Future weapons and 5.56mm

[l_Z_l]

thnx for the links...yea i'm totally in agreement w/ using a higher grain 5.56 to take them out.

[1lostinspace]

thnx for the links...yea i'm totally in agreement w/ using a higher grain 5.56 to take them out.

Well here is the thing they are not an army so we don't have to use fmj but it's cheaper then Mod1

I have seen a coyote get hit at about 150 yards with a 16" AR and M855 and it dropped dead! Was hit on the side of the chest. The exit wound was nasty

[Toolbox X]

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

I think you mean "hydrostatic shock". There is no such thing as "hydraulic shock"

[ibanezfoo]

All he ever whispers is that the 5.56mm lacks stopping power, funny thing is word in the sandbox is that it works just fine and has been doing so almost 50 years now.
I have seen a few episodes where he is shooting metal silhouettes with 5.56mm hitting low on target, and 6.5mm or 6.8 or what ever else round he is shooting hitting the target high knocking it over.

I think the 5.56mm is the perfect round for the job, you can carry allot of it, it is very accurate, and controllable in FA.

I am so tired of people saying that 5.56mm lacks power. Anyone here have any real world experience? If so please share if you feel comfortable doing so.

I can't stand that show. Actually I might watch it if they fired the host out of a Howitzer or something.

-Bryan

[CHS]

If I was hunting, with a bolt-action single-shot rifle and had my choice of 6.8 or 223/5.56, I would easily take the 6.8.

The combination of bigger/badder cartridge with good shot placement would, in my mind, constitute a more worthy investment.

Too bad the folks in warzones are not armed with single-shot bolt-action rifles. They've got M16's, and M4's, and M249's. .556/223 was chosen as a "good compromise" between stopping power and weight. The lighter a round, the more you can carry, and when you're firing FA or burst, you need a lot more ammo regardless of your shot placement.

6.8 already means you get something like 3 rounds less per magazine on an M16/M4 platform. It means entirely new links for something like the M249 platform. It's bigger and heavier, so the soldier who's already burdened with a hundred pounds of gear either has to carry more weight for the same ammo capacity, or has to take a reduced ammo capacity.

This is all silly. The 5.56 drops people dead just fine. The 6.8 might make them MARGINALLY deader, but I don't think it's worth any of its tradeoffs.

The soldiers that need the extra "oomph" are already being fielded with 7.62 NATO, and everyone else seems just happy with 556.

[1lostinspace]

If I was hunting, with a bolt-action single-shot rifle and had my choice of 6.8 or 223/5.56, I would easily take the 6.8.

The combination of bigger/badder cartridge with good shot placement would, in my mind, constitute a more worthy investment.

Too bad the folks in warzones are not armed with single-shot bolt-action rifles. They've got M16's, and M4's, and M249's. .556/223 was chosen as a "good compromise" between stopping power and weight. The lighter a round, the more you can carry, and when you're firing FA or burst, you need a lot more ammo regardless of your shot placement.

6.8 already means you get something like 3 rounds less per magazine on an M16/M4 platform. It means entirely new links for something like the M249 platform. It's bigger and heavier, so the soldier who's already burdened with a hundred pounds of gear either has to carry more weight for the same ammo capacity, or has to take a reduced ammo capacity.

This is all silly. The 5.56 drops people dead just fine. The 6.8 might make them MARGINALLY deader, but I don't think it's worth any of its tradeoffs.

The soldiers that need the extra "oomph" are already being fielded with 7.62 NATO, and everyone else seems just happy with 556.

exactly not to mention 6.8 I think you loose 5 rounds per mag.
And we can all agree that .308 Nato will out perform 6.8 any day.

There is a reason we have 5.56 .308 .50 different jobs require different rounds. Your clearing a house or with 300 meters 5.56mm will do just fine, need to shoot someone out to 800 meters or through cover .308, need to hit some one 2000+ out or make them duck behind walls cars and get them anyways well the .50 is more then enough.

[1lostinspace]

I can't stand that show. Actually I might watch it if they fired the host out of a Howitzer or something.

-Bryan

I like the fat guy from the weaponlogy and history channel.
Shooting MAC out of a Howitzer (Wisper) would be great............

[Nose Nuggets]

depends how you look at it. if you want to blow holes in concrete buildings, then yeah, it lacks stopping power. if you want to blow cinder blocks into chunks, yeah, it lacks stopping power. but if you want to kill soft fleshy humans the research is there; the round works well. in fact, a lot of ballistic reports show the 5.56 does substantially more damage to soft targets if the round performs as intended, spinning and rotating inside the body to create substantial tissue damage. a 7.62 usually just makes a tapered hole in one side and out the other.

[1lostinspace]

Another thing that does not get mentioned is how hot would the rifle get after firring 6.8 or 6.5??? After 3 mags you would need to stop firring. I have ran 10 30 round mags through my AR and it still shoot fine.

[Toolbox X]

Did you know that Eugene Stoner hated the 5.56 round? He designed the AR-10 to replace the M1 Garand, but politics and a rifle that looked too "space age" made the AR-10 lose to the M14.

Stoner and James Sullivan redesigned the AR-10 to shoot the new tiny 5.56 round the military wanted to adopt because the M14 was uncontrollable by the average soldier when shooting FA.

One of the reasons the M240 (.308 version of the SAW) has a bunch of new configurations for CQB use is because the M4's and SAW's are not effective enough at immediate incapacitation, and soldiers have been modifying M240's on their own to use for room clearing.

[Nose Nuggets]

interesting stuff toolbox, i did not know that.

[Toolbox X]

There was an awesome 3 part interview with James Sullivan in Small Arms Review. I can't believe how much I learned from it.

I'm also reading Assault Rifle by Maxim Popenker and Anthony G. Williams. The history of how we got to these tiny 5.56 rounds is facinating.

[lioneaglegriffin]

Well wouldn't fragmentation cause a larger wound cavity? I large bullet that does not frag just passes right through making a whole the size of caliber.

get .308 that fragments Hornady TAP does it.

[3rd_gear]

I don't see any reason to change. I also don't see any reason for the military to be looking at an AR10 type sniper rifle when the M14 works just fine.

The M14 is somewhat accurate and very reliable. I believe one of the main reasons the army is going to the AR-10 is because it looks like the M16/M4 rifles. The army does not want snipers to stick out like a sore thumb by carrying a non standard rifle. The insurgents actually seek out US snipers and put them as higher priority than field commanders.

[bigdave1121]

I hate how people hunt deer with a bow and arrow.

Why?

It's perfectly humane to kill an animal with an arrow?