Posted on 12/20/2002 3:11:35 PM PST by 45Auto
Soldiers who fought in Afghanistan have some hard-earned opinions about the rifles on which they relied to stay alive. Mostly, they want more firepower.
The standard-issue ammunition compounded the problem, they said: The 5.56 mm round shot — a bullet equivalent to that marketed in the States to shoot small vermin — wasn’t effective in stopping al-Qaida and Taliban fighters. “Should be a 7.62 mm, so it will drop a man with one shot,” wrote one soldier.
Not all soldiers’ reviews were negative. Pat, a Special Forces soldier who is serving in Afghanistan, wrote the military watchdog group Soldiers for the Truth that “the M-4 with optics and the newer hand guards tends to be a pretty good weapon. Guys can change the optics out depending on the mission, and misfeeds don’t happen too often with good weapon maintenance.
The adjustable shoulder stock and assault sling, front pistol grip works well with body armor and different sized guys also,” the soldier said.
Army Lt. Col. Robert Carpenter, project manager for the small arms section of the report, said: “Somewhere between the trigger pullers and the maintainers is the ground truth.”
Also a factor, he said, are the rounds soldiers use today.
Soldiers now use the M-855 ball round, a lighter bullet designed during the mid-1980s with a steel penetrator designed to pierce body armor. But soldiers now find themselves shooting at al-Qaida, an enemy that doesn’t use body armor.
Some soldiers who fought in Afghanistan said the small, current-issue 5.56 mm rounds just lack needed punch.
The commercially available equivalent to a 5.56 mm round is a .223-caliber — marketed as a vermin round, for killing small game such as rabbits or coyotes, said John Bloodgood, a 19-year Air Force master sergeant with 11 years in tactical units, who also is a private firearms instructor.
More effective are .308 bullets — commonly used for large-game hunting and similar in size to bullets used up through the Korean War, he said.
“A .308 bullet has almost twice the frontal area of a .223,” he said.
It’s not the size but the type of round the military’s using, and shot placement, that determines a bullet’s stopping capability, said Ken Cooper, director of Tactical Handgun Training, a New York state certified law-enforcement pistol-training facility.
“The military uses hardball rounds and the effect is less than if soldiers were shooting expansion rounds,” Cooper said. “You can penetrate the human body with little to no effect.”
Cooper teaches law-enforcement officials to shoot low, for the pelvis. He said the human torso is like a sponge; it easily can absorb the impact of small pieces of lead, especially non-expanding jacketed bullets that leave small, clean holes that close quickly.
Shots to the pelvis, Cooper said, increase the likelihood of breaking the pelvic bone or severing the femoral artery, resulting in an immobilized attacker at a minimum or one rapidly losing blood at a maximum.
“The military teaches people to shoot center mast, in the middle of the body,” he said. “But if you hit people low, they will go down quickly. That’s what we want, both in civilian law enforcement and in military combat.”
5.56 is too small and lacks stopping power, particularly at long distances.
What we need is an intermediate cartridge of around 6.5mm shooting about a 100 grain bullet at around 2800 fps.
Secondly, I have always questioned the use of hardball ammo for combat. I know the rationale is that one bullet might go through several bad guys but I'd rather be sure to clobber the guy I'm aiming at (HP or SP).
I believe the term is "center MASS." That gaffe alone should discredit this reporter.
That aside, are we really going to have to fight this 5.56 vs. 7.62 battle again? It's been going on since the 1960's, and the M16 has proven itself on a variety of battlefields in a gamut of conditions. Is 5.56 the perfect military caliber? Probably not. But that's only because no such thing exists.
Yes and no, we actually drove the standard. The europeans had wanted something intermediate betwee their existing rounds, 30-06, .303, 8mm, etc, and the "varmint" catridge size. We insisted on the 7.62x51, which is also a NATO standard round. We were right, but then changed our mind.
I remember firing a bolt action 308 when I was a kid. More like a rocket launched than a rifle - my shoulder ached for hours. I can't imagine how you could handle an automatic version.BTW, a rocket launcher generally hardly recoils at all, especially condidering the size of the rockets they launch. It's a physics thing.
Depends on your location. Some states do not allow it for deer sized animals. How effective it is also depends on how big the deer are. Northern deer tend to be larger than southern ones, especially southwestern ones. And that's just the Whitetales, Mule deer are larger still.
Bet you could put your eye out with it.
I thought the theory was to drill a neat hole, and tie up one or more buddies or corpsmen to rescue and care for the wounded.
A quick kill only removes one enemy.
On the matter of the FMJ 7.62, I had read that some Warsaw Pact ammo had a hollow in the lead filling, just at the point. Upon impact, the point would irregularly collapse, causing the bullet to tumble within the target..Yet it was still fully jacketed.
No, a 7.62 won't necessarily drop a man with one shot- or even several. I once worked with a soldier who took 3 rounds in the chest (miraculously going through-and-through without hitting a major artery of the heart), who went back to full duty as an Infantryman after his wounds healed.
It's not the size of the projectile (unless you are using something REALLY BIG, like a .50 cal), but the amount of force that is transferred to the target, as well as the shot placement. One of the worst wounds I ever saw was inflicted during a domestic dispute with a single .22 Short round- but perfect shot placement, as well as some ricocheting around in the chest, abdomen, and pelvis. The amount of damage was incredible (fatal, in fact).
By the way, the article goes on to say that soldiers are trained to shoot "Center of mast". That must be the Navy he's talking about- in the Army we shoot "Center of MASS"! LOL! (You have to suppose the intrepid reporter got this quote by telephone, and knowing nothing about the subject, wrote what he thought he heard...)
Of course, I meant a "major artery OR the heart"! (The other way sounded kind of poetic, though, didn't it??)
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