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

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The cost to reequip our forces with a new caliber, including weapon, has already been calculated to be about the price of one fighter jet.

It's NOT the cost that's a problem, it's that a problem doesn't exist except in the mind of untrained, uneducated, and unknowledgeable shooters with no clue about military requirements.

Nobody except some SF even wanted 6.8, much as I appreciate the caliber. The Army went to 5.56 in the face of using .308 over 45 years ago, the ballistics were accepted, the decision made, and all the research of battle from the prior fifty years proven by the results since.

You don't need DRT, you need to increase hits, and only out to 500m. Those are base on human factors, like it or not. We are not superbeings, it really doesn't take much to incapacitate us and prevent continuing the fight. It's also hard to actually have the skill to hit a human target at that range. Hunters study animal behavior to focus on high probability areas from as close a range as possible.

Do not confuse the "ethical" treatment of game animals in caliber selection, humans have used a lot of methods now made illegal because they work very well. It's not ethics, it's simply not wanting to work hard at recovering game. A larger bullet with lots of power makes it easy to bring about a quicker kill. We spend less time tracking animals, and don't work as hard to find them. Nothing to do with combat at all - we don't need to track and recover wounded enemy as much as handle them surrendering. Post battle consolidation activities never get talked about much outside professional circles.

In battle, it's equally good however the enemy is stopped from resisting, and artillery, chemical warfare, air dropped munitions, land mines, barbed wire, and use of long ranging direct fire weapons is the preferred and instituted methods of doing it. It often doesn't come down to soldiers firing at each other on the battlefield, when you can cut off their supplies, prevent them moving forward, even deny them the simple pleasure of sleep.

Force them to work at night, then incapacitate them when superior optics reveal their presence. Drones can do that better than soldiers, cover more area, and get successful results.

The art of war is about having more reach than the other guy - longer swords, use lances, counter with arrows, and respond with ballista. It's a series of measures and countermeasures to actually prevent seeing the whites of their eyes. Fighting under 500m is a small part of a very deep 500 mile battleground engagement in traditional warfare.

But, some can't possibly know that from the singular perspective of sighting down a rifle. No, that's NOT what it's all about, it's a very narrow and unrealistic view of a very small part of one engagement.

The Army can certainly spend one fighter jets worth of money on new caliber weapons, it does no good if it can't show a proven and significant increase in hits on the battlefield. Just another brass cased cartridge is exactly that, no real help at all.
 
Excellent post, tirod. Ought to be required reading.

One sometimes reads something about how many bullets it takes to kill one enemy these days. There was a time, not so long ago, when machines guns were used for indirect fire, just like artillery. Sounds inefficient, doesn't it? Yet we often make the mistake of measuring efficiency the wrong way. The object, usually, is to win battles, not necessarily to kill the largest number of the enemy. Even so, winning the most battles doesn't necessarily win the war.

I'm not sure the army can spend the cost of one fighter jet, because the army doesn't have any. There is the minor problem of inter-service rivalry at play sometimes, but mostly in the form of a competition for limited funds, which may possibly become even more limited.
 
I had an old man tell me once that the only ammo he wanted for his BAR was the black tipped AP ammo. The regular ball didn't penetrate well enough for his liking.

It seems that soldiers were even complaining about .30-06 not being good enough at some point...
 
Add into the mix the fact that today, we are not fighting enemy armies

We are fighting "terrorists", and the tactics and weapons optimised for fighting enemy military units are not always the best one for dealing with the "insurgents".

But has anyone ever bothered to calculate how many lives would have been lost by staying with the 308 because soldiers ran out of ammo. Or because they could not shoot it as well.
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No one has, or can. The data is non-existant, and even if it were possible to do anything beyond a wild guess, it would be irrelevant anyway. Because each engagement is an individual thing, fought by individual soldiers. Some of whom are going to blast off all their ammo and not hit a thing, regardless of the caliber, while others are going to aim well and hit. And most are going to be somewhere inbetween.

You could ask how many troops did we lose in WWII because we used the .30-06 and not the 5.56mm? The answer would, of course, be all of them, a huger number! But it would have just as much real meaning, in other words, none.

The past hundred+ years of war have tought us that long range accuracy is good, and useful, but not to the point of being worth the cost of trying to get every troop capable of it. Not even worth the cost of getting all the infantry capable of it. The Army has gone in nearly the opposite direction. Giving every solder an automatic rifle, optic sights, small caliber, etc. This makes them easier to shoot rapidly and reasonably accurately. Does it mean each individual round has less power than what we used before? Yes. Does it mean less long range performance? Yes. There is no easy (or even correct) answer. What we have been slowly coming to is what we used to do, a mixture of weapons, so that at least some are opitimsed for what ever conditions present themselves.

Look at a WW II squad. Then at a platoon. You see a mix of weapons, SMGs, M1/M2 carbines, M1 Garands (the odd springfield bolt action) and BARs. Supported by machineguns and light mortars. It worked then, it would work now, and probably better with more modern weapons.

I was serving when the 5.56mm was still a new round for the military, and left when the M16A1 was the pinnicle of developement. I didn't care for it then, and I'm not a big fan now, even though they got about all the bugs out of them, after 40 freakin' years!!!

Those of us around at the time remember that it was the bean counter whiz kids in the MacNamara defense dept. that took the AR-15 that Gen LeMay wanted for his Air Force SPs (to replace their M1 Carbines) and shoved it down the whole DOD's throat, insisting that it was the perfect infantry weapon. It wasn't. It still isn't, but it is better than it was.

Good is the enemy of Best, and the AR rifle and 5.56mm has proven itself "good" enough, it isn't going away, even though there are other things that might be better.
 
LOL, the Army is ALWAYS looking. People hear that they are looking and always seem to assume that means there will be a change soon. Don't hold your breath.
 
The "bugs" weren't in the original design, some budget cutter dropped the chrome lined barrel instituted in the '30's design of the Garand. And the facts were very much on record, more ammo does indeed play a serious part in keeping soldiers alive.

It didn't take 40 years to fix it - it was fixed by 1970. The existing out of spec barrels gone, the repurposed powder eliminated, and the soldiers taught to keep them reasonably serviced. Every soldier would like a caliber and gun that stops them DRT, even the 8mm Mauser won't. Soldiers don't want to balance things out until it's loaded on their back, then reason and common sense come into play. You can't have uber kill calibers, and you don't really need them. What you do need in combat is the ability to do a better job of hitting a target that hides and makes it as difficult as possible, just like you would.

I trained with early M16's, some from the '60's, none gave me any trouble. Problem is, the only ones who get attention are the ones who complain, not the 20 million servicemen and women who have been using one since the production ramp up guns were fixed. They don't have problems with the M16, and the 9 million around the world haven't been given away for free. Governments had their pro's look at them, use them, and then recommend them because they work.

It's not rocket science, but when you study it enough to stop parroting rumor and myth, the facts are really right there. It's not that they are just good enough, nobody has yet made any other better gun for combat use. Those that claim one is largely ignore the fact the M16 is the basis.

Design a gun without a barrel extension, with a new non rail universal optic mounting system, using a cartridge under 2.400" loaded. Don't put any controls where the M16 had them, use a free floated barrel, and for sure don't use DI but still keep it under 7 pounds unloaded.

Nobody bothers, the design elements of the M16 are pirated foward every chance they get - because it's better. It's not all about Direct Impingement, it's the total gun design. Look around, all the new designs are using the M16 as a stepping stone, keeping everything they possibly can, and changing the things they don't understand.
 
If only because of the sound involved with the .308, and the need to be in densely populated urban areas, the current 5.56 round is the best round I think. You have to be able to shoot 3 clips then listen to what's going on around you. I doubt you could do that with the .308 nearly as well as with the 5.56. There's alot of talk about the 5.56 not having enough killing power, but it's the same argument some guys make when they say the .243 doesn't have enough killing power for deer. A better caliber might make you feel better, but the real problem is most of the guys in the army can't shoot all that well.
 
The last issue of The American Rifleman had an article addressing this problem.

They are bringing some M-14s out of storage.

It seems that the distances are great in that terrain and a heavier bullet is needed. As probably everyone on this forum knows it's a 308 Win or 7.72x51mm Nato round.

The only draw back as I see it is the extra weight that they have to pack.
 
I'm no expert, but it seems to me that the military has spent too much time and money devloping the M16/M4 family of weapons to suddenly change up for something else.
 
They are bringing some M-14s out of storage.
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Past tense. Some were brought out of retirement, and despite the mythology to the contrary, they did a so-so job at best. A lot of units issued them just chucked the things back into CONEX's and left it at that, since a guy with an ACOG and an M4 or M16 can make better hits than an M14 with optics on it.

And it's about hits, as tirod described.
 
They refurbished about 5,000 M14's by adding a bunch of M16 accessories. What they got was about 1 per squad on patrol. That's a supplementary weapon, not a huge reversal spelling out doom for the 100,000 M16's and M4's already in Afghanistan.

The war has already shifted to IED's and urban terrorism. Back to Baghdad for all extents and purposes. We've got Civil Affairs units selling the concept farmers can be free and market food to the urban areas, LEO activities targeting the Taliban drug traders cutting into their income, and lots of experienced command level decisions with literal ground level experience who helped them bust the Soviet Union. We're well aware of what mistakes we shouldn't copy.
 
From article: It will also be determined if the new carbine will use 5.56 mm rounds or 7.62 mm ammunition, said Tamilio.
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Hmmm....five years ago I was told it was all over but the shouting, and .27 was to be the new caliber. I just figured that simply meant new uppers for the M4s, but here we are with the same hole-producing M4s. I wish they'd make up their minds, so we could get our hands on all that surplus 5.56 NATO. ;)
 
The last issue of The American Rifleman had an article addressing this problem.

They are bringing some M-14s out of storage.
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The 1911 folks got all giggly when they found out that the Marines were bringing old 1911s out of storage and about every time one showed up in a deployment image, somebody felt the need to post it.

I think the M-14s have been out for a while. They don't look like they are going to be general issue again.

Here is a SEAL with one in 1991
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SEAL_with_M14.jpg

M21 http://www.usmilitariaforum.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=39297&pid=712190&st=0&#entry712190

A bunch posted in 2007 http://www.m4carbine.net/showthread.php?t=6081
 
http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/vi...combat+videos&FROM=LKVR5&GT1=LKVR5&FORM=LKVR9

At the ranges these guys are firing, the M-4 won't penetrate soft body armor..... it won't likely even be lethal ..... holdover would be measured in meters, not inches........

I read somewhere awhile back that the initial range of 50% of all engagements in Afghanistan is greater than 500 meters..... making the M-4 pretty much a noisemaker useful for keeping the enemy's attention while supporting fires are called in...... which apears to be what they were doing here.
 
I read somewhere awhile back that the initial range of 50% of all engagements in Afghanistan is greater than 500 meters..... making the M-4 pretty much a noisemaker useful for keeping the enemy's attention while supporting fires are called in...... which apears to be what they were doing here.
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For engagements at 500+ meters, any individual weapon is just going to be a noisemaker -- going back to the acquistion/positive ID and engagement problems I talked about up thread. People who have never fired at targets at 500, or have only done it when the target was paper and not trying to avoid being hit, just don't grasp the enormity of the dilemma in making those kinds of shots on two way ranges. If you can even spot a bad guy, does he stay still long enough for you to put the sights on him and hit him? If you can line up your sights or optics, does your physiology allow you to make the shot, with your blood pressure and heart rate jacked up and the adrenalin flowing?

It's about like telling NRA Highpower shooters that their course of fire will be random exposure times on pop up targets at unknown ranges, the range will also be populated with no-shoot targets, and just for the fun of it their course of fire starts with a guy in boxing gloves beating on them for 15 seconds before they jump on their guns and start shooting their course of fire. To keep it fun, a guy with a paintball gun will occasionally put rounds in the ground near them, or just shoot them in the back.

There are a lot of guys who shoot at the highest levels in that sport who probably wouldn't manage any hits at all under those conditions . . . not unlike troops in contact in the real world, who are obviously dealing with even greater stress under even less ideal conditions.

As for the video clip itself, the only major difference in terminal ballistics for all the rounds those guys fired with their rifles and carbines is that if it was 308 they'd have been less able to return fire because they'd have exhausted their basic load quicker. Same deal (though not as badly) if they'd had 6.8 Rem SPC or 6.5 Grendel or whatever else.
 
Even in 1920 it was recognized that even an automatic rifle was pretty useless beyond 500 yards and individual riflemen did not have the firepower to make a difference at that range. That's why the army has other weapons, you know.
 
Okay, so American troops can't hit anything with their rifles beyond 500 yards/meters and half the engagements in Afghanistan are beyond that distance (caliber not mattering).

Are the Taliban hitting targets beyond 500 yards/meters?...the same Taliban that are noted by several folks to be poorly trained.
 
It's about like telling NRA Highpower shooters that their course of fire will be random exposure times on pop up targets at unknown ranges, the range will also be populated with no-shoot targets, and just for the fun of it their course of fire starts with a guy in boxing gloves beating on them for 15 seconds before they jump on their guns and start shooting their course of fire. To keep it fun, a guy with a paintball gun will occasionally put rounds in the ground near them, or just shoot them in the back.
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You forgot to saddle them with 70lbs of armor/gear and a helmet, just to make it interesting.
 
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