quote:

Originally posted by waynett:

quote:

Originally posted by 2231791:
When I see our troops in Iraq shooting it out with the bad guys; and I see all the stone and brick buildings that we are trying to shoot through - I wish I could send them all AR10's!

AR10's wouldn't shoot through the stone or brick eigther...

quote:

Originally posted by 2231791:
I know lugging around .308 ammo is a burden, 100 rounds of 5.56 is lighter than 100 rounds of 7.62. But that 5.56 is just too small of a round!

Yes it would be heavier and for god sakes don't make me carry it!

quote:

Originally posted by 2231791:
I don't believe any of the 5.56 hype. I do not accept the "Tumbling Bullet" shoot a guy in the foot and the 5.56 will bounce around inside the body and come out the top of his head. I also do not accept that if you wound one guy then you tie up two more bad guys who will drag their buddy to safety (better to wound than to kill theory). Our troops need a bigger bullet!

You don't have to believe it. But I do and can testify to it's logic.

I have to agree with waynett. I've seen rounds deflect and ricochet inside the body. We hit this one dude in the ***, and the bullet ended up just below his heart because it hit a bone and deflected upwards.

And another instance. We fired on a car when he wouldn't stop. We put a group of rounds into the windshield where the dude's head should have been. Ended up changing the trajectory of the round, which in turn hit the dude in his ***. haha.

So it does happen.

Oh and I have no gripes about the M-4. It was lethal up to 300m. Warfare in Iraq, or in today's world, isn't gonna be any farther out. Besides that's what your SDM's are for. All I ever did in Iraq was fight people off from ranges of 100m and closer. 4 near ambushes total. Or clear some small, tiny *** rooms with tiny *** doors. Imagine trying to go in with full battle rattle, and pie off a corner with a 10 inch barrel.

The weapon fits the type of environment your in. And in Iraq, the M-4 does just fine.

Alright.
I'd like to think I'm a budding firearms designer, and I have a few ideas.
Note that I have ZERO experience in the field, but I think that my ideas are valid anyway.
I'm only sixteen, so I don't have a helluva lot of firearms experience either.
Anyway, I think that you guys have the solution to this all wrong.
What we need is not a modification to the M16, we need a completely new weapon.
The problem I have with the M16 is this: it's direct gas system. That is just asking for trouble with cleaning and such.
I say: take the basic features (other than caliber) of the Atchisson AA-12 automatic shotgun and then chamber it for a rimless .357 magnum round.
Bang! suddenly you have power, capacity, range, low recoil, and firepower.
That's what i'd do.

This is an article that was in AR-15/M-16 vol.1, No1 1986
Written by Jim Sullivan, one of the original designers of not only the AR-15 and the .223 round, but a major contributor to many of the firearms we all know of including the AR-7, Mini-14, and M-77 and the Ultimax squad auto.

I don’t know if I am breaking any copyright laws in copying it in this post. I hope not.

The AR-15 an interesting twist.
Some interesting facts on ballistics that explains the difference in effectiveness of the AR-15 over the years.

How can a little .22 caliber bullet do more damage than a larger .30 caliber?
First of all the .22 cartridge we are speaking of (now officially called the 5.56mm x 45 M193) has nothing in common
With the .22 rimfire. The 5.56 is driven by 25 grains of powder, not 1.5 grains, and has more energy than a .44 Magnum
Revolver. In fact the energy of the 5.56 matches the energy of the old black powder 45-70, which killed more buffalo than all the other cartridges put together. The .30 caliber (7.62mm NATO) has twice as much energy which is good if the target is the size of a buffalo.

Don’t worry, we are not going to suggest you throw away your .30 caliber bolt action and take a 5.56 with you the next time you go deer hunting. As long as you use soft point or hollow point the .30 caliber will beat the 5.56 every time.

If, however, you are using a full metal jacket bullet that meets Hague Convention requirements, the results will change.

The size (volume) of a wound is determined by the amount of energy dumped into the target and nothing else.
Any energy left in a bullet which passes through a target is wasted. The trick is to put all the energy into the target.
This is easy with a cartridge like the .44 Magnum which is a big unstreamlined lump, which in most cases won’t go through a body. Unfortunately it won’t go very far through air either. A streamlined soft point or hollow point rifle bullet is a big improvement. It’s streamlined to travel through the air for long range, yet very quickly expand and dump all its energy into the target. While this is just the ticket for hunting, it can’t be used for military combat as the Hague Convention forbids it, literally because it works. A military bullet must have a solid nonexpanding point.

The U.S. solid (ball) .30-06 and 7.62 NATO bullets will go through 79 inches of gelatin block. While this might still be effective in deer or other large animals, most enemy soldiers do not walk on all fours. When they are standing, sitting, walking or running they are about nine inches thick, so what good will the other 70 inches of travel do, unless you can stack the enemy up in a line?

Yes, these bullets will penetrate an enemy helmet at three-quarters of a mile, if you can hit it. For most of us, just seeing an enemy helmet at three-quarters of a mile would be a feat. Incidentally, the new 5.56 SS109 round will also penetrate a helmet at that distance, but again, only if you can hit it.

The key factor is that for maximum wound effect you don’t want long penetration, you want that bullet to stop within nine inches after it hits the target.

When a supersonic military bullet flies through the air, most (not all) of the drag is concentrated at its point. The center pf gravity of the bullet (where all its weight and energy is concentrated) is behind the point. The energy wants to keep moving, but the point is slowing it down, like a tractor-trailer rig with the brakes applied on the tractor only. The rear of the bullet (center of gravity) tries to pass the front part where the drag is. By spinning the bullet fast enough, it becomes a gyroscope with enough stability to keep going point first through the air, but when it hits tissue, which is 800 times denser than air, the brakes really go on. It doesn’t have enough spin to be stable with that much drag, so it begins to yaw back and forth, and then tumble end over end.

When it tumbles, it dumps its energy into the target very rapidly (in less than 1/1000 of a second) with explosive effect.
Before it tumbles it is too streamlined to give up much of its energy (bear in mind we are speaking of solid point, not soft point or hollow point bullets).

Of course the 7.62mm bullet with over twice the energy of the 5.56mm round makes a bigger, deep wound if the target is thick enough but it goes twice as far before it starts to tumble.

The 5.56 tumbles in about nine inches, but the 7.62 doesn’t. The 5.56 will dump all of it’s energy into the target, but the 7.62 will pass through the target, wasting most of its energy.

The 5.56 will dump all of its energy within nine inches, providing it is not over-stabilized.

At least that’s how the 5.56 worked with IMR powder and a 1-in-14 inch twist, but for some unaccountable reason, the Army changed to ball powder, which has more muzzle blast, especially in cold weather. Muzzle blast causes inaccuracy, just like a bad muzzle crown. Unless the bullet is over-stabilized it wobbles off in some new direction all its own. So to compound a felony, so to speak, they tightened up the rifling to a 1-in-12 inch twist. This stabilized it through the air alright but unfortunately it also stabilized it through most of the target too. The bullet now penetrates deeper before tumbling starts, passing through and wasting more of its energy. It will still make a bigger wound (at short range) than the 7.62, but its effective range has been cut in half.

The Russians didn’t make such a mistake. Their new .22 round is blowing people apart in Afghanistan at long range, and I often wonder is our Army has figured out how they’ve accomplished this.

Once the bullet gets out of the range of the muzzle blast, even a 1-in-14 inch twist is more than it needs. For maximum wound effect, you need minimum spin.

Everyone knows that a bullet slows down in flight, and the further it goes the slower it gets, therefore making a smaller wound.
But a peculiar thing happens along the way: the forward speed slows down but not the spin, so the bullet actually gets more stable the farther it goes. This has no surprise effect with a soft or hollow point bullet; the slower it goes (to a point) the shallower the wound. But just the opposite happens to a solid-point military bullet; the slower it goes the more stable it gets, and the more stable it gets the deeper it penetrates. A military bullet will actually penetrate deeper at midrange than it will at short range. Therefore, not only does it have less energy at midrange but it wastes more of the energy it does have by passing through the body. It is therefore far more important not to over-stabilize a military round than an expanding point hunting round.

The effects of over-stabilization on long-range accuracy

To go into detail here would require a small book, but without going deep enough to require a shovel, the basics are as follows:

If a bullet flew in a straight line there would be no problem, but by dropping, due to the effects of gravity, it actually flies in a curved line. The bullet gradually changes direction, and if it is properly stabilized with the correct sin it gradually changes angles to keep pointing in the new direction. An over-stabilized bullet, however, doesn’t want to change angle. It will keep pointing straight forward while beginning to move downward so there is an ever increasing difference in the direction it’s pointing, and the direction it’s moving. When that difference in angle gets too great, the bullet suddenly changes angle to compensate.

With an over-stabilized bullet no two shots lurch at the same spot or by the same amount

Because of the contrary nature of a gyroscope, when you push on it to change its angle, it will change its angle all right, but 90 degrees to the direction you push. Therefore when a bullet lurches to change angle downward, you’ve lost it as it takes off sideways. Which side depends on the twist of the rifling, but the exact moment and amount of the lurch will vary from shot to shot. With a properly stabilized bullet, which gradually changes angle, it also changes angles sideways. Its ballistic curve is not just downward, it also curves to the side, but the curve is the same from shot to shot. By this simple explanation I hope you will be able to see, that as provided to the Air Force and the original Special Forces units, the AR-15 was a devastating weapon that earned its reputation as such. It was only after uncalled for modifications to the ammunition propellant and barrel twist that it later gained a reputation as an ineffective man-stopper.

End of article

Amphibious4life was right on about the twist rate being the problem with the 5.56.
Anyway, I hope this helps.

While I and a lot of other people like the XM8 it went into testing adn had "some" issues. None the less though after the finally "fixed" the problems and retested it the US politicians and military supposebly dropped it because of the problems that they had fixed and actually made the gun more reliable.
Since the US is such great "friends" with Britian why don't we try out the L85A2 I think it is. Also there is a gun used British SF that is made for CQB and it better than the M16/M4 will ever be. It hits harder and does a lot more damage. Plus it is only about a foot long and had a retractable stock like the MP5 does.
All in all why does the US not trust other manufactures even when they are proven better then what we already have?
It is all in the politics my friends!

Just wondered if you had tested the Tavor. I was watching a show on that. A guy who had never fired it before, did a test fire at 50 yards just to get the feel of it. Then he did one at 300 yds, the maximum effective range. It was a stand-up shot. The rifle was touted as having as much power as an M16, only more accurate. It also has a shorter effective barrel, with part of the barrel actually being in the back of the gun. The scope is already zeroed in and stays that way. The shorter barrel was touted as ideal for urban combat, as compared to the longer one in the M16.

quote:

Originally posted by Waynett:
I like the M16 and the M4.
I wouldn't mind switching to this but it MUST HAVE IRON SIGHTS!!!

Roger that !
Number Two Son just returned from in Iraq with the USArmy, 16th Engineers. During their marksmanship and maneuvering traing over by the Czech Republic (they're based were in Giessen between visits) he received some photos;
the only one out of his 10-soldier group not using the electronic sight. Mark has now buckled to Regulations.
He was one of the many 13 - 15 y.o. with the Rio Saldo Junior Olympic Riflery program.
http://www.riojuniors.com/

The L85a2 has the same round as the m16. The only thing it has is a bull pup design. The m16 is a very accurate. There is a reason almost all high power match shooters use a version of it. And at close ranges the rounds hit very hard. The problems with kills is with the ammo. The 62 gr. steel core rounds are for armor piercing, them will break up in flesh but they need velocity. At extended ranges the rounds just pass right through with out breaking up. Sometimes they have even been known to cortorize the wound. The 77 grain match king or Le Mas blended ammo would be alot better. IF you are just it CQB use a 40 gr. hp. The rounds release all there energy in a few inches

This program was canceled in February of 2007 wasnt it? This article is very old.

sorry to jump into this mainly American discussion as a foreigner and even worse from the home country of H&K ) i won't be able to contribute much to the technical side of the discussion (as I haven't shot an M16) but I am a bit surprised by the political side of the discussion. As much as I understand that you can't depend on a foreign country agree with (or not) your foreign policy affecting the supply of arms to your military - it is a prerequisite by your DoD that the manufacturer produces them on American soil to guarantee the adequate supply! I mean why do you think H&K is producing in the US? Because we can't find the skilled labor in Germany? I guess not but simply otherwise they won't be able to sell weapons to your military... Anther famous example is the M256 if your Abrams - it was developed by Rheinmetall for the Leopard 2 found the best available tank gun and is now produced in the US.
Well at the end I think someone who is sent into harms way by his or her government is entitled to the best equipment available - if it is H&K or any other foreign company should count less than 'made by Americans for Americans' as long as it is made IN America...

or they should just throw standardised weaponry into the wind and lets the infantry buy their own weapons and ammo.

quote:

Originally posted by monger6:
or they should just throw standardised weaponry into the wind and lets the infantry buy their own weapons and ammo.

like France.

The soldiers use Famas, M16, SteyrAUG and G36

quote:

Originally posted by 2231791:
When I see our troops in Iraq shooting it out with the bad guys; and I see all the stone and brick buildings that we are trying to shoot through - I wish I could send them all AR10's!

Sorry, but who's trying to shoot through a building? All I've ever been concerned with was not shooting through buildings, as shooting indiscriminately through walls is a great way to get your own soldiers or civilians killed.

quote:

Originally posted by monger6:
or they should just throw standardised weaponry into the wind and lets the infantry buy their own weapons and ammo.

Not a bad idea if nobody ever changed units. Imagine trying to learn a new weapons system every three years, especially if you're not combat arms so you're not getting much range time.

Sorry to dig up the post after a month, just some points of interest.

quote:

Sorry, but who's trying to shoot through a building? All I've ever been concerned with was not shooting through buildings, as shooting indiscriminately through walls is a great way to get your own soldiers or civilians killed.

Shooting through buildings turned out to be very effective (somewhere on the middle east).
http://www.myhuntingbuddies.com

quote:

Originally posted by alfa4_9:
Here's another thought. We take the British L85A1, give copies to, say, Ruger, Winchester, Smith and Wesson, and say "Redesign this so it's 2 lbs lighter, absolutely reliable, has an ambidextrous safety/selector switch right above the pistol grip, and can be easily changed to eject either left or right (like the French Fa-mas)".

Great idea, and then why don't you go to Boeing and lockheed martin and tell them to make a space plane for under five dollars, that will take you to the moon if you feel like it.

quote:

Originally posted by monger6:
or they should just throw standardised weaponry into the wind and lets the infantry buy their own weapons and ammo.

And then you should get your dumb *** to go and set up an effective supply system for a couple hundred different types of small arms.

But as you can see that the 5.56 ammo is tested to make the worst injury as seen on bobtuley.com test result than 7.62's used in 30.caliber M1 and Avtomat Kalaskinova 1947(Ak-47)

I personally like the Masada Rifle
-US made
-designed by a Marine
-lighter than the M16
-more reliable than the same

anybody else have any comments on it?

A few years back at a gun club that I belong to the governor of this club stated that Remington Arms was developing a Blowback design rifle using a 6mm (6.08)PPC cartridge. The governor said he got this information from an uncle of his who is a Marine general. Remington Arms calls this rifle the JK

Wow, this post has run for a long long time.
to all those out here, the whole caliber argument is almost like ford vs dodge.
The 5.56 NATO round is terrible with intermediate barriers. It penetrates poorly. The rifle isnt all that bad. It is inherently accurate but the round it fires wont allow anyone to capitalize on it.
The US Military could effectively replace both 5.56 and 7.62 NATO with 6.5mm Grendel. Better ballistics, range, penetration, energy, accuracy...etc, etc, etc. But it would be expensive. In the cold war that would not have been a issue, but today it is. The 6.5mm grendel round is an evolution of the 6mm ppc.
Most of our engagements are within 100 meters in Iraq, But wounding doesn't affect more than just the man you shoot in a gorilla fight, the wounded are left and they use our resources because we have to help them. Id rather have a round that penetrates intermediate barriers and is more likely to kill, the low mass of the .223 projectile prevents an enormous amount of energy being transfered anywhere.

Also the twist rate was 1 in 9 for M16A2 and 1 in 7 for M16A4 and M4 (there was an earlier post talking about 1:14 and 1:12 referencing the SS109 and M193 rounds, SS109 is obsolete and M19x series are designed for optimal twist around 1:7).