Round of Choice for a Battle Rifle

Rebeldon

Explain something to me about this philosophy of requiring medical attention...

What would you rather have:

1. One guy tended to by three people for three weeks and then back on the line (4 man-WEEKS lost)

or

2. One child raised to be a soldier by at least one parent? (30 man-YEARS lost)

I just don't understand how this "wound 'em is better" philosophy lasted more than five minutes...
 
I think the "wound em is better" theory is applicable to the battle of the moment. AND would only apply when used against an enemy that tended their wounded immediatly instead of carrying on the fight.

Wounded is better than not hitten em at all.

Sam
 
Wounded is better than not hitten them at all, true, but killing them is even better still. That way they cant come back to haunt you.

We're all family people and cannot afford even one casuelty, military tactics are good for the military, but not neccessarily for civilians....
 
Assuming you mean simply "military-style rifle" rather than the more specific "battle rifle," I prefer 223. 223 has awesome wound ballistics in humans and is light enough to carry a lot of rounds. True, it doesn't do much past 300 yards, but IN THE REAL WORLD firefights don't HAPPEN at past 300 yards.
 
Someone please explain...

Why this thread disintegrated into a wound ballistics forum?

How does a 7.62x51 bullet kill any better than a 5.56x45? Give the EXACT same location of impact and corresponding downrange velocity, how can one make such a claim?

Sure, the 7.62 bullet makes a slightly bigger hole but the increased area for bleeding makes little difference if vitals organs or major bone structure is hit.

How many of you have been in combat? Do you know what percentage of battlefield injuries are from point to point, direct fire? Most of the "golden bb's" are from indirect fire, secondary missles, flame and concussion.

I'll take M855 ammo if I have a distance to cover, M193 if I have a lot of rounds to fire and a whole bunch of HEDP rounds for my M203. BTW, the size of the "projectiles" from the HEDP's is about 1/8" cubed or .125 caliber moving at 1500 ft/second. They remove the will to fight nicely.
 
Keith,

How many of the folks who have been in combat know those percentages, do ya think? I've talked to numerous ex-service types who didn't even remember (or perhaps, ever know) the caliber their rifles had fired! Since most of us probably don't have grenade launchers and mortars, the closest to a direct comparison we can come is a shotgun with shot. With smaller shot, one will have to have multiple hits to have any prayer of effectiveness...probably similar to the frags from the 40 you mention.

Something else you might consider, is that one is talking about the difference between an individual or family, versus a military team that probably has fire support. Sure, carry a squirt gun- you have 40mm and LMG/MMG on tap, and probably arty or air cover on call. LOTTA difference (maybe that was your point?).

Personally, if folks are deciding what to use in a life-threatening situation, I'd say terminal effectiveness would be a pretty salient point.
 
One of the advantages of full sized rifle cartridges over the .22 family is the ability to penetrate moderate cover. A tree that would protect from .223 would be holed by .308, 30-06, 8mm etc. Not only holed but could add a handfull of splinters to the wound. I got whacked in a vest (ceramic tiles) once hard enough to break a couple of ribs and we never knew who did it or exactly where it came from. I really do want a real rifle if it comes down to it.

Sam
 
I want to put him done and then some.
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<sigh> The .223 will do that just fine. Of course the .308 has more range, but combat has rarely been at ranges where it makes a difference. Not many people can hit much past 300 meters. To talk of battle rifles needing to hit at 1000 yards is nonsense. At that range you are in scoped sniper rifle territory.

If you can count on doing all your fighting from a fixed location, go with a .308. Or even a .50 BMG. If you are going to have to move, you'd better consider the weight advantages of the .223. They are real, and they count in the real world. You aren't very effective if you are so wiped out physically that you are shaking with fatigue, or maybe collapse.

As for brush penetration, there were some interesting tests run in the mid 60s with M-14s against M-16s. A controlled test, not "my brother in law Harry" second hand anecdotes.

The results ran neck and neck. No appreciable difference in hits on target, at various ranges.


As for .308 vs. .30-06, in a FMJ military round the difference is neglible. There are only 2 reasons for choosing one over the other:

  1. The choice of rifle. If one is more comfortable, more confident with a Garand than with an M-1A, it makes sense to choose the '06.
  2. An irrational devotion to history. That's fine for collectors, but it's a dumb reason to choose a combat rifle.
    [/list=1]
 
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5.56 NATO hurts or wounds. Let me tell you guys something. A hit from a 193 ball round rounds does more than hurt or wound you. That is fact not theroy.

I've used both the 5.56 (M-16) and 7.62 Nato (M-60) in firefights and if I have to hump up and down mountians etc. my choice would the 5.56. The SAW currently being used sound to me a lot better than the 60 I carried for 4 months which then the 60 was used as a squad Auto Weapon.

Turk
173rd Abn. Bdge (sep)
 
What about what happened in Mogadishu, Somalia in October 1993. I thought the Rangers and Delta Force boys using .223/5.56 were having serious problems putting bad guys down. Making hits weren't the problem. I think the round was not nearly as effective as many had thought/wished.

This was about as pure an urban warfare setting as can be. So, I'm not sure if this should be considered when evaluating a "battle" rifle.

I'm not trying to start a flame. I'm just trying to get/give some info.

Joe Mamma
 
Joe:

The problem wasn't the round but the rifle. Our forces were using the M4 carbine and the short barrel didn't give the M855 ammo enough velocity to fragment. See Blackhawk Down and Dr. Martin Fackler's article on the fragmentation threshold of M855/M193 ammo.

As I recall, even the 7.62 x 51 rifle shooters were having trouble dropping targets on the first shot. These perps were drugged and the only one-shot stop would be from a 12 ga. buckshot round at 25 yards.


For the rest of you bigger is better crowd, this sounds EXACTLY like the old-timer's opinion of the 30-40 Krag rifle when it replaced the .45-70 Govt. as our standard round.

And it sounds EXACTLY like the switch from 03 to 06 ammo with its 150 grain bullet instead of the 220 grain slug.
 
Yah, if it's moving too slow (like from a short barrel) for hydrostatic shock, bigger could well be better.

'Course, a .50 BMG beats even the magical '06!
 
"Yah, if it's moving too slow (like from a short barrel) for hydrostatic shock, bigger could well be better."

Don't be fooled by hydrostatic shock. Its a myth. Permanent wound cavity IS the nature of incapacitation. The 5.56 x 45 does a splendid job due to velocity, bullet length and bullet construction.


http://home.snafu.de/l.moeller/military_bullet_wound_patterns.html

The M855 was designed to defeat 3mm thick RHA. It can do much more at closer ranges and performs very close to larger caliber rifles. Lightweight cover like walls, car doors, dumpsters and the like are all easily defeated.

I've defeated 3/8" thick A-500 square structural members at 25 yards with 69 grain Sierra HPBT's. The remaining bullet frags appeared to do more damage than .22 lr to the facing wall.
 
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Any action on US soil which involves the citizenry is going to be a guriella war, long shots will be few and far between. We're going to be concentrating on moving away from the action to safer areas.

What if the BG's are behind a dumpster, mailbox, or vehicle?

.223's wont get them behind such obstacles, velocity is fine but not enough weight. You'll have to be able to stay moving and not get pinned down.

My limited non-military experience tells me .308 gets point and supplemental .223's cover the rear. Better yet .308's all around.
But not all traveling companions can handle a .308, but they can handle .223's....at least in my circle;)
 
Edward, the .223 will do just fine punching through all three. I'm NOT saying it will go through anything that a .308 will, I'm saying it's plenty good enough. Any caliber is a compromise. If stopping power and penetration were the only requirements we'd all shoot 105 howitzers. Or at least .50 BMGs with AP. Weight counts. Big.


BTW, Keith, hydrostatic shock is a well documented phenomenon, not some barracks tall tale.
 
Hydrostatic shock is a myth. Temporary wound cavity isn't although the temporary cavity isn't directly related to the lethality or incapaciation of the wound. The temproary wound cavity is formed by dynamic tearing of tissue in response to its post impact accelerations. Tissue is normally quite compliant and such tearing/bruising and damage is quite superficial.

Permanent wound cavity from the the M193/M855 round is superior to the M80 ball in the above listed link due to projectile fragmentation and early yawing. Energy, power and momentum superiority do not make a better round.

Why is hydrostatic theory bunk? In the medical procedure known as lithotropy, a human is subjected to acoustic energy several times that produced by the typical gunshot. The power difference is several orders of magnitude greater. Most patients have very little bruising and swelling in the subject site because water is incompressible.

I once thought the 5.56 x 45 round was weak until I tried it on deer. Yes, the little pipsquick M193 ball ammo (Winchester Q3131) was quite impressive on whitetail. All my shots (4) were under 200 yards and made with telescopic assistance. The one neck shot (ca 85 yds.) severed and destroyed 2 cervical vertabrae, no surprise. No fragment larger than a grain of rice was found. The remaining center mass shots yeilded only one base fragment and numerous tiny specks, the rest exited. The neck shot deer dropped on the spot (no surprise) while the chest shot deer ran 25-35 yards. Two of the three suffered major trauma to cardiac structures, both muscle and vascular types. The last deer had complete lung penetration and the classic permanent wound cavity depicted in Dr. Fackler's article.

Much has been said about comparisons between deer and human wound trauma. I believe if its adequate for deer, its more than for human. I've never heard of a human run 25 yards after being shot through both lungs with a 30-'06 softpoint but have seen it in deer many times.

All 4 deer were taken IAW state hunting regulations and any centerfire semiautomatic rifle is legal for deer in this state.
 
Completely irrelevant. There is no movement other than sound waves, hence no hydrostatic shock.
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Not quite. Sound waves are pressure waves and the high specific energy of lithotropic frequencies exceed those of the typical ballistic projectile. Lithotropic procedures are hydrostatic impulses of single pulse duration, just like those purported by the hydrostatic wounding crowd.

Although the delta t would be somewhat longer for a typical bullet, lithotropy uses power levels approaching 5 kW or roughly 3700 ft*lbf/second. That's a lot of power for the human body to be subjected to yet surrounding tissue damage is slight even though the duration for the lithotropy is much shorter than a typical bullet (.75ft / 1600ft/sec gives an average delta t of half a millisecond). Remember, the speed of sound in water is much greater than in air.

In wound trauma treatment, the tissue needing debridment is limited to the permanent wound cavity surfaces in which shearing damage from the projectile is limited. If hydrostatic shock were a factor in incapacitation and mobidity, one would expect to see permanent tissue damage radiating from the wound area. It simply does not happen. The incompressibility of fluid/tissue in most organs does not permit damage from isotropic pressure waves. The only exception is the lungs and overpressure trauma AKA barotrauma can not be a result of any typical kinetic energy projectiles.

The shock inflicted by ballistic wound trauma is physiological from physical damage associated with the projectile, not some radiating pressure wave from a high-velocity projectile.
 
(quote) Edward, the .223 will do just fine punching thru all three. I'm NOT saying it will go thru anything a .308 will, I'm saying its plenty good enough. Any caliber is a compromise. If stoppimg power and penetration were the only requirements we'd all shoot 105mm howitzers. Or at least .50 bmg's with AP. Weight counts big. (quote)

I'm starting to warm up to the idea of the .223. It's good to hear of its successes, cause I own three of them, all Mini's. Weight counts big like you said, and while the .223 may work most excellanty if the BG's are in the open, it may not be 100% on some types of cover, yo, bro, with the .308:D

Hydrostatic shock theory, Permanent/Temporary stretch cavities, and all that theory stuff is interesting and all that, but you gotta get that velocity and shock TO THEM if you want to create any type of cavity in them! and if he's behind cover, I'd still TRY to shoot him with the .223 but the added insurance of a .308 or two would certainly cover more of the bases and increase your chances for survival, in a SHTF situation.

Perhaps there is no BEST battle rifle/SHTF cartridge. Perhaps the best is having the biggest nato caliber you can handle, probably 30 cal, if traveling alone, and an assortment of calibers if traveling in a group. Who knows what you may pick up along the way, someone can probly use it!

.50 BMG's and stuff like that would be nice if you were staying put, but if you had to bug out, who would carry it? I've notions that a tactical shopping cart would not go far. It'd be a shame to have to leave and destroy it, expensive and nice as they are, you're not supposed to leave anything servicable that the enemy could use against you, correct? Weight counts big here too, I'll be having fun enough humping that M1A and its ammo let alone a .50 BMG! The .308 falls out as the best compromise in my mind, and will do sniper duty, urban conflict, defeat cover, and hunting duties all equally well, supplemented by .223's, 12 ga's, and handguns to cover all the bases.

just my 0.02
 
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