new military round
I've always wondered why the U.S. military drops down the size of it's rifle calibers. I have always thought that the .223 is a fine round but would hate to have to use it to stop an attack with my life on the line. Any thoughts??
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There may be better choices,but Ive seen what the .223 can do.And it seems more than adequate to me.
Best!!!
Rugster
Toujours Pret0 -
In it's early day's.. The M16 had it's problems. But now it's just about a new gun. After 2 tours in Nam... It did all I wanted it to do, and MORE!
It will hurt you, More than it will hurt me..
Life Member... N R A
Thanks for all the help!0 -
We usually carried around 800 rounds with us, 12-13mags, plus ammo for reloads and 60 rounds. 60 gunners and AG's carried more. Weight is an issue. Any projectile ripping through the air has the same effect. You'll never hear: "They're only firing 5.56 at us, one or two rounds in me probably won't kill me, let's rush em'!" I'll take my 5 1/2 pound rifle over a 9-10 lb one, and supplement that saved weight with even more ammo any day. 0 -
My M-16 was 8.7 pounds loaded, back in my jar head days. Have they made them lighter "5 1/2 Lbs"? The M-203 "16 with grenade launcher" was a couple of pounds heavier but well worth the extra fire power. I carried this most of my career. Ammo weight is a big concern.
danski0 -
America's first modern rifle round was the .30-40 Krag (.30 U.S. Army) for the M1898 Krag Rifle. Eight years later we went to a more powerful cartridge, the .30-06 for the M1903, M1917, and later M1 Garand.
During WWII and Korea, each rifleman had a semi-auto rifle (the M1) and each rifle squad usually had one fully automatic weapon (the BAR).
The Army (in it's wisdom) decided that it wanted every man to be a machinegunner and have a fully automatic weapon. That way you don't have to teach each soldier to actually aim and hit anything....they can just "spray and pray".
So they modified the M1 to select fire and called it the M14. They also shortened the .30-06 and called 7.62 NATO (.308 Winchester). Now everybody had a nice short-action machine gun....problem, with a full-power round like the 7.62, on automatic fire you couldn't hit anything but sky (that was tough on blue jays and chickadees), and you couldn't carry enough ammo to do very much of that.
So....the experts in the five-sided puzzle factory (the Pentagon) decided that if you go with a .22 caliber varmint cartridge, the recoil is low enough so you can "spray and pray" and still carry enough ammo to do lots of spraying and praying.
Now the blue jays and chickadees are happy....and the world is safe from rabid groundhogs.
Edited by - Xracer on 12/13/2002 21:40:260 -
The M-16A2 is select fire semi or 3 round burst "no full auto". Spray and pray is not a normaly excepted practice in USMC. M203 is 12.3 Lbs
danski
Edited by - danski26 on 12/13/2002 16:39:120 -
Being a old radio operator 2531 in the USMC, I used the spray & pray method with a M-16.
The .223 round does a lot of soft tissue damage, a wounded person takes 2 to 3 people out of service to tend to the wounded person, verses a dead person, which they usally leave behind or bury.
The Russian's now use a .221x39 round that more than duplicates the damage of the .223 round. This round replaced the 762x39 as the current service issue.
FN has created a new round for their Five-Seven series P90 rifle & handgun, it uses a ( I might have the demsions wrong) .221 or smaller bullet with a 25mm case length. This round is also a heck of a soft tissue damage round.
My belief is that the military would rather inflect more wounds than they would to right out kill the enemy, to demoralize the enemy troopers from fighting.
Walte0 -
I just have one thing to say. The experience of WW1 taught astute countries that the 6.5 cartridge was insufficient, especially for machine gun use; hence Italy adopted the 7.35, Japan the 7.7, etc., though these weren't fully integrated by the time war came or indeed at war's end. Germany hit on a great idea with the 7.92 Kurz; a round powerful enough and with a big enough bullet to do the same job as the 8mm Mauser at close ranges. The USSR similarly adopted the 7.62X39 with the same bullet diameter as the 7.62X54R then in use. The US learned a lesson and scaled down its cartridge to the .308 from the 30-06. Smaller ammo means more rounds carried. Good idea! But too much of a good thing is bad. In my view the .223 is just too small. No, I don't want to be shot with one. Yes, I understand the idea about tumbling and better energy transfer; FJM .30 bullets often punched right through victims. A rifle accurate at a mile really isn't needed for the average soldier. BUT in certain applications the M16 and the .223 are at a real disadvantage. Jungle warfare with heavy underbrush, long range shooting at open targets, etc. it just doesn't do well. Picture a group of US soldiers in combat in the hills. They come under fire from an unseen enemy. One enemy soldier with a 30-06 or similar cartridge could open fire beyond the .223's max range. Ideally our guys would have .308 machine guns, air support, etc. to respond, but suppose they didn't? They could get picked off before they even entered range. It could happen; hence I feel the Army needs to adopt a new cartridge; either by making the current round much more powerful and guns to suit or switching to a bigger caliber again. Personally I think a slightly smaller .308, perhaps 5mm shorter or with a slightly smaller bullet of say .300 or .280 would really do great. But JMHO.
"...hit your enemy in the belly, and kick him when he is down, and boil his prisoners in oil- if you take any- and torture his women and children. Then people will keep clear of you..." -Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher, speaking at the Hague Peace Conf0 -
Yeah, Danski, but the Corps actually teaches it's people to shoot (what a novel idea).
And.....they wanted to keep the M14 (but McNamara wouldn't allow it).0 -
Looks like we could start our own VFW Post, on Gun Broker
It will hurt you, More than it will hurt me..
Life Member... N R A
Thanks for all the help!0
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