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To: Long Cut
I agree with that! It worked well enough on Iwo Jima!

And I still think that a platoon of elite troops armed with Ruger Mini-14s, or M1 Carbines for that matter, will utterly destroy a platoon of unmotivated conscripts armed with XM-8s. And after that encounter, they'll have the better weapons if they want them.

Even so, I'm all for issuing the XM-8 for all of the listed reasons.

But really, considering the type of mounted and dismounted warfare we're involved in, and the need to penetrate mud and cinder block walls etc, I think it's time to dump the 5.56 altogether. The old rationales for 5.56mm no longer apply, and the caliber is now deficient, no matter how nice the bullet launcher employed.

441 posted on 11/30/2003 9:02:27 AM PST by Travis McGee
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To: Travis McGee; All
"But really, considering the type of mounted and dismounted warfare we're involved in, and the need to penetrate mud and cinder block walls etc, I think it's time to dump the 5.56 altogether. The old rationales for 5.56mm no longer apply, and the caliber is now deficient, no matter how nice the bullet launcher employed."

Very true. Heck, this thread started out with a discussion of how much better a .243 Winchester or .260 would be as a standard round.

Thing is, then you've got to convince ALL the NATO and other allied countries to switch, which means switching ALL those rifles, SAWs, and belts and magazines as well. It would seem that they're not quite ready to go that far, or expend that much money just yet, especially since some nations simply could not afford to do so at all.

From the articles, it seems clear that, for now, the approach that they're taking is to see how much the effectiveness of the .223 round can be increased via different weights and loads, and of course, adding a grenade launcher.

Just for the standardization issue alone, I wouldn't expect a total cartridge switch for at least another generation. Sad, really, as standardization was intended to SOLVE problems, not cause them.

Fact is, American civilian shooters always led the way on new rounds for the military. We always had the best, up until we had to clear it all through the Euros.

447 posted on 12/01/2003 9:10:38 AM PST by Long Cut (Whiskey...oil for life's frictions)
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