Military small arms ammo

[2004tdigls]

the solution is simple, convert all 5.56 rifles to .243

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.243_Winchester


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Civ-ijoFgEQ


the video tells it all, the 5.56 was a steel core round, the .243 was a deer round

 

[Astro14]

Originally Posted by CleverUserName
Originally Posted by hatt
Originally Posted by Oildudeny
Concept of war wasn't to kill it's to wound the enemy. Takes more man power to mobilize the wounded then leave the dead. However the middle East are just different animals all together.

M193 out of 20 inch barrels is a nasty round. At shorter ranges it's probably more damaging than 7.62 ball.


Yep that's why it was banned. M193 was also given the pleasant colloquialism "meat axe". NATO conventions specify an ammo must wound and not kill so it was replaced with SS109.


To what NATO convention are you referring?

Please be specific.

Ammo that is designed or modified to wound is prohibited by The Hague Conventions.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hague_Conventions_of_1899_and_1907

I really doubt NATO specified* ammo that is a war crime under a convention to which the original NATO nations are signatories.


*NATO nations enter into standardization agreements, called STANAGs, for things like ammo, communication protocols, and other interoperability concerns.

 

[ammolab]

Originally Posted by Astro14
The selection of .30-06 for the M1 was based on logistics. We had hundreds of millions of rounds of .30-06 for the 1903 Springfield. Many soldiers went into battle in WW II with 1903s. Common ammo made sense.

The 10 round specification for the Garand's internal magazine was relaxed to 8 to accommodate the change in ammo.


Roger that history: The Garand story not the point. The thing is the 276 Pederson would have penetrated the Jungle (5.56 didn't). It could have fit the SAW and rifle role (5.56 and 7.62 NATO required) and it would carry out to the distance needed in the Middle East.

 

[HangFire]

Citations, please.

 

[hatt]

M193 wasn't a NATO round. It wasn't banned, just never adopted.

 

[Astro14]

Agreed. NATO STANAG 4172 adopted the SS109 5.56mm as the NATO standard.

 

[Astro14]

Originally Posted by ammolab
Originally Posted by Astro14
The selection of .30-06 for the M1 was based on logistics. We had hundreds of millions of rounds of .30-06 for the 1903 Springfield. Many soldiers went into battle in WW II with 1903s. Common ammo made sense.

The 10 round specification for the Garand's internal magazine was relaxed to 8 to accommodate the change in ammo.


Roger that history: The Garand story not the point. The thing is the 276 Pederson would have penetrated the Jungle (5.56 didn't). It could have fit the SAW and rifle role (5.56 and 7.62 NATO required) and it would carry out to the distance needed in the Middle East.


General Douglas MacArthur was the one who killed the .276 Pederson ammo once he verified the technical feasibility of changing the Garand (originally specified to hold 10 rounds of .276 Pedersen) over to .30-06. It was a commonality/logistics decision.

I don't think the .276 Pedersen is the answer to any of today's battlefield issues. The .276 Pedersen is a highly tapered case, 7x51 round. It's a pretty big round. No savings in either weight or size over the 7.62x51, just a bit of change in bullet diameter, and BC as a result. That makes it both heavy and bulky compared with the 5.56mm the US and other NATO nations use today. It might offer a bit of extreme range over .308, perhaps in a modern loading, because of slightly better BC, but its muzzle velocity of 2400 FPS as originally loaded is slightly less than a 7.62x51 and I doubt anyone is shooting beyond 600 yards with a battle rifle in any case.

Consider, too, that at the time of development, the Pedersen was designed to be effective out to 300 yards. That was the specification back then. No one is arguing that the current ammo/rifle is ineffective at that range. The Pedersen, with the same size and weight as the 7.62x51 would offer no weight savings and no volume improvement , and really, no performance improvement.

The weight savings of the 5.56mm, along with the simpler, lighter design of the M-16, over the M-14* with it's 7.62x51 ammo (.308) is what drove the adoption. The M-16 had its issues, but the weight savings of both the ammo and the rifle are unarguable.

For a 10KG load of ammo:

7.62x51 - 13 mags of 20 = 260 rounds.
5.56x54 - 31 mags of 30 = 620 rounds.

The Pedersen would be the same. Where's the advantage?

The Pedersen rifle itself was a technological dead end. The delayed blowback toggle link was complex and unreliable. To improve reliability, the already highly-tapered case of the .276 Pedersen was coated with wax. Wax-coated ammo? Not a good idea in anyone's book, but in the 1920s, when semi-autos were new, technology was being explored. The gas operation of the M1 was far more reliable. The M1 deserved to win the competition against the Pedersen rifle.

Would a 7mm have been a better choice than a 7.62 in the years following WW II? Perhaps, but again, NATO STANAG was for the 7.62x51, based on the US development of that round, concurrent with the development of the M-14. Once our allies adopted our ammo, we couldn't just change it.




*The M-14 was the ultimate evolution of the M1 Garand. A magazine fed Garand prototype existed during WW II. Interestingly, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, it was thought that external magazines would introduce too much dirt into the action, thus the Army specified an internal magazine for both the Pedersen rifle and the Garand. The Johnson rifle, the one other US built semi-auto of the time, was also an internal magazine design. It held 10 rounds of .30-06 in a rotary magazine that could easily be topped off by single rounds. Engineers and weapon designers could've made an external magazine rifle from day one, as the technology was already in use for other rifles, but the very conservative thinking of the US Army in the 1920s and 1930s demanded an internal magazine.

 

[hatt]

The military brass making the decisions on new weapons are normally the wrong people to have such power.

 

[Astro14]

Originally Posted by hatt
The military brass making the decisions on new weapons are normally the wrong people to have such power.


Won't argue that point. I merely convey the history surrounding how we got to where we are.

I do think that MacArthur's decision to keep common ammo was a good one. Many Marines/Army units in the Pacific campaign had a mix of 1903s and M1s. Imagine if they used different ammo!

I do think that the decision to choose the M1 over the Pedersen was a good one. More reliable, common ammo.

I'm not a 5.56mm fan. I think that there is a better balance point between weight and cartridge performance. The decision to select the M-16 was back before good small arms training was done in the Army. According to some studies done on the battlefields of WW II, only about 10% of infantry fired effectively. The rest were ineffective, for a multitude of reasons, but mostly marksmanship and fear.

So, the brass in the 1960s thought that more rounds per soldier was the answer.

The effectiveness of the average infantry went way up in the past few decades with much better training, so do we need more rounds when the rounds are being used more effectively? Estimates now runa about 70-80% effective fire. 8 times as much of the ammo carried is now on target.

So, we could've kept a more effective rifle/cartridge combination, and that improvement in shooter performance would've been greater than the increase in ammo carried by weight.

Now, however, we have a huge logistics infrastructure - supplies, armories, training, rifles and spare parts spread across our entire DOD and those of Allies. Changing caliber now is a couple of orders of magnitude more difficult (financially, logistically, and politically) than it was before WW II, when just the Army picked its own stuff and the USN/USMC picked theirs.

 

[Astro14]

The M855A2 and other rounds are being developed to stay within this set of logistics constraints, by the way.

We're stuck with 5.56mm. So, tungsten cores, and other exotic materials are being considered to maximize the ballistic performance of the 5.56 (and comply with environmental regulations in certain states, but let's not go there).

Some of these new rounds will burn up barrels, and some require different twist rates to stabilize, but barrels are a lot cheaper than changing the entire Alliance over to a new caliber...

 

[bubbatime]

Everyone has already figured out a 6.5mm round is the ideal infantry cartridge. China extensively studied the issue, came to the same conclusion. They invented a new caliber, and new guns, to go with that caliber, because they rightfully found that 6.5mm is the sweet spot with knock down power, weight, and long range effectiveness.

So yeah, we SHOULD have went with that pederson round back when it was developed. But we got stuck with the 7.62 instead. And then the 5.56.

 

[Astro14]

Originally Posted by bubbatime
Everyone has already figured out a 6.5mm round is the ideal infantry cartridge. China extensively studied the issue, came to the same conclusion. They invented a new caliber, and new guns, to go with that caliber, because they rightfully found that 6.5mm is the sweet spot with knock down power, weight, and long range effectiveness.

So yeah, we SHOULD have went with that pederson round back when it was developed. But we got stuck with the 7.62 instead. And then the 5.56.


Pedersen wouldn't have gained us anything over the 7.62x51.

It really wouldn't. Same size round.

Now, a 6.8 SPC, a 6.5 Grendel, that sort of thing makes sense to me from a ballistics perspective. A couple of Middle Eastern countries have selected the 6.8 as their infantry weapon. M-16/M-4 lower commonality, so there is some cost efficiency there. Magazines aren't much different (if any) so there is some efficiency there. No new manual of arms/training for the troops, so there is some efficiency there as well.

But from a re-tooling perspective, it's hugely expensive. We change uppers, get rid of billions of rounds already made, get all new optics and gear. Force our NATO Allies to do the same.

China can do that. Nice to be a totalitarian government acting alone, in this case. Decide on a course of action, then execute.

The hue and cry of contractors, suppliers, and others who stand to lose would be huge, as would the cry of those interested in keeping costs down. Lots of political pressure to keep the platform we've got. Lots of interested parties in that democratic decision.

For the record, I never was an M-16/M-4 fan. Lightweight, ergonomic, easy to shoot, I own one (and several lowers) because, well, it's fun to shoot an AR-15.

Not because it's particularly effective.

Great platform for teaching newbies because of the low recoil. My youngest daughter learned to shoot one when she was 12. She had a great time, did very well with it.

For me, personally, if I needed a rifle for all purposes, my DMPS AP-4 in .308 would be the go-to in my safe. AR-15 ergonomics. Up to 25 rounds with MagPul SR magazines. Good, effective round in a high capacity, lightweight, ergonomic rifle.

For fun, I've got Garands, but that's another story.

I think that there are much better rifles available today than the M-16/M-4. I would love our troops to have the best. I am simply realistic about the reality of that happening.

 

[hatt]

The .308 is a poor choice for any military role today. Even the machine guns need to be replaced with something like .338 Norma.

The 5.56 with proper ammo is fine for most roles.

 

[JohnnyJohnson]

I know that the US military was experimenting with a replacement ammo cartridge for the M16 and its 5.56mm round. From what I understand in areas like Afganistan where long range shooting is common the 5.56 just does not have the knock down power at range. There are many reports of shooting an enemy soldier twice and several hours later he walks into an aid station looking for some help. So for some time now our military has been trying different ammo and also coming up with its own new cartridge although for some time now I have not seen any updates in the news or on line. Does anyone here know of any updates to our small arm ammo program?

The only thing they need is to go back to the m14 and the 7.62 NATO good to 500 yards plus. A bunch of them have been used successfully as snipper rifles past 500 yards. In fact very few people have the skill to shoot past 500.