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The problem with our military's choice of round selection is that politics, DOD careerist aspirations and people without combat experience are what rule the choice of weapons, ammunition, etc.

People who pay attention to ballistics, both exterior (ie, in-flight) and wound ballistics have known for a long, long time (since the late 1920's) that a bullet diameter somewhere between 6.5 to 7mm (.264 to .284") has optimum exterior ballistics and that in this range, a moderate weight bullet (say, around 120 to 140 grains) has excellent wound ballistics in a solid, non-expanding round.

The problem is this: When the US entered WWI, we were well behind the curve in rifle technology. The 1903 Springfield was basically a rip-off of the Mauser action. We chose a .30 bullet diameter based on experience up to that time. Out of the pre-WWI and WWI experience, we come away with the 1903 Springfield rifle, an excellent bolt gun, and what we all know today as the ".30-06" round.

At this point in military history, the emphasis was on "aimed fire" and the machine gun was a new invention and not well co-ordinated with military doctrine at that time.

Along comes the 20's and early 30's and some people start thinking about semi-automatic rifles and volume of fire from individual infantrymen. The Army "Gravel Bellies" don't like the idea of semi-automatic weapons -- "wastes ammunition and nothing more!" they proclaim. The consideration is made that the .30-06 is a tad heavy to carry, a tad heavy on the recoil, and we could get more bang for our bucks by using some real science on the issue of bullet selection.

So the Dep't of the Army forms what is known in history as "The Goat Board." They prop up quite a number of goats and goat carcasses to test wound ballistics and lo, they come up with the result of bullets in the .270 to .276 region seem to maximize everything we're looking for in a battle weapon's ammunition.

Well, the aimed fire bureaucrats in the Armory system aren't going to hear of a "wimpy" sub-.30 round. Just won't hear of it. There were still some fossils in the Army who thought that the .45-70 round was entirely sufficient, if only the infantry would be trained to use very judicious, carefully aimed fire. Mind you, the .45-70 killed people deader than an anvil with very few bullets, but loaded to modern ballistic capabilities with smokeless powder instead of 70 grains of black powder, it kicks like a pissed-off mule.

No one was buying the idea of a sub-.30 bullet, so the bureaucrats point out that goat flesh isn't a good approximation of human flesh for testing would ballistics, so they force a repetition of the wound ballistics tests, only this time with pigs, because pig flesh is a better approximation in density and depth to humans.

And so, the "Pig Board" was formed. They repeat the tests and arrive at the same result. About a .270 to .276 bullet seems to optimize everything we're seeking.

The gravel bellies are now worried. They're running out of excuses to keep the .30-06. So they fiddle, twiddle, piddle and delay and debate the issue some more.

Now it is the late 30's. People who don't have their head up their backside are looking across both oceans and seeing the winds of war start to pick up. The sane people of the day can see this coming, and one of these sane people was Douglas MacArthur, who, at that time, was in charge of the decision whether we're going to chamber the newest battle weapons (eg, the M-1 Garand, etc) in this new .276 caliber or in the .30-06.

MacArthur looked at the huge stockpiles of .30-06 ammo we had in stores all over the country. And then he looked at the fools in Congress, as well as in the Dep't of the Army. And MacArthur made the decision that perhaps saved our asses early in WWII: he said that logistics trump all the science, and it was better to have a good, solid, if sub-optimal round than no ammo at all.

The most valuable M-1 Garands for collectors today aren't the Garands that got issued. They're the very few prototype Garands that were made in .276 Pederson round (7x43 mm), a round much closer in power to what was necessary for a assault weapon with ranges out to 500 meters, instead of out to 800 meters.

Fast-forward to prior to Vietnam: the Army wanted an assault rifle. The "gravel-bellies" were back in the saddle, and all the science from the Goat Board and Pig Board was swept under the carpet. The Armory bureaucrats wanted a "full power .30" round in a fully automatic rifle, and told Mr. Garand to develop this.

John Garand told them it couldn't be done. Nonetheless, Garand labored long and hard and came up with the M-14, which as other people here have said, is tough to control on full rock-n-roll settings. The Dap't of the Army grudgingly allowed a reduction in power from .30-06 to .308, mostly to gain reliability in action cycling.

We get into Vietnam with the M-14. A wonderful, tough rifle for marksmen, but because it couldn't be controlled easily in full auto, and because it had no burst-fire mode, it was a bear to control. It was much harder still to give a M-14 to a ARVN and tell him to do anything useful with it. The rifle is simply too large, too heavy and kicks too hard for someone of slight frame and small dimensions.

Along comes Eugene Stoner and the AR-15/M-16. The DOD bureaucracy *hates* this, but gets it crammed down their throats by McNamara, along with the 5.56 round, which is simply too small and too light for longer shots. If someone here would like me to expound on ballistics, I can, but for now, I'll keep it short and say that small, varmint-sized rounds can be highly frangible, even in solid-bullet configurations, but they need high velocities upon impact to break apart. The problem here is twofold:

1. It takes a longer rifle barrel than the AR-15/M-15/M4 (especially longer than the M-4) to fully burn all the powder in the cartridge and maximize the velocity of the bullet. Most varmint rifles have at least a 24" barrel. The M-16 has a 20" barrel. The M-14 has something like a 14" barrel. The shorter the barrel under 24 inches, the more powder that leaves the muzzle as unburned powder and the brighter the muzzle flash.

2. The spectrum of bullets (diameter x length x weight) has a few "sweet spots" where everything comes together. Us gun nuts have known this for years and years. .223 is not one of those sweet spots. .30/.308 isn't either. Some of the smaller-caliber sweet spots are:

6.5mm (.264) -- very high ballistic coefficient and sectional density for the weight. Best bullet in this caliber would be a 160grain bullet. Terrific sectional density, and terrific ballistic coefficient. This bullet keeps its kinetic energy for a long, long ways downrange. There are plenty of long-range shooters using wildcat 6.5mm rounds at 1000 yards very successfully.

7.. (.284) -- almost as good as the 6.5 at the same weight, but really good at heavier weights.

.338 -- at the 300grain to 325 grain levels, the .338 is an excellent long-range round. But it is so heavy that you need something like a .338 Lapua to launch this, and now we're in the realm of dedicated sniper rifles.

.404 -- the .404 CheyTac is a new sniper system under development.

And then we find wonderful ballistics in the .50BMG, which is obviously too heavy for individual infantry.

So, out of all of this, the 6.5mm is really the ideal situation for an infantry rifle, just as discovered before computers by the Goat and Pig boards. The 5.56 (.224 diameter) bullets have horrible BC's, and bleed off their energy very, very quickly, and penetration is a function of velocity. Couple this horrible BC rating with the trend towards shorter and shorter barrels, which rob the bullet of velocity right out of the muzzle, and you get what we have here today: a worst of all worlds situation: the bullet is too light to have knockdown on unarmored targets, it has no hope of penetrating body armor at any distance, it doesn't have any long range killing power on something bigger than a poodle and it sucks as a CQB weapon, where what would be ideal is a fat, slow bullet (like, oh, a .45 ACP out of a sub-gun, or a short-barrel shotgun).

Sadly, the DOD today seems intent on turning the M-16 into a jack of all trades and a master of absolutely nothing. Further trouble is, the DOD now has a lot invested in the 5.56 and they're slow to do anything.

A 6.5mm bullet, perhaps in 120 grains, with a moderate cartridge behind it (say, something like a .308 necked down to 6.5mm -- aka the ".260 Remington" would have much more knockdown power, much more range, yet still be very mild in recoil and fully managed in full-auto by anyone in the infantry. It wouldn't be ideal in CQB. We still need to get the DOD to realize what we realized in WWII: there are lots of situations in urban combat where our guys need something that puts down a volume of fire that's very lethal at close ranges, much like what we had in WWII with the Tommy Gun and the M-3 "Grease Gun."

As for piecing body armor: that's tough to do. The projects extant to do this typically use very small diameter bullets (say, 4.5mm or .177 cal) and very high sectional density (they look very long and carry some higher weight) with a very sharp, non-deforming tip. They're not going to kill someone at long range, and the wound ballistics must be about that of a knitting needle. Yes, the guy is hurt, but the wound channel will be very narrow and not cause immediate death unless the projectile hits a very critical area.

So if you're wondering why our guys are saddled with this varmint round suitable for dispatching nothing larger than a coyote, here's your answer: Literally 100 years of malfeasance on the part of the Army/DOD bureaucracy.