>>I spent over half my active-duty career performing operational tests for DoD (13 years of it) so I was able to poke about in dark corners few others knew about. After leaving active duty, I spent over a dozen years working in gun repair for a small dealership, which helped shed additional light on the problems.
So you understand cost vs benefits analysis of functional vs perfect.
>>No rifle can be as accurate as a bolt action, for a given weight, cartridge, and cost. Semi-auto rifles have to be made to looser tolerances merely to function; all those moving parts slamming about at high speed also degrades accuracy. Some semi-autos can be tuned to deliver very good accuracy; only then can they challenge the average bolt action. US military marksmanship unit technicians spent decades ironing out the problems of the M1 Garand; then it was able to fire groups almost as small as issue M1903 rifles did, right off the rack.
OK. So, a rifle that can put its rounds reliably into a 10 pie plate at distance is useless or not? If I am a sniper, I want the eyeball shot. If I am a regular soldier or militiaman, is a solid center mass or pelvic hit good enough?
>>Apart from reliability and accuracy, manually cycled arms like revolvers and bolt actions will function with any bullet shape and any load; semi-autos are limited to a narrow range of bullet shapes, propelling powders, and load density.
Factory ammo baby!! That’s the name of the game.
>>Revolvers and bolt actions are also far more forgiving of poor reloading practices. They will fire a round that will tie up an autoloader. And semi-autos can be reduced to junk if the reloaded round has a high primer.
Again, factory ammo. Factory quality control is very good.
>>Autoloaders toss brass all over the place, which matters more to reloaders than shooters who do not bother with reloading.
Yep. I quit reloading year ago. Don’t have the patience for that. But I do have money and plenty of suppliers.
XLNT Thread....
Thanks
“So you understand cost vs benefits analysis of functional vs perfect. ...” [Bryanw92, post 78]
Pretty succinct. Except that “perfect” never happens. Also assumes that:
1. The user knows what they want
2. Politics (institutional, interservice, national, international) don’t intervene
3. Original requirements remain stable
Item 2 almost never happens. Item 1 is sometimes an uphill battle - especially when the user is slow to acknowledge that constraints exist (laws of physics, development time is never zero, designers and manufacturers want money before they perform, etc) or is over-impressed with advancing technology and clings to the dippy faith that tech solves all (and does so overnight, for no money). Item 3 is unpredictable, but is made worse when the user clings to the “tech solves all” faith. There are more; these loom larger.
“...So, a rifle that can put its rounds reliably into a 10 pie plate at distance is useless or not? If I am a sniper, I want the eyeball shot. If I am a regular soldier or militiaman, is a solid center mass or pelvic hit good enough? ...”
Not a bad approximation, but still too generalized. Chances of success depend too tightly on situations, which are simply too varied, and change too quickly in the field, to predict the need beforehand.
Military units compensate by creating teams (more manpower enhances flexibility), improving communications (radio for air support), and fielding heavier weapons (ATACMS outrange sniper fire). The civilian user ordinarily cannot call on any of those.
“...Factory ammo baby!! That’s the name of the game. ... Factory quality control is very good. ... I quit reloading year ago. Don’t have the patience ... I do have money and plenty of suppliers.”
If Bryanw92 has the money and what he buys fills the requirement, good enough. After reloading for all but two calibers (out of dozens), I confess my patience has declined (along with my physical stamina).
But my experience has been just the opposite when it comes to accuracy: no reload I have created has ever proven less accurate than factory ammunition. And reloads have proven more accurate by wide margins, typically: 70-80 percent reduction in group size. Holds true across all chamberings and all platforms. Only one exception: cast bullet, wrong configuration & weight.
Gun magazine writers wax enthusiastic about advances in factory loads, which deliver much smaller groups. Heard it by word of mouth also, from former customers (no one ever brought us targets to compare, though). But prices for the newer stuff have been high, so I’ve never bothered; my reloading was already delivering better results, at a fraction of the cost.
My other experiences in gun sales and repair indicate that the shooters too busy to reload are thes one firing magazine upon magazine through their Kalashnikov (or AR-15). They demand the cheapest ammo they can find, then complain about poor results. Volume means more to them than performance