armor did their job, and soon crossbows received their maximum distribution. They say that even the church once announced that it was not good to use a crossbow against Christians and threatened to excommunicate for such an act, but one wants to live stronger than being a good Christian, because they simply did not give a damn about this prohibition, and this was not the twentieth century. In general, the crossbow took its place and took quite firmly. It was used along with bows, but if bows were now relatively long-range weapons, then crossbows were used as armor-piercing weapons.
Well, now let's go through the myths that cinema has created. The crossbow is a silent weapon. Haha three times. The one who claims so apparently held in his hands those crossbows that are sold now only upon presentation of a passport and even a weapon, it seems, according to the law, they are not considered, but only an object that is structurally similar to a weapon. Although recently the law on weapons has so many amendments that appear like mushrooms after rain that you can't keep track of everything.
In fact, a full-fledged crossbow, with which there is a chance to survive on the hunt for the same wild boar, when fired, they emit a loud enough clap, or rather not a clap … in general, a sound. At the same time, if we compare with the same self-loading silent pistols, from which the sound is essentially formed only when the shutter moves during reloading, then a good block crossbow "sounds" much louder. But oh well, let's say this can be compensated for by the greater armor-piercing of the crossbow bolt and a greater effective range, although it all depends on the specific model of the crossbow. But the fact that the crossbow between shots will have a huge period of time, which is even longer than that of non-self-loading silent pistols, cannot be compensated in any way. Yes, the dimensions with the weight are simply incomparable, or rather comparable, but already with a silent sniper weapon, and here the crossbow is already losing in all respects. It turns out that the crossbow cannot replace a silent pistol, and the pistol will be in a more advantageous position, and the crossbow is in flight.
Now about the effective range of the weapon. Well, you can't shoot thousands of meters from a crossbow, unless the bolts of the crossbow are reactive, although with a light arrow, but from the top of Everest … In general, in theory everything is possible, but in practice, when such concepts as efficiency also come into play and practicality can be much less. So, alas and ah, but the crossbow cannot compete with long-range sniper rifles. However, the sniper's targets are not always at a distance from his position, hundreds to thousands of meters, sometimes it is necessary to work on closer targets. So, in urban areas, a good crossbow can very well compete with a sniper rifle at distances of up to 150 meters, but let's not forget back about the rate of fire of the weapon, and the fact that it is impossible to cock it without taking our eyes off the target, and the fact that the weapon possesses large dimensions and so on. In general, here the crossbow, despite its aerodynamic properties, flies. By the way, it is possible to increase the rate of fire of the crossbow, one of the options for increasing the rate of fire is described in this article on the rapid-fire crossbow, but along with the rate of fire, the dimensions and weight have increased and this approach can only be used with very weak shoulders.
But we will not write off such a weapon completely, nevertheless, if you are already persistently looking for the use of a crossbow, then you can really find it.
For example, with the help of a crossbow, you can throw the antenna to a sufficiently high height, although if you use a crossbow for such purposes, then why not start a trained monkey, it will cope better with the task, and even if you have a camera, you can earn money … The crossbow can be used for hunting in the case when the detachment is forced to get its own food, and each cartridge is worth its weight in gold, but who will drag such a fool especially for this case? In the end, the crossbow can be used simply for recreational shooting, because the soldier also needs to rest, although here I think the preferable occupation would be eating food and sleeping. In short, the use of a crossbow in a modern army can be found, but it will not be used in combat, and I will not look for it, although I really like the weapon itself, there is something attractive in it, it's not for nothing that movie heroes still use it.
