Karnaj fucked around with this message on 06-09-2006 at 01:23 PM.

I like the little bastard. He's fun to shoot.

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Sean screamed this from the crapper:
A lot of people like the 5.56, a lot of people don't. There's not much more to this than what the article says: It's a small caliber round that a soldier can carry a fuckload of without weighing himself down.

I like the little bastard. He's fun to shoot.

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But should the soldiers be able to put down a sand grandma with fewer hits? Or is it better to be able to put more rounds in the air for a longer time?

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This one time, at Karnaj camp:
But should the soldiers be able to put down a sand grandma with fewer hits? Or is it better to be able to put more rounds in the air for a longer time?

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It's all real reminiscient of the Philippine-American War, but we already had this opposite problem in Vietnam; we couldn't carry enough ammo, so the lighter 5.56 was adopted.

As for those silly Philippines;
The standard sidearm at the time was a .38 Long Colt revolver, but it proved horribly unsuited for the jungle warfare, and lacked stopping power against the Moros who got all hopped up on drugs and didn't feel much pain. I think it was a 9mm Luger that was introduced, which was more suited to the jungle warfare, but still didn't have the stopping power to put down those sand grandmas. Those were scapped, and the military went back to some old .45 Colt revolvers. They did the trick, and lead to the Colt 1911 coming along after a few weapons tests and contract bidding snafus.

The main problem, as I understand it, is that shorter carbines are becoming more prevalent. These are better suited for mounted combat and urban operations, since there's not so much gun hanging out in front of you, but since they've got a shorter barrel you're not getting as much velocity off your rounds. According to a lot of the ballistics gelatin tests I've seen, the primary wounding mechanism of 5.56x45 is fragmentation of the round due to the rapid deceleration in flesh. Since you're not getting as high of velocities from these shorter barrels, the ranges that you get reliable fragmentation from the issued M193 and M855 rounds decreases dramatically. Most of the people in this camp think that the solution to this problem is the adoption of different, heavier 5.56x45 rounds -- there's a 77 grain load (as opposed to 55 or 62 for M193 and M855, respectively) that has some sort of alphabet soup designation that I can't remember that's gained popularity in this camp, and supposedly has seen some use in the two way firing range. According to gel tests, this fragments out much further than the standard issue ammo - in other words, is more lethal. The argument against this camp, of course, is that one is not likely to be attacked by an army of ballistic gelatin. Ballistics gel has been shown in the past to correlate fairly well to actual human tissue damage, but without very much in the way of battlefield testing, it's hard to evaluate end user performance. Getting this ammo produced on a large enough scale to provide a steady supply to the troops is another issue; as I understand it, right now it's more or less a boutique offering.

Another school of thought that I've seen is that 5.56 is simply not a good enough solution to the problem of killing people. There are a lot of alternative chamberings that some companies have tooled up, supposedly at the behest of some .mil branch or another, that would allow the continued use of the M16 platform with minor changes. The problem with these is that none of them have really gained any widespread popularity -- the most promising one, a 6.8mm load, is still only being produced in miniscule quantities. Personally, I don't think this is the right solution, since the logistics of getting new ammunition, barrels, and other parts produced and distributed would be a complete nightmare.

Yet a third perspective that I hear from time to time says that the ammunition we're using is fine, but we're not running it through the right rifles. The original M16s had a 1 in 12" or 1 in 15" (I can't remember which) twist; in other words, they were designed so that a round would make a full rotation every 12 inches in order to stabilize them in flight. When the military started adopting heavier loads, the rounds themselves became longer, and would not stabilize in flight with this twist, so a faster, 1 in 7" twist became the standard on all issue rifles and carbines. According to this perspective, the 1 in 7 twist actually overstabilizes the lighter rounds, like the 55 grain M193, preventing the rapid destabilization in human flesh that the same rounds exhibited in earlier conflicts. If this is the case, the solution is simple: break the older rifles out of storage, if they haven't already been destroyed. I'm not sure how much I buy in to this theory. Human flesh is so much denser than air that I doubt that the slightly faster twist makes any difference at all once the round's penetrated the skin.

As far as the lethality of the 5.56 round? I certainly wouldn't want to be shot with one. Keep in mind, this is the same round that was described as extremely deadly military ammunition during the Beltway Sniper attacks. I'd take this story with a grain of salt.

EDIT: I wonder where the hell I learned to ramble like this.

DOUBLE EDIT: +1 on what Bloodsage says about penetrating armor, as well. Most 5.56 loads generally do not penetrate hard body armor, however since most of what it'll be used against will be soft armor or improvised armor, the penetration is more than adequate.

Arttemis fucked around with this message on 06-09-2006 at 02:02 PM.

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Blindy. painfully thought these words up:
Are the insurgents even wearing body armor?

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Improvised armor, if anything. Vests with tons of rifle magazines stuffed in them, heavier clothing, that sort of thing.

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At least Arttemis isn't Somthor:
Improvised armor, if anything. Vests with tons of rifle magazines stuffed in them, heavier clothing, that sort of thing.

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It just seems silly to sacrifice stopping power for penetration when the primary targets don't have any armor to speak of. Triple the number of rounds works for me though.

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Verily, the chocolate bunny rabbits doth run and play while Blindy. gently hums:
It just seems silly to sacrifice stopping power for penetration when the primary targets don't have any armor to speak of. Triple the number of rounds works for me though.

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The insurgents don't have a navy, either--should we scrap ours? It'd be incredibly short-sighted to completely re-equip our army to be effective against street gangs when there are still plenty of real armies out there we need to deter.

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How.... Blindy..... uughhhhhh:
It just seems silly to sacrifice stopping power for penetration when the primary targets don't have any armor to speak of. Triple the number of rounds works for me though.

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When it comes to supply, they have to plan for every eventuality. We didn't all of a sudden decide to adopt the M16 and variants thereof for Iraq... they've been around since Vietnam. They're not going to keep assloads of M16s in inventory for fighting modern armies, M14s for long range desert engagements, 1911s for insurgents that are hopped up on some amphetamine or another, et cetera, ad nauseum.

There's not really a "sacrifice" taking place, per se. We're using what we have since that's what the troops have training with and ready access to.

For comparison a 9mm Round weighing 124 grain (typical for Self defense) would have a muzzle velocity of 1200 Feet per second and 380-390 Foot/lbs of energy.

A .45 firing a 185 grain bullet has a muzzle velocity of around 900 Feet per second and an Energy of around 400 Foot/lbs.

I am no math genius but the difference is pretty drastic to me.

Now of course all this is only half the story. the dimension of the bullet has a large impact on the performance as well. a .45 with it's near half inch diameter will transfer a lot more of that energy to the target surface than a round with a much smaller cross section. Of course a 5.56 nato round has a better chance of penetrating than a larger round does. And so you can have a much deeper wound channel and theoretically more damage.

Another often overlooked fact is that the original idea was for the round to tumble when it hit a target. SO instead of a small in and out hole, you had a corkscrew shaped one. This caused much more damage to the soft squishy parts of a target. It also cut down on accuracy since a 1/12 twist rifle barrel didn't spin stabilize the bullet enough. This is one of the reasons, along with heavier weight bullets, that made the government switch to the current 1/9 twist. Some rifles even use a 1/7 twist but I consider this to tight personally. Of course I am not in the military so...

Most of the damage done by a high velocity small caliber rifle bullet is cause by what is called Hydrostatic Shock. Essentially what this means is that the bullet is moving at such a high speed that it homogenizes the insides where it hits. So while the actual hole may only be .223 inches wide, the area for a few inches around that hole has drastic tissue damage.

What all this means in the long run is that the 5.56/.223 round is a good war weapon. However it does lack the pure knockdown power of some larger rounds like the 7.62 Nato and 7.62x39 used in the AK47, SKS, AK74, etc. Your target is going to die, and do so painfully probably. However they may get a shot or two off before hand.

Now because of the small size a soldier can also carry a larger loadout. 9 fully loaded 30 mags of 5.56 ball ammo weighs about the same as 4 or 5 fully loaded 20 round mags for an FNFAL which uses 7.62 Nato.

In the end people have complained about the M16 and it's ammo since it was first introduced. SOme of those complaints have been valid. Others were just from people who hated the idea of a "Plastic" gun using a "Varmint" round. Of course I dont' see any of them offering to be test subjects on the lethality of said weapon either.

The interesting thing is that we are seeing an even greater shift towards small fast rounds. The FN P90 uses a 5.7mm Round traveling at over 4000FPS. The energy potential is HUGE. And I don't see many people complaining about it either. Of course the pure trauma cased by a round moving that fast tends to make up for the slightly smaller bullet. Something the 5.56 also does but to a lesser extent.

Fazum'Zen Fastfist fucked around with this message on 06-09-2006 at 04:05 PM.

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From the book of Bloodsage, chapter 3, verse 16:
They also fail to note that one of the main purposes of a light, fast-moving bullet is to penetrate the layers of armor and equipment that modern soldiers carry. A heavier, slower round might knock a guy down. . .but also might not penetrate his armor.

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Why is this? I would think that a heavier bullet would hit with a higher impact force... are the heavier bullets slower, and therefore decelerate before they can penetrate the armor?

Noxhil2 fucked around with this message on 06-09-2006 at 05:29 PM.

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x--Noxhil2O-('-'Q) :
Why is this? I would think that a heavier bullet would hit with a higher impact force... are the heavier bullets slower, and therefore decelerate before they can penetrate the armor?

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Armor works by distributing impact force over a larger area. Bullets that do the exact opposite - confine force to a smaller area - stand a better chance of penetrating the armor.

At least that's the way I figure it, I'm not pr0 like nem-x

Maradon! fucked around with this message on 06-09-2006 at 05:36 PM.

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Verily, the chocolate bunny rabbits doth run and play while Noxhil2 gently hums:
Why is this? I would think that a heavier bullet would hit with a higher impact force... are the heavier bullets slower, and therefore decelerate before they can penetrate the armor?

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Bullets have no speed by themselves; it's a function of how much powder is behind them and barrel length. In general, though, heavier bullets aren't moving as fast unless fired from crew-served weapons.

Penetration is a function of the speed of the bullet and its shape and composition. Speed being the huge factor. (Kinetic energy = 1/2mass * velocity^2, so you can see that increases in speed up your energy output more than bigger bullets.)

When it comes to hurting your target, what you want is to transfer as much kinetic energy as possible to the target. So your small, fast bullet will likely blow right through an unarmored bad guy, doing damage but wasting a bunch of kinetic energy, whereas a big slug moving slowly will ideally lodge inside the bad guy somewhere, tranferring all of its energy to the target. With bad guys wearing light armor or lots of equipment, though, you need a round that has enough velocity to pass through the equipment to reach the soft tissue behind.

Bloodsage fucked around with this message on 06-09-2006 at 05:46 PM.

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Channeling the spirit of Sherlock Holmes, Maradon! absently fondled Watson and proclaimed:
Armor works by distributing impact force over a larger area. Bullets that do the exact opposite - confine force to a smaller area - stand a better chance of penetrating the armor.

At least that's the way I figure it, I'm not pr0 like nem-x

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That's the principle behind jacketed and armor-piercing rounds, but not exactly relevant in the debate about calibre. The idea is to have a round moving really fast because a bullet's speed exponentially affects its energy, while a bullet's mass affects it only linearly. You can shoot a light round quickly without being knocked on your ass by recoil, is pretty much the bottom line.

If the 5.56 round is ineffective against insurgents, why can't we give front-line soldiers weapons that instead fire a heavier round, so that they have the appropriate stopping power they need? Is the cost that prohibitive?

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Quoth Noxhil2:
So our soldiers in Iraq are equipped to fight a modern army, not unarmored insurgents.

If the 5.56 round is ineffective against insurgents, why can't we give front-line soldiers weapons that instead fire a heavier round, so that they have the appropriate stopping power they need? Is the cost that prohibitive?

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The weapons aren't ineffective at all. This is just a 40-year-old debate resurfacing.

And you do the math about how expensive it would be to equip half a million people with new weapons. Almost a million if you count the other services, and well over if you count Guard and Reserve people. All just for a slight improvement in a very particular kind of warfare?

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Noxhil2ing:
So our soldiers in Iraq are equipped to fight a modern army, not unarmored insurgents.

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Haha, oh, I see where this line of inquiry is going now.

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Azizza had this to say about Tron:
The interesting thing is that we are seeing an even greater shift towards small fast rounds. The FN P90 uses a 5.7mm Round traveling at over 4000FPS. The energy potential is HUGE. And I don't see many people complaining about it either. Of course the pure trauma cased by a round moving that fast tends to make up for the slightly smaller bullet. Something the 5.56 also does but to a lesser extent.

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Eh, don't know about that. Friend of mine brought his PS90 with the civvy 16" barrel out to the range last time we went out. We chrony'd some of the SS195 stuff he had, the 28 grain stuff, and it was only pushing about 2300fps.

EDIT: Felt like a total mall ninja fag shooting it, too.

Arttemis fucked around with this message on 06-09-2006 at 11:58 PM.

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Bloodsage Model 2000 was programmed to say:
The weapons aren't ineffective at all. This is just a 40-year-old debate resurfacing.

And you do the math about how expensive it would be to equip half a million people with new weapons. Almost a million if you count the other services, and well over if you count Guard and Reserve people. All just for a slight improvement in a very particular kind of warfare?

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I guess I do not see why we cannot make other weapons available simply to use in Iraq. Uniformity in the miliary? If you think it's silly, though, it probably is.

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Everyone wondered WTF when Noxhil2 wrote:
I guess I do not see why we cannot make other weapons available simply to use in Iraq. Uniformity in the miliary? If you think it's silly, though, it probably is.

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Oh I don't know, perhaps the cost of replacing working equipment, training everyone on new stuff, letting the pre-purchased stockpiles of ammo go to waste....I can think of about 200 reasons. Not to mention production and shipping times.

And that M-16 will almost always punch a hole in the enemy even if it isn't the best hole. What if they fighting a group that somehow acquired body armor. All they have is their slow round that isn't made to penetrate armor. That squad will be in for a world of hurt.

Alaan fucked around with this message on 06-10-2006 at 01:07 AM.

Plus we have scary things like M249s and M240s for heavy firepower

The Army is refurbishing M14's and Issueing them In Iraq, and moreso in Afghanistan (According to shotgun news.)

The only "Operator" types I have spoken to complain about the short-upper AR's past 300yds, which isnt too bad, the longer m16 barrel does better, but everyone still has reservations about that.

The heavier grain 5.56 type rounds are being fired as far as I can tell from modified AR-15 type weapons, and 700 bolt actions of some sort or another. Ive heard the guys learning on these are qualifying at 1000yds which seems suspicious to me, as the longest "varmint" kill ive ever heard of was a ground-squirrel at somewhere over 1100yds and it took a bench-shooter 7 shots.

Barrel Twist rates... Ok there are alot of rumors about twist-rates and the changes that have been made in m16 twist-rates. At some point during testing It was discovered that the origonal m16 barrels would not stabilize in extreme cold-weather causing the bullets to "tumble" which somehow started big rumors about the gun being designed to shoot tumbling bullets to increase tissue damage. (Had a few guys who claimed to be Nam vets tell me this. But its total crap.)

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and contends that urban warfare in Iraq demands a bigger bullet.

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In the chaos of war, the more bullets the better, he says, because bursts of automatic fire beat one big bullet at a time.

"There is no such thing as a well-aimed shot in combat, because combat is fought by scared 18-year-olds who haven't been trained enough and are in a place they've never seen before," Sprey says.

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Lastly, since its in context to where the thread has gone.

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Either way, there's no questions that if the Pentagon did have any questions about this bullet, it would face some very expensive modifications to the M-16.

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Azizza had this to say about Pirotess:
You are right Art. I don't know why I was thinking the 5.7 had such a higher muzzle velocity. *shrugs*
How did you like the PS90. I am really thinking about getting one. But I don't know if I can justify 1500+ for the gun and 30 bucks for 50 rounds.

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It was fun to shoot, but the downward ejection and the need to thread the mags through the sight tower killed it for me. I had a bunch of powder burns down the front of my shirt and on my right forearm after I was done shooting.

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'sage:
Bullets have no speed by themselves; it's a function of how much powder is behind them and barrel length. In general, though, heavier bullets aren't moving as fast unless fired from crew-served weapons.

Penetration is a function of the speed of the bullet and its shape and composition. Speed being the huge factor. (Kinetic energy = 1/2mass * velocity^2, so you can see that increases in speed up your energy output more than bigger bullets.)

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The other side of that coin is how well a bullet retains it's energy. The 5.56x45 round has a poor ballistic coefficient, and looses both velocity and kinetic energy rapidly. A bullet with greater mass may start out with less velocity and kinetic energy at the muzzle, but due to a higher sectional density and ballistic coefficient, retain it better and offer better penetration on the target as a result.

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Again, so well spoken, and deep. This person seems to have zero understanding or experience dealing with military / firearms related issues. Retrofitting M16 rifles to say, the 6.8mm rounds that are starting to become vogue is pointless because you are going to lose the ability to lose all the auxillary parts for the AR-15's (mags tools etc. etc.) and the uppers are total losses, not to mention the man hours to fix the lowers (if thats even realistic.)

Actually there a few different flavors of 6.x mm rounds that will work in the AR/M4/M-16 with only a barrel swap. Others may require a new bolt as well. The mags work, the lowers need no modification, and 90 plus percent of the upper would be reused. It still won't happen though, as not only would the army have to admit both the 7.62x51 and the 5.56x45 were mistakes, NATO would have to adopt another new round after we forced the 7.62 and 5.56 on them. This would go over really well in the former Warsaw Pact countries, who just finished replacing their 7.62 and 5.45 chambered AKs with 5.56 versions as a condition of joining NATO.

No one doubts that it'd be possible to design a better round, but the point is whether it'd be worth the cost. Or whether the situation is as bad as the whiners say it is.

.. and no, it wasnt because the ammo was more easily available.

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How.... Cavalier-.... uughhhhhh:
All I add to this discussion is to point out that there was a very good reason that the UK (and other Commonwealth nations like Australia) converted from the 7.62N round to the 5.56N round...

.. and no, it wasnt because the ammo was more easily available.

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G36? What ammo, gunnuts?

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Nobody really understood why Tarquinn wrote:
Germany too, if I'm not mistaken.

G36? What ammo, gunnuts?

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5.56x45, same as the M4. Every NATO country without exception (as far as I know) uses 5.56x45 ammunition.