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Also the Doctrine of US Warfare is to injure the enemy not kill him. Reasoning is to take one injured & two more to help him off the battlefield. So it takes three combatants out of the fight.

Interesting point! I wonder if it is time to adjust this doctrine. In asymmetrical warfare against irregulars forces, foes normally do not have the discipline, let alone a doctrine to tend to their wounded, or do they? Remember Mogadishu.
 
I have also heard that the average American soldier won't shoot to kill, which was part of the reason for adopting a select fire weapon system so soon after developing the m14. I guess the idea is to get more lead in the air even if it isn't aimed, it will still do damage. I don't have a reference for that, it's just hearsay, so take it for what it's worth.
In our current wars, we are fighting in close urban environments and wide open spaces. No weapon will excel at both CQ combat and long range precision. I guess the trick is finding a good compromise, but I don't think the m16/m4 fills those criteria.
 
I have also heard that the average American soldier won't shoot to kill,

Used to be true, not anymore:

Despite our entertainment industry telling us otherwise, it is not easy to kill. In his groundbreaking and highly influential study of World War II firing rates, S.L.A. Marshall, a World War I combatant and chief historian for the European Theater of Operations during World War II, interviewed soldiers fresh from battle and found that only 15 to 20 percent of the combat infantry were willing to fire their weapons, and that was true even when their life or the lives of their comrades were threatened. When Medical Corp psychiatrists studied combat fatigue cases in the European Theater, they found that "fear of killing, rather than fear of being killed, was the most common cause of battle failure in the individual," Marshall reported. Marshall's methodology is now in question, but his findings have been replicated in studies of Civil War and World War I battles, even in re-creations of Napoleonic wars. And the effect of his findings on the military has been profound. As Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman notes in his book On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, "A firing rate of 15 to 20 percent among soldiers is like having a literacy rate of 15 to 20 percent among proofreaders. Once those in authority realized the existence and magnitude of the problem, it was only a matter of time until they solved it."

By the Korean War, the firing rate had gone up to 55 percent; in the Vietnam war, it was around 90 to 95 percent. How did the military achieve this? As Grossman writes, "Since World War II, a new era has quietly dawned in modern warfare: an era of psychological warfare—psychological warfare conducted not upon the enemy, but upon one's own troops. . . . The triad of methods used to achieve this remarkable increase in killing are desensitization, conditioning, and denial defense mechanisms."

Training techniques became more realistic and varied. Soldiers no longer stood and fired at a nonmoving target. They were fully suited up, down in foxholes, and shooting at moving targets, targets that resembled other humans. Simultaneously, the "enemy," whether North Korean, North Vietnamese, Russian, or Arab, was purposefully dehumanized. Killing people was described graphically, and with relish. As Dyer notes, most recruits realize the bloodthirsty talk of drill sergeants is hyperbole, but it still serves to desensitize them to the suffering of an "enemy."

From an article most of you wouldn't like...


To stay on topic, the recent combat vets I know (all two of them) don't have any problems with the platform or the cartridge in question.
 
The reason for the shift to the 5.56x45 caliber, from my understanding was in order to increase the carrying capacity of each individual soldier, so that they may continue to fight in prolonged engagements with the enemy. Now in response to the article, I would just like to point out that out to 300 yards the 5.56x45 cartridge should be plenty accurate to hit an enemy combatant, and the relatively low amount of recoil afforded by the weapons design should allow for follow up shots to be placed on target more effectively as well. The M4 platform isn't without its flaws, but I think that the author of the article is being a little melodramatic, personally.
 
The reason for the shift to the 5.56x45 caliber, from my understanding was in order to increase the carrying capacity of each individual soldier, so that they may continue to fight in prolonged engagements with the enemy. Now in response to the article, I would just like to point out that out to 300 yards the 5.56x45 cartridge should be plenty accurate to hit an enemy combatant, and the relatively low amount of recoil afforded by the weapons design should allow for follow up shots to be placed on target more effectively as well. The M4 platform isn't without its flaws, but I think that the author of the article is being a little melodramatic, personally.

The combat vets I know (from Iraq/Afghanistan and Vietnam) have explained to me that 90% of small arms combat takes place in under 200 yards and about 70% of that in under 100 yards.
 
Todays 62 grain armor piercer is a problem compared to yesteryears 55 grain lead core. A rifle bullet entering a body needs to deform and do crazy stuff inside a body on the way through, not keep it's shape and trajectory.

Bruce.

THe SS109 will deform if it has at least 7 inches of body to pass through.. it turns base backwards and literally explodes.. in fact it causes as much or more damage than the 7.62 x 51, which does not fragment. The only use for the 7.62 x 51 in combat is better range and penetration on some surfaces. I have both calbers as well as AK47s. A buddy has an AK74 that is as accurate as any national match AR15, BTW. It's the man and not the gun

Note the scale is in centimeters, not inches


M80.jpg


SOURCE article:
http://www.firearmstactical.com/wound.htm
 
Interesting point! I wonder if it is time to adjust this doctrine. In asymmetrical warfare against irregulars forces, foes normally do not have the discipline, let alone a doctrine to tend to their wounded, or do they? Remember Mogadishu.

Somalia.. the problem there was the SS109/M855 did not have enough body to work on (The soldiers called the Somalis "skinnies") and to boot they were armed with RPGs and likely hopped up on opium

Sometimes stuff happens. Now if the US soldiers had had hi tech hollowpoints..
 
Used to be true, not anymore:



From an article most of you wouldn't like...


To stay on topic, the recent combat vets I know (all two of them) don't have any problems with the platform or the cartridge in question.


For every one hundred men you send us,

Ten should not even be here.

Eighty are nothing but targets.

Nine of them are real fighters;

We are lucky to have them, they the battle make.

Ah, but the one. One of them is a warrior.

And he will bring the others back.

Heraclitus, 500 BC
 
THe SS109 will deform if it has at least 7 inches of body to pass through.. it turns base backwards and literally explodes.. in fact it causes as much or more damage than the 7.62 x 51, which does not fragment. The only use for the 7.62 x 51 in combat is better range and penetration on some surfaces. I have both calbers as well as AK47s. A buddy has an AK74 that is as accurate as any national match AR15, BTW. It's the man and not the gun

Note the scale is in centimeters, not inches

SOURCE article:
http://www.firearmstactical.com/wound.htm

Great info, thanks for the link. Note that the 55gr XM193 ain't too shabby either. 25 cm = about 9.8 inches, I think.


M193.jpg
 
5.56 can usually do the job if the man behind the trigger does his. I prefer the 62 grain penetrator due to several high profile instances of the 55 grain not penetrating far enough to get past an arm (1986 FBI shootout for one) although in that case mentioned it blew the arm muscles inside out (FBI agent hit by Mini 14)
 
For every one hundred men you send us,

Ten should not even be here.

Eighty are nothing but targets.

Nine of them are real fighters;

We are lucky to have them, they the battle make.

Ah, but the one. One of them is a warrior.

And he will bring the others back.

Heraclitus, 500 BC

That's what I was thinking about when I read it too. Great quote.
 
Prior to WW II, the Japanese were fighting the Chinese and using their early version Arisaka 6.5 bolt guns. They learned the hard way that round did not have enough hit power or range. Solution: redesigned the system to move up to a 7.7 mm round... same design, larger and stronger. THAT is what our men met throughout the Pacific Theatre, as they had that in place starting in 1938, well before Pearl. That was a vicious round to go up against.... a pretty good match for our venerable .30/06 round.

Someone made the point that, for a round to COUNT, it had to hit accurately. True enough. And it is my understanding that true marksmanship is not really taught our soldiers these days. Full auto sprayed in the direction of an advancing enemy might be intimidating... but leaves them alive to come back in an hour, or a day. One round on target, with sufficient hit power to take an enemy combatant out of action sill do far more.... in fact, this is the tactic that turned the tide during the War for Independence... our men outshot the Brits by a wide margin.

Having read the first linked article, I fail to see why our all-wise (figure of speech here, guys) national government can't find the funds to replace a too-small and inferior weapon system in the field. How long would that take? Do it on an area by area basis.... or a Unit by Unit plan. Batallion X comes to a rear base, turns in their old weapons, gets their new ones and ammo, spends two, three days working with them in combat simiile situations, and redeploys. Their rear base is well supplied with spares and proper ammo, and so next supply runs bring out the new stuff. It could be done in a month. Thirty thousand weapons swapped out this way would go a long ways toward turning the tide in AfPak... leave Iraq alone for the time being, seems most of that action is urban and shorter range, better suited for the older smaller equipment. Afghanistan has different difficulties.

But then, I've noticed ever since the VietNam war, when our troops were restricted and limited and underequipped so as to prevent their really accomplishing their vague mission... at least toward the latter part of that conflict. Seems, with all the protesting going on and the bad press on the Military Industrial Complex, we couldn't reallly WIN over there.... what, are we headed for the same sort of "resolution" in Afghanistan?

Personally, I believe we should leave that entire area, bring our troops home and deploy them along our Southern Border for a season. Retire most of them out of the military, freeing up huge amounts of tax revenue being spend now to keep them there. BUT--- since they're THERE, in Afghanistan, give them the proper tools to do their work. Less is to do them a grave injustice.

I also appreciated the comment someone made about the present enemy in that theatre lacks the manpower and moral spine to stay with their wounded... thus a non-lethal wound no longer takes out three combatants. Time to move up to a weapon and round with enough more authority to get the assigned job done. I also don't see why a 6.5 round cannot be fairly quickly adopted... a great medium point between the 308/7.62 NATO and the current weak 5.56 rounds.
ah, but what do any of us know, we're only WE THE PEOPLE, watching from the sidelines and armchair quarterbacking... we're supposed to leave it all to the "professionals", right?

some changes need to be made to the swamp-dwellers alongside the Potomac.....
 
the true desire is to wound not kill this ties up more resources, people and vehicles to get the wounded to an aid station medical staff to treat the wounded and supplies to get it done food to feed all these people, one shot one kill is not an efficient way to do it, it eliminates one guy when you wound him it ties up 6-8 people
 
This is simple.

In combat, you miss a lot. So you need more rounds. More rounds mean a lot more weight. Unless they're smaller rounds.

FMJ's don't do near enough damage. Every problem people have with the 5.56 round can be solved with some 75gr soft point happy-pills.
 
Prior to WW II, the Japanese were fighting the Chinese and using their early version Arisaka 6.5 bolt guns. They learned the hard way that round did not have enough hit power or range. Solution: redesigned the system to move up to a 7.7 mm round... same design, larger and stronger. THAT is what our men met throughout the Pacific Theatre, as they had that in place starting in 1938, well before Pearl. That was a vicious round to go up against.... a pretty good match for our venerable .30/06 round.

Someone made the point that, for a round to COUNT, it had to hit accurately. True enough. And it is my understanding that true marksmanship is not really taught our soldiers these days. Full auto sprayed in the direction of an advancing enemy might be intimidating... but leaves them alive to come back in an hour, or a day. One round on target, with sufficient hit power to take an enemy combatant out of action sill do far more.... in fact, this is the tactic that turned the tide during the War for Independence... our men outshot the Brits by a wide margin.

Having read the first linked article, I fail to see why our all-wise (figure of speech here, guys) national government can't find the funds to replace a too-small and inferior weapon system in the field. How long would that take? Do it on an area by area basis.... or a Unit by Unit plan. Batallion X comes to a rear base, turns in their old weapons, gets their new ones and ammo, spends two, three days working with them in combat simiile situations, and redeploys. Their rear base is well supplied with spares and proper ammo, and so next supply runs bring out the new stuff. It could be done in a month. Thirty thousand weapons swapped out this way would go a long ways toward turning the tide in AfPak... leave Iraq alone for the time being, seems most of that action is urban and shorter range, better suited for the older smaller equipment. Afghanistan has different difficulties.

But then, I've noticed ever since the VietNam war, when our troops were restricted and limited and underequipped so as to prevent their really accomplishing their vague mission... at least toward the latter part of that conflict. Seems, with all the protesting going on and the bad press on the Military Industrial Complex, we couldn't reallly WIN over there.... what, are we headed for the same sort of "resolution" in Afghanistan?

Personally, I believe we should leave that entire area, bring our troops home and deploy them along our Southern Border for a season. Retire most of them out of the military, freeing up huge amounts of tax revenue being spend now to keep them there. BUT--- since they're THERE, in Afghanistan, give them the proper tools to do their work. Less is to do them a grave injustice.

I also appreciated the comment someone made about the present enemy in that theatre lacks the manpower and moral spine to stay with their wounded... thus a non-lethal wound no longer takes out three combatants. Time to move up to a weapon and round with enough more authority to get the assigned job done. I also don't see why a 6.5 round cannot be fairly quickly adopted... a great medium point between the 308/7.62 NATO and the current weak 5.56 rounds.
ah, but what do any of us know, we're only WE THE PEOPLE, watching from the sidelines and armchair quarterbacking... we're supposed to leave it all to the "professionals", right?

some changes need to be made to the swamp-dwellers alongside the Potomac.....

Keep in mind that you are discussing old bullet tech and FMJs that tended not to disintegrate as the modern 5.56 FMJ is capable of. The old bullet styles tended to zip right through as depicted in the 7,62 NATO graph, above, The graphs were done by the noted Forensic expert Dr Martin Fackler

You will also notice in the main link that softpoints in the 7.62 NATO or even the 30-30 Winchester are far more devastating than softpoints in the 5.56. This is all about bullet tech
 
Blitzkieg that is a fancy picture of 50% fragmentation of the SS109 but is just not the truth. After action reports of the Ranger fight in Mogadishu reported little stopping power.

Let me say this before anyone mistakes anything I say about my experience there, I did not see combat and never shot at anyone and was not shot at.

However, I was stationed off shore as a TRAP (Tactical Recovery of Air Personnel) team with a Marine Expeditionary Unit. We got there after the Rangers got shot up.

According to the Rangers one body hit did little to deter attackers and often times several hits to the body was required to stop an attacker. Yes, the locals were on drugs, but a stimulant (a local root that was chewed) not opium. Either way the SS109 was not doing the job.

If you take a file and dissect an SS109 you will see that there is very little lead at the tip to deform when it hits a body. Also, Somalian torsos (body cavities) are about the same as anyone else's so I am not sure where the 7 inches thing comes into play.
 
cwoo9 I have engaged targets (55 gallon drums) out to 800 yards with an M16A2 (issue rifle not a range queen) and got consistent hits. Do I think it would do as good as a .308 at that range? **** no!
I would choose a .308 over 5.56 for beyond 300 yards work.
But at the same time modern warfare has not often exceeded 300 yards with the exception of Afghanistan, since World War 1.
 
Todays 62 grain armor piercer is a problem compared to yesteryears 55 grain lead core. A rifle bullet entering a body needs to deform and do crazy stuff inside a body on the way through, not keep it's shape and trajectory.

Bruce.

I've heard from several soldier friends that they dislike the green-tip AP rounds because they just punch holes. They end up just going for head shots.
 
Last Edited:
Stop using FMJ's.

Problem solved.

This is simple.

In combat, you miss a lot. So you need more rounds. More rounds mean a lot more weight. Unless they're smaller rounds.

FMJ's don't do near enough damage. Every problem people have with the 5.56 round can be solved with some 75gr soft point happy-pills.

Keep in mind that you are discussing old bullet tech and FMJs that tended not to disintegrate as the modern 5.56 FMJ is capable of. The old bullet styles tended to zip right through as depicted in the 7,62 NATO graph, above, The graphs were done by the noted Forensic expert Dr Martin Fackler

You will also notice in the main link that softpoints in the 7.62 NATO or even the 30-30 Winchester are far more devastating than softpoints in the 5.56. This is all about bullet tech

A soft point in .223/5.56 is not nearly as effective as a modern FMJ. Tumbling and breaking and creating multiple wound channels (and therefore the chance to cut something vital such as an artery) is far more effective than any expansion which might be expected from a very light and thin bullet. And yes, 75gr is a very light and thin bullet - too light and thin to expect much expansion.
 

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