223/5.56: underrated or overrated?
- Thread starter kcub
- Start date
- Status
Brian Pfleuger
Moderator Emeritus
Llama Bob said:
Trouble is that it IS legal for deer in almost every place that rifles are legal and in places where deer are a WHOLE LOT bigger than 90 lbs.
NY deer range from ~100lbs for average adult doe to over 200lbs for large adult bucks. The .223/5.56 is legal here (as is *ANY* other centerfire rifle) and used by more than a few hunters.
Is it the most common, or even common at all? No. But it does get used and it does kill deer just fine. No one I know that uses one has ever lost a deer to it. I can't say the same about 12a shotguns, .300Win Mags, .30-06....
Of course, it's a game of numbers. Somebody, somewhere, has lost one with a .223.
But when someone loses one with a .223 it's always blamed on the cartridge. When someone loses one with a .30-06 is was a bad shot or a flinch or bullet failure or bad luck or the deer moved right as the shot broke or...
No, but .308 does better than the cartridges being discussed pretty much across the board - WAY better terminal performance, better long range, very reasonable recoil in an auto. Yeah, it weighs a tiny bit more, but midget depression kids packed .30-06s all over the world, so let's not pretend that's the big issue.
The fundamental issue with the 5.56 is not that it's a bad cartridge. It's that it's inferior to the predecessor. The reason 5.56 is attractive to the military is that they don't for an instant take rank and file rifle marksmanship seriously. They knew they were shipping 10s of thousands of rounds into theater for every opponent killed (that number has risen to 100s of thousands in the current wars) so why care what you equip the grunts with? All the kills are coming from snipers, artillery, air, and heavy weapons anyways. A smart ordinance department would just issue cap guns to the infantry and get it over with.
For an individual with shooting skills who can expect a hit rate several orders of magnitude better than the average soldier, it's a very different calculus.
Theohazard
New member
I'm always amazed by threads like this. Those of us who were in the military will point out that the 5.56 is an excellent choice for an infantry rifle cartridge due to its overall package of weight, performance, and low recoil. Then all sorts of people who have never been in the military and never had to carry a full combat load will try to tell us that we're wrong and that we actually need rifles chambered in a caliber like 7.62x51mm.
So let me get this straight: You would prefer that myself and the rest of the Marines I served with be issued a heavier rifle that's harder to shoot quickly, and you want us to only be able to carry half the amount of ammo? All for a performance increase that's marginal at best? Thanks. I'm glad you know what's best for us...
So let me get this straight: You would prefer that myself and the rest of the Marines I served with be issued a heavier rifle that's harder to shoot quickly, and you want us to only be able to carry half the amount of ammo? All for a performance increase that's marginal at best? Thanks. I'm glad you know what's best for us...
Llama Bob, I'm going to ask you straight up what your combat experience is with the 5.56x45. Because either you earned your opinion or you are regurgitating the opinion of someone else. The way you write doesn't sound like you earned your opinion. I've earned my opinion, Tucker1371 earned his opinion, KraigWY earned his (and while he hasn't commented in this thread he has commented elsewhere here on TFL). As is stands, you sound like someone who has read a ballistics table and started regurgitating the opinions of other people, especially someone who has no idea how hard it is to actually be a good marksman in a two way live fire range.
What you are not addressing is that the military had very good reasons to transition away from the 7.62x51, and it has to do with all the other crap that we expect Soldiers to carry, and EVERY SINGLE major military force on the planet transitioned away from the "horse calibers" (rifle calibers that are designed to be able to stop a real cavalry charge, 7.62x54r, 8x57, 30-06) after WWII because combined arms warfare is best when the Infantry is more mobile to enhance fire and maneuver. The Germans with 8x33, the Russians with 7.62x39, and the Americans breaking the trend of "same old bore, lighter slower cartridge" with a real high pressure small bore with high velocity. The Russians and the Chinese would copy the US by the 70s and 80s respectively.
But I'm sure your opinion on the correct balance of tanks and aircraft to infantry and how making the infantry carry less of heavier ammunition will make absolutely fascinating reading. I'm sure you understand the intricacies of echeloning fires to support the advance on a planned objective.
The Army’s Asymmetric Warfare Group teamed up with Johns Hopkins University in 2009 to conduct a soldier load assessment in Afghanistan to find out what would happen when you shaved 20 pounds off of the typical soldier load that averaged more than 100 pounds. http://www.defensetech.org/2012/08/16/study-evaluates-soldier-load-weights/
The average infantryman in the South Pacific during World War II saw about 40 days of combat in four years. The average infantryman in Vietnam saw about 240 days of combat in one year thanks to the mobility of the helicopter. http://www.uswings.com/about-us-wings/vietnam-war-facts/ Simply put, those WWII GIs would have had to lug around that Garand for 24 years of WWII OPTEMPO combat to equal the combat time of a single year of experience in Vietnam. Maybe that explains why the combat load in WWII was only 96 rounds.
So on average, the WWII Infantryman was carrying a Garand and 96 rounds, with an average load between 60 and 90 lbs. The average OIF/OEF Infantryman was carrying 210 rounds and between 80 and 100 pounds but also including real body armor (bullet proof, not just shrapnel protection from the helmet). The platoon of grunts in Iraq or Afghanistan would be able to take a 30-06 to the SAPI plate, then engage in a firefight with their WWII counterparts, and simply outlast them because they are carrying more than twice the ammunition. You use the word "inferior" without thinking about what the heck it is we are asking that round to do.
It isn't the numbers on a ballistic table, it isn't the mass of the projectile. We ask that round to give us an actual tactical advantage on the ground so that we can kill the enemy before he kills us. We carry medium machine guns so that we can put them into place and gain fire superiority. We carry M203/M320s so that we can drop grenades on bad guys. The new XM25 will allow true defilade fire at the platoon level (which is something with no WWII analog).
So yeah, I'd take my platoon against your underfed WWII midgets any time. My men carried more radios, more ammunition, more body armor, more medical supplies. All of my men were volunteers. All of my men had to deal with wars where there were no front lines, where the terrain varied from date palm and pomegranate orchards to windswept mountain tops. People like to talk about how the WWII generation was "in it until the end" but I'll retire with the vast majority of my career spent in a time of war as will the vast majority of all my peers. A career spent training up to go, deployed, coming back to train up again. Folks get this dumb idea that the WWII military was invincible. At 12 million strong it should have been.
So yeah, how was your opinion formed again?
Jimro
The stats still show that we have to ship between 100,000 and 250,000 rounds (depending on exactly whose numbers you use) of ammo to the sandbox for every enemy kill. So this is an easy problem - remove the infantry's rifles altogether. They're not worth it. Not even a PDW.
Last edited:
Art Eatman
Staff in Memoriam
Punishment in the afterlife will include reading every post in a six-page thread. 
Since there does not seem to be a preponderance of any one opinion in this thread, and it has an excess of backing-and-forthing to no avail, let's give it a rest. I'm sure the subject will come up again.
Since there does not seem to be a preponderance of any one opinion in this thread, and it has an excess of backing-and-forthing to no avail, let's give it a rest. I'm sure the subject will come up again.
- Status