It is not 900 saw combat. It is not my fault you misunderstand the conversation. It is 900 actually closed with and destroyed the enemy in actively killing enemy combatants in a direct fire engagement.
What is patently ridiculous is the idea 68,000 support guys were out slaying the enemy. The war would have been over in a week, LMAO. It is irrelevant to the fact 5.56mm is being replaced because of lethality issues. Factually, that is happening. Nor does it invalidate the documented experience of those whose primary mission was direct fire engagements at close quarters.
What is fact is that vast majority of CAB are given out for reason other than direct fire engagements with the enemy.
I'm not buying your assertion that only 900 US personnel actually closed with and destroyed the enemy in direct fire engagements. The 68,000 Marines who got the combat action ribbon between 2001 and early 2006 weren't just fobbits that had a mortar round land within a mile of them.
It seems to be important to your argument to discount the experience of others instead of building a strong argument on its own merits. If your argument relies on downplaying or ignoring the experience of others then it's suspect.
Your link to the article on small caliber lethality is an example of what you should be doing to build an argument as it has some interesting points.
From the article you linked:
Not long after the US Army’s entry into Afghanistan, reports
from the field began to surface that in close quarters engagements,
some Soldiers were experiencing multiple “through-and-through”
hits on an enemy combatant where the target continued to fight.
Similar reports arose following the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Those reports were not always consistent – some units would
report a “through-and-through” problem, while others expressed
nothing but confidence in the performance of their M4 carbines
or M16 rifles. The M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, which fires
identical bullets as the M4 and M16, did not receive the same
criticism. Often, mixed reports of performance would come from
the same unit.
That's an example of providing evidence to support your claim that 5.56 doesn't always work well at CQB distances. Some units thought it worked great and other units thought it was a problem of through and through holes being poked without enough wounding. The performance of the 5.56 ammunition these units were issued was inconsistent and that is an issue.
What your argument could benefit from now is evidence that the new 6.8 cartridge fixes the issue of inconstancy at CQB distances. From what I have seen, the Army says the new cartridge will be better at distance than the 5.56 and be better at defeating body armor. There is no question the new cartridge has more energy than the 5.56. Does it perform better at various distances, including CQB? Does it do better at defeating body armor? If there are benefits in greater lethality at various ranges and in defeating body armor, do they justify any downsides such as weight/bulk, and etc.?
The link you posted mentions this:
The following chart (Figure 3)
shows the rounds of interest plotted together. The specific values
of the chart are not meaningful; what is meaningful is the fact
that all of the rounds act in the same band of performance. Interestingly, the one 7.62mm round that received the full evaluation,
the M80 fired from the M14 rifle, performed in the same band of
performance, which would indicate that for M80 ammunition at
least there appears to be no benefit to the larger caliber at close
quarters range
What evidence do you have that the new 6.8 round will outperform the 7.62x51 ball round at CQB distances? The 5.56 did as well as the 7.62x51 M80 ball at CQB distances so why should we expect the new 6.8 round to do better? If there is something special about the new round and its wounding at CQB distances, could that be applied to the much lighter and lower recoiling 5.56?
If the problem with lethality at CQB ranges of 5.56 is inconsistency, is that something that could be solved with more consistent ammunition or does it require a major change?