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Subject: The truth about the 5.56mm round
TriggaFingaz    1/24/2004 1:51:19 PM
To all infantrymen and gunusers out there , tell me this: is the 5.56x45mm round an effective round or is it so weak that you need more than one shot to drop a man? Some books say that it is absolutely lethal, able to stop one's heart owing to sheer velocity. Other accounts claim that enemy soldiers hit with this round continue charging. Some books claim it will tumble and dig multiple wound channels in the body, detractors claim it drills straight though people but yet has poor anti-material penetration. Which is more accurate? Please specify whether you used M193 or M855 'green tips'.
 
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Horsesoldier    RE:The truth about the 5.56mm round   5/30/2004 8:00:37 PM
>>Don't need a DU bullet. Until now, we have not faced any combatants [infantry] wearing body armor that a conventional steel core bullet can't penetrate.<< Aim low, boys, they're wearing body armor. Pelvic girdle has yet to be protected with SAPI plate type protection . . .
 
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Ehran    RE:The truth about the 5.56mm round   5/31/2004 11:56:28 AM
Aim low, boys, they're wearing body armor. Pelvic girdle has yet to be protected with SAPI plate type protection . . hmm that's harsh. why does it seem wrong somehow to deliberately target the foe's nards hehe. btw you ever see that Canadian Club ad with the soccer player getting the boys rung but good.
 
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TriggaFingaz    How could this happen?   6/10/2004 4:03:55 PM
The poor performance of the M855 round in Iraq: http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=Special%20Reports.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=246&rnd=905.6276899484862 How can ANYONE still keep popping off AK rounds after being hit so many times by any bullet? How could the M855 do so poorly, even if not striking vital organs? I know I can't stand up if SEVEN 62 grain steel tipped slugs travelling at 950m/s struck my limbs or chest!
 
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Horsesoldier    RE:How could this happen?   6/10/2004 7:56:04 PM
>>How can ANYONE still keep popping off AK rounds after being hit so many times by any bullet? How could the M855 do so poorly, even if not striking vital organs? I know I can't stand up if SEVEN 62 grain steel tipped slugs travelling at 950m/s struck my limbs or chest << SFTT has demonstrated an axe to grind with 5.56mm on more than one occasion. The details in the article are really too sparse to work with. I'm not belittling the reliability of the ODA members on the ground there, but there's absolutely no attribution of anything said to have occurred at ar-Ramadi to anyone said to have been there. The insurgent took seven rounds in the chest -- observed and examined by whom? And under what conditions? One of the teams 18Ds checking the guy out after the fire fight means a bit more than a team member giving the guy a quick kick to the groin to establish he's dead and then a cursory search for intel material and being pretty sure there were seven holes in him. As written, we don't even know if the account reported is coming directly from the ODA or second, third, etc., hand. To say nothing of an autopsy on the dead guy, some sketches or other reconstruction of what happened including ranges of shots, etc., which are the sort of things you really want to assess what happened. The author looks to me to be a member of the Cult of the Dinosaur, judging by the apparent relish he takes from pointing out that a trusty WW2 era M1911A1 saved the day when that (aging) new fangled shooting iron came up short. Hard to tell, without outside evidence or more rigorous reporting just how much this guy spun the story to grind his axe.
 
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mcgredo    RE:How could this happen?   6/11/2004 10:56:54 PM
This isn't the movies, where people drop like you hit the "off" switch when shot. Human bodies can take huge amounts of damage and the person can continue fighting for some time, even if they have fatal wounds. There are all sorts of examples of people with legs and arms blown off who continue fighting. The only way to get a guaranteed fast stop is a central nervous system hit to the brain or spinal cord. Absent that, people die by loss of blood, and black out due to loss of blood pressure. And that can take a while. The canonical example is the Florida FBI shootout, in which the bad guys were hit with multiple handgun rounds to the chest. Arteries were severed that would kill them, but they kept on moving and fighting. Ditto for FBI agents that were hit.
 
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mcgredo    RE:apples to oranges...   6/11/2004 11:12:18 PM
The performance of the SS109 is pretty much the same as the 55 grain stuff, modulo the lower velocity caused by the heavier bullet. See for the details.
 
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mcgredo    RE:The truth about the 5.56mm round   6/11/2004 11:17:54 PM
The time it takes them to stop shooting back depends on a lot. If the guy is motivated he can continue until he blacks out from loss of blood pressure. If he's been watching too many B movies he may stop fighting after getting a superficial wound. The mental state of the subject is a big variable. The best you can do is make big holes the you hope overlap with something vital. The 5.56 does that IF it has enough velocity.
 
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E.T    Protective thickness of materials.   6/12/2004 2:36:06 AM
"a friend of mine tested his 5.56 vs old sandbags and found them unable to penetrate the bags. he was getting 6-7 inch penetration into a settled sandbag." "Soldier's handbook" made by Finnish defense forces tells some protective thicknessis against "handguns" and I think there's very good reason to assume that these are against russian 7.62 rounds. Steel 1.5 cm Concrete 20 cm Rocky soil/dirt 0.5 m Sandbags 0.5 m "Fresh" wood 0.6 m Normal dense soil/dirt 1 m
 
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mcgredo    5.56 stopping power example   6/13/2004 1:09:53 AM
Warning: graphic. An Iraqi with an RPG catches a couple bursts of MG fire. Consensus opinion is that this is from a M249 SAW (5.56). http://perso.wanadoo.es/iraqshot/iraqi%20shot%20650%20frames.avi
 
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Bigbro    RE:5.56 stopping power example   6/13/2004 11:46:22 AM
Watching the clip it looks to me that the only one round fired on first engagement, enters right side of chest, exits lower left side of chest at or below diaphragm bullet path is deflected by ribs and impacts ground behind shooter with RPG. Second engagement looks to be a three round burst coming from shooters left. Some one with more experience in analyzing things like this, like eon, should comment. If I am correct on the first round hit, and that is a big if, it should have damaged both lungs and perhaps the diaphragm. I could not tell how much about the second burst but it looks to be a three round burst with the first round striking the shooter in the left side of the head at a shallow angle. It looks like it was very fine shooting. What stuck me were all bad guys standing around with weapons that didn't seem to think that they would be next.
 
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