Future weapons and 5.56mm

[csmintel]

Pretty much sounds like Russian history post-1945...

The copy is never as good as the original. Their space shuttle comes to mind.

i think they were first to space.

[csmintel]

I was willing to give csmintel the benefit of the doubt, but he's confirmed he's just a troll with his nonsense.
Specs aren't ordered like a pizza, FYI. But then, csmintel is the one who thinks the US uses 5.56ammo because the contractors are protecting their contracts. He also thinks the US has inferior weapons because the contractors determine what we use. The stuff he writes is entertaining though.

dwtt let's not fight, we give anti-gun people the leg up.

[redneckshootist]

You should stop the hate. Since I am a newbie to bow hunting educate me.
I have seen numerous deer shot and run off to die somewhere
So explain to me how does it work is the deer not in pain? I am not trying to be a smart *** I just want to know how does it work? Does the arrow numb the deer some how? If I learned how to use a bow would take the deers pain away some how? I choose 30-06 with a 125 Nosler they don't feel a thing!!

its all about shot placement. I have seen deer shot with 30-06 and run away.
The arrow needs to go through a vital and have the right point, a good broad head going through the heart will stop a deer very quickly.
I'll stop the hate if you do

[1lostinspace]

its all about shot placement. I have seen deer shot with 30-06 and run away.
The arrow needs to go through a vital and have the right point, a good broad head going through the heart will stop a deer very quickly.
I'll stop the hate if you do

But you have to admit they don't die as fast as a rifle and most people are not a good shot and end up shooting the poor thing in the butt.

[redneckshootist]

But you have to admit they don't die as fast as a rifle and most people are not a good shot and end up shooting the poor thing in the butt.

no I will not agree with that you have no idea what you are talking about. I will say that bow hunting takes more skill than rifle hunting but like I said before you hit the deer in the right spot he will drop without pain.

[Toolbox X]

This is what my research has shown me. And I've done a whole lot of research on firearm wound ballistics.


The 5.56 round was extremely effective when it was 55gr and shot out of the 1/14 twist M16 barrel. The round was barely stable, which caused it to tumble and create massive holes in tissue.

However, the round wasn't stable, so it wasn't accurate much past 200m. They fixed this by changing the barrel twist to 1/12 (and eventually 1/7) which stabilized the round and made it accurate at distance, but made it cause very little damage compared to the tumbled round.

Current 55gr and 62gr FMJ rounds will sometimes kill the enemy, eventually. But they are horrible rounds for immediate incapacitation. Sure the bad guy might die 10 minutes or 2 days later, but until then he is still in the fight.

The 77gr Mk262 and Hornady 75gr 5.56 TAP rounds are HP and they are devastating. I wish our troops were using those rounds.

Additionally, .223 and 5.56 softpoint rounds are devastating. It's only the FMJ rounds that perform very poorly at stopping people.

You guys should watch some of the reenactments of recent battles in the Sandbox on the Military and History channels. We're hitting these bad guys 4 and 5 times center mass with m855, and they keep on going. One battle had a guy clearing a house with his SAW. He shot a bad guy 7 times in the chest from 10 feet away and the bad guy turned around, ran up the stairs and lobbed grenades down at the guy with the SAW for another 10 minutes.

The .308 is the best round for incapacitating someone quickly. With the .308 round comes a lot of disadvantages of course, but it is the best. The 6.8SPC is good and I wish we would switch to it, but that will never happen because Bush and Clinton closed 5 of the 6 huge ammo manufacturing plants in the US. Only Lake City is left, and we depend on over 200 smaller private ammo companies to provide our military with the ammo we need. We simply do not have the machines or capacity to switch to any different calibers.

The simplist solution to making the 5.56 round effective is to toss the 1899 Hague Convention nonsense out the window and start using HP rounds for everything not requiring serious penetration.

At least that is what my research tells me.

[M. Sage]

Toolbox: Very nice! Reading Blackhawk Down really made me leery of 5.56. They talk about shooting people multiple times only to have them get up and walk away. I'm sure they died eventually, but eventually isn't when you want the fight to end.

I agree on tossing the Hague, since we're not fighting people who signed it either. Only problem is that it complicates supplies, and you have to worry about penetration. It's not like 5.56 FMJ penetrates all that well anyway... I could see going to HP or SP to replace FMJ and keeping AP around. IMO, FMJ is too much of a compromise between the two...

But you have to admit they don't die as fast as a rifle and most people are not a good shot and end up shooting the poor thing in the butt.

Lol. Measure the diameter of a broadhead sometime, realize that the blades are all razor sharp and tell me that a .30 cal rifle will create a wound profile that even comes close.

I've seen deer run away after being hit with rifles, including magnums. I've seen deer run off never to be seen again after being hit with a 12 gauge. It doesn't matter what you shoot the stupid thing with if you don't hit it in a vital area. It's just harder to do that with a bow, but people still manage to screw up with a rifle...

[Contraband]

I'd like to chime in and say a few things. I'm not military/LE, I've never shot anyone, I've only heard stories and claims from people who are of better credibility than I.

In the end, we all tend to measure 'stopping power' with technicalities - how big/heavy the bullet is, how much velocity, how much kinetic energy transferred, ballistic gel damage, etc. In the end, unless we've seen some real world action and objective comparisons ourselves, then maybe we should consider the following:

If a soldier shoots an enemy 3-4 times with a 5.56 chambered weapon and sees him crawling around or fighting back, then I must ask:
Where did he hit the enemy?
Was it a vital shot?
Are the rounds coming out of M4's as fast as M16's (Let's remember that some 5.56 benchmarks are from 20" M-16s, not 14.5" M-4s)? This is just a hunch I have, but can someone clarify as to how much performance of the 5.56 is degraded out of M-4s, and if this is enough to lose the frag effect? Is it just me or is the 5.56 stopping power question only been raised to large proportions fairly recently, and seeing an influx of specially chambered AR15s?? Is it because it wasn't until the 80's that the M4 was put into action, but is seeing much wider use up until now?

Just something i've pondered, that's all, feel free to debate otherwise.

Some other notes and things that I found interesting:
My dad has seen some action in Vietnam, and he said he's seen wounds on enemy vietcong inflicted by M-16s, some of which are quite devastating (arms hanging by pieces of flesh, large exit wounds, etc).

On the other hand, a good friend of mine served a tour in Iraq. He said that the M4/M16 wounds inflicted on the bodies of enemy combatants that he had to haul after a firefight had exit wounds of about a half-dollar size, and has too heard accounts in his company of enemies being shot several times without immediate incapacitation.

Something doesn't seem right here...

[1lostinspace]

no I will not agree with that you have no idea what you are talking about. I will say that bow hunting takes more skill than rifle hunting but like I said before you hit the deer in the right spot he will drop without pain.

Actually I know what I am talking about, The hydro shock and cavitation created from a high powered rifle is far more devastating then any broad head arrow out there.

Check this out
and do some research before you tell someone they don't know what they talking about.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IL-liPFY5-I&feature=related

It is true it takes skill to shoot a bow and not just that but getting close to make the shot to begin with.

[1lostinspace]

This is what my research has shown me. And I've done a whole lot of research on firearm wound ballistics.


The 5.56 round was extremely effective when it was 55gr and shot out of the 1/14 twist M16 barrel. The round was barely stable, which caused it to tumble and create massive holes in tissue.

However, the round wasn't stable, so it wasn't accurate much past 200m. They fixed this by changing the barrel twist to 1/12 (and eventually 1/7) which stabilized the round and made it accurate at distance, but made it cause very little damage compared to the tumbled round.

Current 55gr and 62gr FMJ rounds will sometimes kill the enemy, eventually. But they are horrible rounds for immediate incapacitation. Sure the bad guy might die 10 minutes or 2 days later, but until then he is still in the fight.

The 77gr Mk262 and Hornady 75gr 5.56 TAP rounds are HP and they are devastating. I wish our troops were using those rounds.

Additionally, .223 and 5.56 softpoint rounds are devastating. It's only the FMJ rounds that perform very poorly at stopping people.

You guys should watch some of the reenactments of recent battles in the Sandbox on the Military and History channels. We're hitting these bad guys 4 and 5 times center mass with m855, and they keep on going. One battle had a guy clearing a house with his SAW. He shot a bad guy 7 times in the chest from 10 feet away and the bad guy turned around, ran up the stairs and lobbed grenades down at the guy with the SAW for another 10 minutes.

The .308 is the best round for incapacitating someone quickly. With the .308 round comes a lot of disadvantages of course, but it is the best. The 6.8SPC is good and I wish we would switch to it, but that will never happen because Bush and Clinton closed 5 of the 6 huge ammo manufacturing plants in the US. Only Lake City is left, and we depend on over 200 smaller private ammo companies to provide our military with the ammo we need. We simply do not have the machines or capacity to switch to any different calibers.

The simplist solution to making the 5.56 round effective is to toss the 1899 Hague Convention nonsense out the window and start using HP rounds for everything not requiring serious penetration.

At least that is what my research tells me.

first of all the rate of twist effects yawing very little.
Here is the facts the M193 55FMJ used in Nam was been fired out of a 20" barrel doing 3250+ FPS and the average engagement been 25 yards it would hit and frag making a mess. Currently we are using a SS109 projectile with a steel penetrator in it making it less likely to frag and act more like an icepick.
The current ammo is M855 a SS109 projectile with Nato pressures out of an M4 doing about 2900+ lacking the high FPS needed for fragmentation.
2700 is threshold where FMJ fails to frag so shooting at someone past 100 yards with an M4 you are counting on the round to tumble because it will not frag. We would be better off with M193 out of a 20" then the current M4 and M855, but here is the thing the M4 is doing a great job and not to blame.
The M855 was made to penetrate steel helmets at long range 400 meters+ not skinny little insurgents. Mod 1 blows them apart!. As far as .308 yes it is a more powerful round but the recoil will take you off target, in combat the follow up shot is key. Also how much .308 can you carry?

So it's not the caliber but the ammunition you load and where you shoot them. The bottom line is a hole through vitals with 5.56mm or 7.62 it does not matter.

[l_Z_l]

from what i've read/researched so far.

in vietnam we used 1/14 and used the fact that the bullet would tumble like crazy. but wasn't accurate a long distances.

we moved up the twist so that it would be more accurate for further range. still out of the 20" barrel the round would fragment due to the fps and create a large would channel. the xm 193 did this perfectly w/ in it's fragmentation range.

when the m855 came along it was used as a penetrator and did not fragment. i'm guessing somewhere along the line someone confused better penetration as being a better bullet to kill. when in fact the fragmentation is the main reason someone dies.

the m855 is less effective imo as it's prupose was to penetrate not fragment to cause large wound channels. correct me if anything i've read was wrong or maybe i've been reading off of some weird sites.

[1lostinspace]

Toolbox: Very nice! Reading Blackhawk Down really made me leery of 5.56. They talk about shooting people multiple times only to have them get up and walk away. I'm sure they died eventually, but eventually isn't when you want the fight to end.

I agree on tossing the Hague, since we're not fighting people who signed it either. Only problem is that it complicates supplies, and you have to worry about penetration. It's not like 5.56 FMJ penetrates all that well anyway... I could see going to HP or SP to replace FMJ and keeping AP around. IMO, FMJ is too much of a compromise between the two...



Lol. Measure the diameter of a broadhead sometime, realize that the blades are all razor sharp and tell me that a .30 cal rifle will create a wound profile that even comes close.

I've seen deer run away after being hit with rifles, including magnums. I've seen deer run off never to be seen again after being hit with a 12 gauge. It doesn't matter what you shoot the stupid thing with if you don't hit it in a vital area. It's just harder to do that with a bow, but people still manage to screw up with a rifle...

are you serious about the .30 cal not making a bigger whole?

look at this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IL-liPFY5-I&feature=related

[1lostinspace]

from what i've read/researched so far.

in vietnam we used 1/14 and used the fact that the bullet would tumble like crazy. but wasn't accurate a long distances.

we moved up the twist so that it would be more accurate for further range. still out of the 20" barrel the round would fragment due to the fps and create a large would channel. the xm 193 did this perfectly w/ in it's fragmentation range.

when the m855 came along it was used as a penetrator and did not fragment. i'm guessing somewhere along the line someone confused better penetration as being a better bullet to kill. when in fact the fragmentation is the main reason someone dies.

the m855 is less effective imo as it's prupose was to penetrate not fragment to cause large wound channels. correct me if anything i've read was wrong or maybe i've been reading off of some weird sites.

M855 does frag it has to be doing 2700 FPS

look at this

http://www.brassfetcher.com/M855bareblock1.html

here you go here is the best info on the 5.56mm

http://ammo.ar15.com/ammo/project/term_velocity.html

[l_Z_l]

lol...i'm missing all the figures from my post. so the i'm guessing the m855 would be better at getting headshots from distances as helmets and such wouldn't provide and protection from the steel core.
in the end xm193 would actually be better for all of the cqb engagement rather than the m855 that would just go right through the target w/o much energy transfer.

[1lostinspace]

lol...i'm missing all the figures from my post. so the i'm guessing the m855 would be better at getting headshots from distances as helmets and such wouldn't provide and protection from the steel core.
in the end xm193 would actually be better for all of the cqb engagement rather than the m855 that would just go right through the target w/o much energy transfer.

against armor m855 works great!
we are not facing an army with armor on, we are fighting guys that have nothing on but a shirt, 75-77gr would kill them where they stand with center mass hit.
My friend came back he has 3 deployments now and from what I have heard from him and his friends the M855 and M4 work just fine. What they complained about was radios not working no armor on vehicles and some other stuff that would start a flame war.