6.5 Grendel vs. the .308
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Achilles11B
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Read my post again. When does 'few manufacturers' equal 'problems buying one'? I said 6.5 G barrels weren't as common as .308-chambered ones.
No one asked you too.
Actually I would "have a clue" and, that really wasn't the point anyway. I find it hard to have much faith in a "barrel maker" who can't tell me what kind of steel the barrel is made of.
Everything you quoted after that didn't come from me. I really have nothing more to discuss on this subject. You have your "wisdom and experience" on the subject and I am some dummy who doesn't know how to read a ballistics chart or understand anything about barrel steel. Lets just leave it at that.
Topnbr, yes, I forgot that the Bison Armory barrels don't include the price of the bolt. It is an extra $60 I believe. I ordered them together so I was thinking it was included in that price.
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I would say the title of this specific thread is exactly the evidence that is right under our nose - the 6.5G fans have created a concept that it can replace the .308. That's exactly what the OP is talking about.
As for the Grendel filling the bill to replace the 5.56 and emulate the .308 in the process, it goes right back to a bullet with 20gr less mass and 20gr less powder doing it - which is physically impossible. What the general public keeps focusing on is fps and accuracy, where the military is looking for controllable power. Completely different thing. They don't need to bother with making the 5.56 do more, they already turned down the 6.8 which is 40% more powerful and even paid for it's development. Not what they needed because they have other weapons in inventory, in the field, and much more deadly in delivering power. Most of those are crew served.
That's what's wrong with the myopic perspective of caliber debates, as most of the participants are taking it at face value the single shooter needs to deliver the power. It's a classic misunderstanding generally brought up by those who aren't trained in firepower management on the battlefield. They aren't Infantry, and they sure aren't command level trained.
No clue what it's really about. "Gunner, troops in the open, 450m, fire at my tracers!" and another 100 round belt of .308, .50BMG, or a burst of 40mm goes there.
Don't need no stinkin' leetle 6mm's. It's really a question the Army didn't ask and could frankly care less about.
I didn't see anything in that post that suggested anything about military applications.
Far as I'm concerned, the 6.5 Grendel HAS replaced the .223/5.56 for me in the AR-15 platform.
I see no advantage, from any perspective, for me to own that caliber over the 6.5.
None.
For those that like to plink with cheaper ammo, that would not be the case.
Far as I'm concerned, the 6.5 Grendel HAS replaced the .223/5.56 for me in the AR-15 platform.
I see no advantage, from any perspective, for me to own that caliber over the 6.5.
None.
For those that like to plink with cheaper ammo, that would not be the case.
Tirod said:
You're going to have a very hard time coherently explaining that to YoungSon, late of the 3/75th Rangers, two tours in Iraq, two in Afghanistan, and now going back for a fifth all-expense-paid trip to the sandbox.
We're all (well, some of us) are very familiar w/ mad-minute-fill-the air-with-smoking-lead theory. But the single shooter matters big time -- no less than the single shooter is the basic element of the larger fire team. Even more so because a basic tactic of the Taliban was--and is-- to engage us at 450 yards, knowing that we will have to move in to hit him in the immediate term --and catching us in an intervening trap set in defilade.
I say again: This was, and remains, a favorite tactic and is a specifically-learned response to the limitations of our current main battle rifle. Any lightweight thing we can do to improve standoff response for the individual dogface infantryman in that critical time before heavy weapons, artillery and/or air support can be brought to bear saves good lives and kills bad people.
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I start these questions with some trepidation, since the military application topic generates a fair bit of steam among many of the participants, but these comments are useful for future discussions in other threads and forums.
Let's see, 450 yards is about the same thing as 400 meters. How well documented is this tactic as opposed to 300 meters or 600 meters?
I know that the Mk 262 is developing a good reputation for precision engagements at this and longer ranges in the hands of well-trained designated marksmen. What evidence do we have the the 5.56 M855A1 has filled in this performance gap for the individual rifleman?
Getting air or arty is a lot more difficult and time consuming than getting your personal firearm into action. Further, even in today's precision engagement world, moving ordnance in closer than a half-kilometer is fraught with danger, so the more the squad or patrol can bring to the fight for this intermediate distance, the better their chances.
Unfortunately, we have not seen enough discussion about the assets a patrol can and does carry in addition to their rifles. The answer may be in lighter, more effective grenade launchers, lightweight rockets, and so on instead of marginal improvements in individual rifle effectiveness.
Let's see, 450 yards is about the same thing as 400 meters. How well documented is this tactic as opposed to 300 meters or 600 meters?
I know that the Mk 262 is developing a good reputation for precision engagements at this and longer ranges in the hands of well-trained designated marksmen. What evidence do we have the the 5.56 M855A1 has filled in this performance gap for the individual rifleman?
My job during Vietnam was bringing air and occasionally artillery support to folks on the ground. I know from that experience that getting air and artillery can be a long and frustrating endeavor. In spite of, or because of, the introduction of modern communications and precision ordnance, the time delay hasn't changed all that much.
Getting air or arty is a lot more difficult and time consuming than getting your personal firearm into action. Further, even in today's precision engagement world, moving ordnance in closer than a half-kilometer is fraught with danger, so the more the squad or patrol can bring to the fight for this intermediate distance, the better their chances.
Unfortunately, we have not seen enough discussion about the assets a patrol can and does carry in addition to their rifles. The answer may be in lighter, more effective grenade launchers, lightweight rockets, and so on instead of marginal improvements in individual rifle effectiveness.
Hard experience--wherein YoungSon experienced/had to overcome it multiple times.
He was quite specific and spoke of it repeatedly. (And as FiST Team leader, he was
the one that had to deal with it while his company was getting shot up.)
Here is the comparison of the improved M262 against (the likes of) the Grendel.
Mk262 ballistics courtesy of the manufacturer/Black Hills
http://www.calguns.net/calgunforum/showthread.php?p=7868737
I cannot speak to the field performance of the newer solid penetrator/M855A1 except to
say there is a great deal of back & forth discussion of it in the Graduate forums,
and to offer this briefing...
http://usarmorment.com/pdf/M855A1.pdf
...noting the "Green" aspect as the touted headliner. That it also penetrates well out
to 300+ yards seems an added benefit--incredibly so. (Think what a 6.5 could do with this bullet design)
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Keep in mind that the same genius that came up with the notion that you don't have to aim, the statistics say you just throw more lead at them and statistically you will kill more of them, also came up with the "most engagements are under 300 meters".
51% can be most, which leaves 49% (potentially) that are not.
And arty and heavier MG fire is not there for the day in day out foot patrol (on call reserved for the big pushes and the small guys have to survive or deal with what they have until they get support which as mentioned can be a long time coming and to often too long or never as its too late).
Beauty of the 6.5 is it opens up the world in the same platform as the M series guns and no downside.
Military ammo is not hunting ammo, its penetration oriented, and if you can poke a hole in them at 600 yards, they are probably out of the fight killed or not. A lot will then die of festering wounds.
Will we get there, we can hope.
WOW....REALLY? Are you kidding me? AGAIN?
This argument has been the biggest continuing discussion on ARF.com's Variants board for 5 years. Some of you have learned NOTHING!!
Out to 400 yards, most modern centerfire rifle cartridges have essentially the same flight characteristics. They all shoot fairly flat for that distance. Its why BDC reticles are so common. There are exceptions, but that's a pretty good general rule.
Past 400 yards is where things get interesting. At that point, drag begins to play a big part in what the bullet does, and the sleeker the bullet, the better the flight characteristics are. The 6.5 Grendel case is short and fat, the 6.8 longer and skinnier. They have essentially the same powder space. What differs is that the short, fat case allows longer, higher BC bullets to be used and still fit in the magazine of an AR15.
You simply cannot compare bullet weights, because a bullet heavy enough in the 6.8 to have the same BC as a 123 grain 6.5 bullet is way to long to fit in the mag. Therefore, you can only compare the bullets closest to optimum in each. In the Grendel, that is generally recognized to be in the 115-130 grain range. In the 6.8, its in the 85-110 range. (Some people think lighter and faster is better than heavier and slower, even within the ranks of the proponents of each cartridge.)
I'm sorry, but at this point, a history lessen is in order: The PPC cartridge was developed by Dr. Lou Palmisano and Ferris Pindell. They started with the .220 Russian and developed the 6mm Palmisano/Pindell Cartridge, or 6mm PPC. They never developed the Grendel, and their only contribution was that original idea.
In the mid to late 1990's, Arne Brennan necked the cartridge up to 6.5, creating the 6.5 PPC. Arne Brennan and Bill Alexander were then introduced and began development of the 6.5 Grendel. The Grendel cartridge limped along until Bill Alexander convinced a gentleman at Lapua that it was a good thing, he eventually agreed. Working with Alexander, they developed a cartridge with a blown forward shoulder and a shorter neck, as much different from the 6.5 PPC as the 6mm PPC was from the parent .220 Russian. David Fortier has published pictures of the cartridges on ARF.com if you want to research and see what they looked like at each stage. It was not, "As for the 6.5G, it got it's creds shooting and earning the 600m record which it held for some years. I question the background of a 6.5 fan who doesn't know this. After all, it was developed by the creator of the PPC cartridge, all of which were designed to garner long distance precision shooting records - on and in paper. " as Tirod states.
Tirod says this, here's the straight scoop: in the AR, the 6.8 is a great killer under 500m, the 6.5 will punch paper very precisely out to 600m, and the .308 will still kill people at 850m., and proposes it as the straight scoop.
Tirod, you say the Grendel punches paper so well, denigrating its potential as a game rifle, even though Bill Alexander has stated multiple times that he was trying to develop a great deer cartridge for the AR15. The Grendel has bullets with significantly better sectional densities than the 6.8, which is one of the deciding factors in penetration, critical in hunting. So lets do this, we'll take the two rifles, with hunting length barrels, stand side by side, and place 2 pigs at 100, 200, 300, etc. out to say, 800 yards. We'll each shoot one shot at each pig, first one to not drop the pig, loses. Better yet, we'll save the pigs for hunting, which is way more fun than shooting stationary live targets, and we'll simply shoot targets, comparing the ballistics generated by any decent computer program. What we'll find is simple. That out to about 500 yards, the energy between the two, using optimum bullets for each, is comparable. Beyond that, the Grendel's numbers are obviously superior.
In fact, what we'll also find is that at longer distances, the Grendels numbers actually become quite comparable to the .308, which now gets us back to the OP's original question.
The .308 is simply much more common, its been around for approx. 60 years, while the Grendel for only about 7.
I've had this comparison of the ballistics of each for years. It was originally posted by Arne Brennan.
NOTE the results using Open Tip Match bullets from each rifle and compare the results. From 600-700 yards out, the Grendel exhibits less drift than the 175gr .308, and energies are within 100 pounds. If you think any animal or human can tell the difference in 100 pounds, please disregard!
This argument has been the biggest continuing discussion on ARF.com's Variants board for 5 years. Some of you have learned NOTHING!!
Out to 400 yards, most modern centerfire rifle cartridges have essentially the same flight characteristics. They all shoot fairly flat for that distance. Its why BDC reticles are so common. There are exceptions, but that's a pretty good general rule.
Past 400 yards is where things get interesting. At that point, drag begins to play a big part in what the bullet does, and the sleeker the bullet, the better the flight characteristics are. The 6.5 Grendel case is short and fat, the 6.8 longer and skinnier. They have essentially the same powder space. What differs is that the short, fat case allows longer, higher BC bullets to be used and still fit in the magazine of an AR15.
You simply cannot compare bullet weights, because a bullet heavy enough in the 6.8 to have the same BC as a 123 grain 6.5 bullet is way to long to fit in the mag. Therefore, you can only compare the bullets closest to optimum in each. In the Grendel, that is generally recognized to be in the 115-130 grain range. In the 6.8, its in the 85-110 range. (Some people think lighter and faster is better than heavier and slower, even within the ranks of the proponents of each cartridge.)
I'm sorry, but at this point, a history lessen is in order: The PPC cartridge was developed by Dr. Lou Palmisano and Ferris Pindell. They started with the .220 Russian and developed the 6mm Palmisano/Pindell Cartridge, or 6mm PPC. They never developed the Grendel, and their only contribution was that original idea.
In the mid to late 1990's, Arne Brennan necked the cartridge up to 6.5, creating the 6.5 PPC. Arne Brennan and Bill Alexander were then introduced and began development of the 6.5 Grendel. The Grendel cartridge limped along until Bill Alexander convinced a gentleman at Lapua that it was a good thing, he eventually agreed. Working with Alexander, they developed a cartridge with a blown forward shoulder and a shorter neck, as much different from the 6.5 PPC as the 6mm PPC was from the parent .220 Russian. David Fortier has published pictures of the cartridges on ARF.com if you want to research and see what they looked like at each stage. It was not, "As for the 6.5G, it got it's creds shooting and earning the 600m record which it held for some years. I question the background of a 6.5 fan who doesn't know this. After all, it was developed by the creator of the PPC cartridge, all of which were designed to garner long distance precision shooting records - on and in paper. " as Tirod states.
Tirod says this, here's the straight scoop: in the AR, the 6.8 is a great killer under 500m, the 6.5 will punch paper very precisely out to 600m, and the .308 will still kill people at 850m., and proposes it as the straight scoop.
Tirod, you say the Grendel punches paper so well, denigrating its potential as a game rifle, even though Bill Alexander has stated multiple times that he was trying to develop a great deer cartridge for the AR15. The Grendel has bullets with significantly better sectional densities than the 6.8, which is one of the deciding factors in penetration, critical in hunting. So lets do this, we'll take the two rifles, with hunting length barrels, stand side by side, and place 2 pigs at 100, 200, 300, etc. out to say, 800 yards. We'll each shoot one shot at each pig, first one to not drop the pig, loses. Better yet, we'll save the pigs for hunting, which is way more fun than shooting stationary live targets, and we'll simply shoot targets, comparing the ballistics generated by any decent computer program. What we'll find is simple. That out to about 500 yards, the energy between the two, using optimum bullets for each, is comparable. Beyond that, the Grendel's numbers are obviously superior.
In fact, what we'll also find is that at longer distances, the Grendels numbers actually become quite comparable to the .308, which now gets us back to the OP's original question.
The .308 is simply much more common, its been around for approx. 60 years, while the Grendel for only about 7.
I've had this comparison of the ballistics of each for years. It was originally posted by Arne Brennan.
NOTE the results using Open Tip Match bullets from each rifle and compare the results. From 600-700 yards out, the Grendel exhibits less drift than the 175gr .308, and energies are within 100 pounds. If you think any animal or human can tell the difference in 100 pounds, please disregard!
The OP asks us to compare the Grendel with the .308 but, as near as I could tell, did not indicate the type of shooting he wants to do. That means that some guessing is in order -- and our previous posts reflect that.
Generically comparing with the .308 Winchester, the Grendel offers the same or a bit better probability of hit out to beyond sensible hunting ranges. It is a LOT kinder to the shoulder. It does well in target shooting out to at least 600 yards with the right bullets and loads.
For hunting, the high sectional density of 6.5 mm bullets makes it effective on almost any game you care to hunt except for the largest North American animals. One would usually go with a larger cartridge for those animals anyway.
The AR15 is generally lighter and easier to handle than is the AR10.
The price of factory ammunition continues to go down compared to the .308 Win. Reloaders will find that the Grendel is less expensive to shoot when the price of brass is amortized over a few reloads.
The debate also suggests a lot of passion for the different cartridges. My own take, based on owning and shooting a number of different calibers from .223 through elephant rifle calibers, is that if I had only a .308 Winchester, I would look to owning a smaller caliber for casual shooting. If I had only a .223, I would be shopping for a larger caliber for big game hunting. If I had only a Grendel, I would be happy.
Generically comparing with the .308 Winchester, the Grendel offers the same or a bit better probability of hit out to beyond sensible hunting ranges. It is a LOT kinder to the shoulder. It does well in target shooting out to at least 600 yards with the right bullets and loads.
For hunting, the high sectional density of 6.5 mm bullets makes it effective on almost any game you care to hunt except for the largest North American animals. One would usually go with a larger cartridge for those animals anyway.
The AR15 is generally lighter and easier to handle than is the AR10.
The price of factory ammunition continues to go down compared to the .308 Win. Reloaders will find that the Grendel is less expensive to shoot when the price of brass is amortized over a few reloads.
The debate also suggests a lot of passion for the different cartridges. My own take, based on owning and shooting a number of different calibers from .223 through elephant rifle calibers, is that if I had only a .308 Winchester, I would look to owning a smaller caliber for casual shooting. If I had only a .223, I would be shopping for a larger caliber for big game hunting. If I had only a Grendel, I would be happy.
In an AR platform, the Grendel is very hard to beat as an all around cartridge.
Grendel = AR15 .308 = AR10
AR15's run about 30-40% cheaper to build or buy than comparable AR10's.
AR 15's weigh 2-3 pounds less than comparably equipped AR 10 style rifles.
The Grendel recoils significantly less than a .308, so followup shots are much quicker if necessary.
.308 surplus ammo is comparably priced or even slightly less than Wolf Grendel ammo, though Wolf MPT might be slightly superior in accuracy.
Taken across the board, the Grendel is lighter, cheaper, and does virtually everything that the .308 will do.
Compared to a .260 in the AR 10, the advantages narrow, because the .260 shoots the same bullets faster. Even so, I still pick the Grendel, because the advantage of surplus ammo goes away, and the .260 weighs more and recoils more.
IF I had to shoot everything at 600 yards or more, the .260 would be my choice, though. AND I would take it over the .308 every day of the week.
Grendel = AR15 .308 = AR10
AR15's run about 30-40% cheaper to build or buy than comparable AR10's.
AR 15's weigh 2-3 pounds less than comparably equipped AR 10 style rifles.
The Grendel recoils significantly less than a .308, so followup shots are much quicker if necessary.
.308 surplus ammo is comparably priced or even slightly less than Wolf Grendel ammo, though Wolf MPT might be slightly superior in accuracy.
Taken across the board, the Grendel is lighter, cheaper, and does virtually everything that the .308 will do.
Compared to a .260 in the AR 10, the advantages narrow, because the .260 shoots the same bullets faster. Even so, I still pick the Grendel, because the advantage of surplus ammo goes away, and the .260 weighs more and recoils more.
IF I had to shoot everything at 600 yards or more, the .260 would be my choice, though. AND I would take it over the .308 every day of the week.
well obviously the 308 is a better round but the rifles are so big and heavy!
Please define "better".
Heavier bullet?
Since the trajectories are essentially the same, that's all I can see as the difference.
Heavier bullet equals more recoil. Is more recoil better?
In SOME circumstances a heavier bullet is desirable, such as when shooting dangerous game. BUT...in North America, shooting all but a few big game animals, that is not an issue.
Please define "better".
Heavier bullet?
Since the trajectories are essentially the same, that's all I can see as the difference.
Heavier bullet equals more recoil. Is more recoil better?
In SOME circumstances a heavier bullet is desirable, such as when shooting dangerous game. BUT...in North America, shooting all but a few big game animals, that is not an issue.
I don't like the idea of a 24" AR so the grendel pushing the 100gr OTM @ 3000fps is unlikely which would lead me to stick with my .308 for anything past 600yds. I agree the grendel is awesome for the AR15 truly makes it more versatile. One could also argue that running the new Berger 168gr Hybrid around 2700fps, or even the 175s at 2700fps with alliant MR-2000 that the .308 would out do it at 1000yds. Just a matter of choice i guess.
Better for what?
- hunting?
- plinking?
- serious target shooting?
It is definitely better at producing recoil.- plinking?
- serious target shooting?
It does carry more energy than already exemplary cartridges in .243, .257, .264 .277 and .284 calibers.
Many cartridges in these calibers are all well-known game getters, so where is the .308 enough "better" to make a difference?
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