Vaunted M4 & the 5.56mm need new Weapon & larger rounds 20% of Troops say.

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I don't know if moving to a different caliber will actually make a sufficient difference. Larger bullet to increase lethality? The bullets don't matter much when you can't hit your targets.

This came up in a round about way in this thread
http://thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=414157&highlight=marines+accurate+fire
with this video dealing with Marines who were pinned down by "accurate fire" by a "sniper." Pretty much every Marine in the video had ACOGs and the position of the sniper was known, yet nobody could hit him. The distances being fired were within the capability of the guns, ammo, and troops, but they failed to hit their targets.

Fortunately, they got help from some other Marines who fired a ground-to-ground guided missile that completely missed the correct compound and hit another several hundred yards away, hitting civilians.

If we do move to a larger caliber, how is that going to affect the carrying capacity of each soldier. They won't be taking as much ammo and if they end up like Kilo Company in the above article, the cries to conserve ammo will come much quicker and as evident in the video, the help they requested may not turn out to be any help at all.

So more rounds of smaller ammo or less rounds of larger ammo. You have tradeoffs either way.
 
The debates have been going on for a few decades!

The long and detailed debates prompted a more detailed look the premise of replacing BOTH the 7.62X51 and 5.56 NATO rounds for light infantry. The results of the study are presented at http://shootersnotes.com/battle-rifle-cartridge/

The study concludes that 90 grain bullets from a cartridge with the volume of the .22 PPC or 107 grain bullets from a 6 mm BR size cartridge would do the job. The price paid is a moderate decrease of number of cartridges carried compared to the 5.56. Both options would have a greater number of cartridges per pound than the 7.62X51 NATO,
 
I use to say the same thing that the 223 is too week to be used by the arm forces, But a fully automatic in 223 is an extreemly good weapon, but you just have to use up more ammo. When they went to the three round burst, they really killed the effectiveness or the AR. Close in on fully auto does the job every time, that is how the gun was designed. Just don't grab the barrel.

For effective kills at ranges greater than 150 yards you need heavy bullets in the range of 130 grain to 150 grains. It mantains suffecient energy to take down the target more times than not. But, it needs more gun powder as any reloader will tell you. That means you need to be shooting a cartrage the size of a 30-06. More bullet weight more gun powder less of them that you can carry. Sorry they will not fit into your AR or even your M-14. This was tested over a 100 years ago, that is why they came out with the 1903 Springfield. Well that was good for WWI and WWII but not for jungle warfare. The problem is that the idiot generals are still fighting the VC out in a desert eviornment and it is not working.

Let's see the the AK's are using a 123 grain bullets and we are using a 62 & 69 grain bullets. What part of stupid do the boys with the stars on their shoulders not understand? Let's break out all the old 1903 Springfields and have the troups learn how to shoot, I am sure a lot of deer hunters would be willing to help or just give the troups each a 50 BMG and this whole thing would be over in a matter of weeks.

There is nothing wrong with the AR it is just being used wrong.

Jim
 
Kraig

Thank you also for your service. Please take a 1911 or FNP-45 with you. This is a different enviornment than the jungle you fought in before. If you are only in the cities the M-4 should be OK. If you have to travel in the desert then see if you can get your hands on a M-14.

Good luck and stay safe.
Jim
 
This came up in a round about way in this thread
http://thefiringline.com/forums/show...+accurate+fire
with this video dealing with Marines who were pinned down by "accurate fire" by a "sniper." Pretty much every Marine in the video had ACOGs and the position of the sniper was known, yet nobody could hit him. The distances being fired were within the capability of the guns, ammo, and troops, but they failed to hit their targets.
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I watched this before a while ago and it only ****** me off. It only cemented my beliefs of having at least 1 trained long range marksmen with a scoped rifle with each squad.

I mean out of all those marines not one had a precision marksman rifle or even a mortar tube?
 
Someone mentioned that a lot of the Soldiers for the survey were non-combat arms. or that the non-combat Soldiers are typical the ones who get in firefights.

I'm not bashing on the Army at all, however maybe it could take a lesson from the Marine Corps. Taking their old M16A2's and putting rails on them with an Aimpoint mounted on the rail would perhaps explain a few things. Maybe they should stop mounting ACOGs on top of the carry handle? From what I've seen out here, the terrain is in no way, shape, or form 'Aimpoint-worthy.' Marines that are not 03's carry an M16A4's with an ACOG. So do the junior Marines. The SOST round seemed do resolve most complaints about the 5.56 amongst Marines.

Just my humble opinion though.
 
I don't know about the rest of y'alls; but, my a AR has 5.56 NATO on the barrel. I though our our choice of a battle rifle cartridge was part of an international agreement and not subject to unilateral change by one nation. Didn't we swap our 1911's in on 9mm's for NATO standardization?
 
This is what's so stupid about the government.

During the second phase, the weapons will test fire approximately 700,000 rounds. The weapons will be graded on their physical attributes and features as well as their compatibility with existing Army accessories. Other areas of consideration include accuracy, reliability and durability, according to a PEO press release.
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They don't need to do any testing at all! All the evidence is already out there for what guns and calibers work.I swear,they're idiots sometimes.
 
I don't know about the rest of y'alls; but, my a AR has 5.56 NATO on the barrel. I though our our choice of a battle rifle cartridge was part of an international agreement and not subject to unilateral change by one nation.
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Really? NATO has fielded two service rifle cartridges in its history, and both of them were imposed by the US. With 5.56mm we let NATO church it up a bit with an open competition, but caliber wasn't really open for debate.

Didn't we swap our 1911's in on 9mm's for NATO standardization?
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Korea tanked the money for the program, but the US military was looking to get rid of 45 ACP 1911s for a 9mm replacement in the late 1940s, before NATO standardization was even up and running and a definite idea.
 
A quick glance at NATO caliber standardization will reveal that just about every standard is of US origin with little or no input accepted from other nations. When 7.62x51mm was adopted the British had a much more forward thinking round that would have been a tremendous compromise between 7.62x51mm and 5.56mm without the rather "meh" ballistics of 6.8mmSPC. We basically told them where to shove it and the 7.62x51mm was adopted. Just sayin, that's usually how that kind of thing has worked in the past.
 
I have shot hundreds and hundreds of Kangaroos a few years back under a destruction permit with the 223, 308 and 7.62x39 mostly under 100 meters (110yards). A Kangaroo is pretty much a man sized target and the 223 doesn't hold a candle to the damage a 308 or even a 7.62x39 does. The 223 were mostly soft points and the 308 and 7.62x39 were mostly FMJ's. They had large exit wounds with the large calibers at reasonably close range.
 
I have shot hundreds and hundreds of Kangaroos a few years back under a destruction permit with the 223, 308 and 7.62x39 mostly under 100 meters (110yards).
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Were you using FMJ or soft point ammunition in the .223 vs .308 argument? If it's soft point your argument is apples to oranges. I agree the .308 has more power behind it but at close range does it perform the same as M855 or M193 ball?
 
Oh, goody, we debate - again - whether we need a new Service Rifle. Ya'll take a big deep breath, and remember, last time we changed, it went from 12 pound .308 to 6 pound FULL AUTO .223.

Now, how do we tweak the battlefield requirement to put out a LOT of ammo? Because, like it or not, the studies have shown since WW1 lots of ammo out to 500m is the best way to increase hit probability. Even random chance hits go up if there's twice as much ammo flying around.

Anything with an effective range over 500m is wasted and detrimental to the soldiers ability to put out more ammo. It has either too much power, which immediately increases weight and limits ammo, or increases recoil, which slows troops from firing it again, or firing it accurately and quickly.

So far, you see it's all about USING THE GUN, not lethality, extreme range, or getting them DRT. You just have to incapacitate them, break down the ability to return fire, and a hit does that. More hits, more incapcitation of the opposing force.

What's on the table for the Improved Carbine isn't what some want to read into a commercial news source article (and Military.com ISN'T the Army official mouthpiece.)

This is a bit more official : The IC requirements support future system enhancements for accuracy, lethality, reliability, signature suppression, ammunition improvements, maintenance and other weapon/accessory technologies.

Read more: http://kitup.military.com/#ixzz1EW7t07Fx

You're looking at a polymer lower, extruded upper, hammerforged nitrided barrel, with standard suppressor. It could very well be caseless, the LSAT doubles the amount of ammo per magazine with the same weight. Soldiers can carry twice at much as before, and twice as much ammo shot is a 50% increase in hit probability. That is twice the effective combat power per soldier, out to the known limit of 500m. Anything further is a crew served weapon, something the weekend range shooter has no clue about, because they didn't serve, or didn't serve Combat Arms. Ahem. :cool:

All those logistic units have organic M249's, M60's pintle mounted on turret rings on the truck cabs, grenade launchers, etc. If you think it's an unfair fight we only show up with M4's, well, you think wrong. We make it as much an unfair fight as a TEAM - the individual soldier weapon is just one tool of a dozen resources.

That's what's fundamentally wrong with these discussions, it's usually a rant about what some wannabe thinks they should go to war with, and no clue about the reality of the task and resources. If your choice of caliber is already known as decreasing hit probability, you don't even have an argument in military circles. It was already decided in the '40's when STG44 equipped troops kicked our Garand equipped butts in the Ardennes.

We may make mistakes, we do learn from them, and we move on. Intermediate calibers are here to stay, the .308 is just another supplementary tool at the company level, not for general issue. It's not even the future sniper caliber - they are all being rebuilt into .300 Win Mag as we speak.
 
Now, how do we tweak the battlefield requirement to put out a LOT of ammo? Because, like it or not, the studies have shown since WW1 lots of ammo out to 500m is the best way to increase hit probability. Even random chance hits go up if there's twice as much ammo flying around.
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+1 to +1,000,000.

Every time one of these threads gets kicked up it seems that most of the people with opinions just cannot wrap their head around the concept that the biggest choke points in the engagement process are target acquisition/positive ID and then actually making the hit in the first place.

So you get brilliant ideas like going for maybe a 25% increase in lethality, in terms of terminal ballistics, in exchange for a 50% decrease in basic load of ammunition carried and a 25% decrease in engagement speed. (Yes, Virginia, there is an M14, and it's been retired for a good long time now for good reason.)

And so on.

"Fixing" the caliber of our service weapons, if you just mean trading one brass cased cartridge for another that pushes the pluses and minuses around slightly into some different configuration, is so far down on the list of things we need to spend one cent of tax payer money on that I'd venture to guess it might even make the Reflective-Belt-Fetishism Classes they teach at the Sergeants Major Academy look like a good pay off. Before we spend several billion dollars to fix 1% of the problem, maybe we'd be better served focusing on ways to fix the other 99% of the problem (training, optics, etc.).
 
There's a lot of big numbers being mentioned here when there's talk of changing the basic rifle. A billion dollars? That's a thousand million. Anyone have any realistic idea of the actual cost of a changeover, assuming that everything is replaced and no current component beyond detachable sights are retained? Also ignoring any inflation aspects because it won't all be replaced in one year. It wouldn't be necessary (or realistic) to replace things very quickly either. The national guard was still using .30-06 caliber weapons in the 1970s.

I'd have to say that a part of the problem, if there is one, is that Americans have a thing about big. It migrates overseas from time to time, too. The famous FAL was supposedly originally designed around the 7.92k cartridge, a round that is no more powerful than the 5.56mm. However, the FAL is actually still in service in some places--in 7.62 NATO, a round that was thought of as intermediate when it was introduced.

Some of this reminds me of the resistance there was to submachine guns in 1940. Maybe its a good thing the enemy doesn't use the 5.56mm. Then we'd really find out how well it works.
 
A billion dollars? That's a thousand million. Anyone have any realistic idea of the actual cost of a changeover, assuming that everything is replaced and no current component beyond detachable sights are retained?
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Cost of fielding the XM8 was estimated at just a bit over a billion dollars, with no associated change in caliber but a need to go to a non-STANAG magazine, so I'm pretty comfortable assuming it would be a couple times more expensive to do the same with a brand new caliber as well.

(And a lot of optics would have to get scrapped as well -- AimPoints would be fine, but anything like an ACOG or MGO that has bullet drop incorporated into the reticle would probably have to go unless the new round was a very close match for 62 grain M855.)

I'd have to say that a part of the problem, if there is one, is that Americans have a thing about big. It migrates overseas from time to time, too. The famous FAL was supposedly originally designed around the 7.92k cartridge, a round that is no more powerful than the 5.56mm. However, the FAL is actually still in service in some places--in 7.62 NATO, a round that was thought of as intermediate when it was introduced.
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We migrated it overseas. The FAL was experimentally built in 7.92x33, but was then very well developed for the 280 British round. But then the clown shoe wearing crowd at US Army Ordnance stuck their fingers in their ears and yelled George Patton quotes at the top of their lungs anytime anyone brought up the idea of an intermediate cartridge and forced NATO to go with 7.62x51. Since the FAL was Belgium's planned rifle for NATO service, it got chambered for what NATO was blackmailed into adopting by the US. I don't think anyone was enamored of the round or enthusiastic about it. (And the British adopted it in 7.62x51 with the understanding that we would adopt the same rifle in the same caliber as well, for NATO commonality, but that's a whole other lie we shafted our allies with.)

As for 7.62x51 being considered an intermediate cartridge this is only vaguely true. The abovementioned clown shoe wearing criminals who forced the cartridge onto NATO were savvy enough to realize that smarter people than themselves were warming up to the concept of an intermediate cartridge based on real analysis of battlefield use of service rifles and observations of the StG-44. So, rather than change their thinking or design, they instead took the wonderfully Orwellian tact of declaring 7.62x51 an intermediate design because it was cut down from 30-06 (never mind that it was only adopted because it identically matched the ballistics of USGI 30-06 ball ammo as adopted).
 
The M16/M4 and 5.56 are not going anywhere anytime soon; and personally, there isn't anything really wrong with them. Sure, I for one would love to see a more reliable M4 (piston?) and I think the 6.Xmm would be a quality performance upgrade. But honestly, throw a few long range .308's in the mix and keep pushing marksmanship and the 5.56 and M16/M4 will continue to march on. I do think that series is starting to peak out...for real this time:D We have done a lot of modfications, add-ons and ballistics upgrades, but I don't know how much more they can squeeze out of the current combo. Money, logistics and training will prevent any major changes. The juice just isn't worth the squeeze.

ROCK6
 
A better way would be to offer a small selection 6.8 SPC and send them on missions. After several contact engagements ask them if they'd prefer the 5.56 or the 6.8.

I think we ALL know the difference.

Is the 6.8 "perfect"? No, but it has better terminal performance than any of the 5.56 ammo currently fielded.

I dread to say this but the Germans, Russians and BRITS were on the proper path...

It's probably too late to change with NATO interoperability requirements. Lost opportunity.
 
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