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Subject: 5.56 NATO penetration
TRiple_C    7/31/2004 6:45:20 AM
Sources are directly contradictary against each other in regard to the penetration of this round. Many say that the 5.56 is easily "deflected" by branches and that the round loses most of its killing power after hitting something as thin as a plank board. The Army claims that the 5.56 had no problem penetrating steel armor plates. How effective, exactly, is the 5.56 in penetrating an obstacle and killing the enemy behind it?
 
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justbill       11/27/2007 4:59:44 PM
This really is pointless. Way too much Kool-Aid to wade through. I guess every soldier, Marine or cop who uses an M14 or other nonstandard M16 variant must be an idiot. It makes me wonder how we won two world wars without the 5.56 NATO.
 
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YelliChink       11/27/2007 5:25:30 PM

This really is pointless. Way too much Kool-Aid to wade through. I guess every soldier, Marine or cop who uses an M14 or other nonstandard M16 variant must be an idiot. It makes me wonder how we won two world wars without the 5.56 NATO.


I'll try to restrain my urge to attack on personality, but it's actually quite hard.
 
1. The propellent formula required to push .223 calibre ammo to 3,000+ fps didn't exist until a few years after WW2.
 
2. M14s were asigned to some soldiers in combat units as designated marksmen, but you won't see people doing forced entry with M14s.
 
3. You know you don't want to be hit by a 5.56mm bullet.
 
Each weapon/ammo combination has their own use, limitation, advantage as well as drawbacks. In most cases, M16A2/M855 is OK. A ground force don't fight as a collection of individuals. If they are doing so, we call them Gauls, and they were decimated by numerically overwhelmed Roman legions led by Julius Caesar because of that. The point is that the army needs a spectrum of weapons to cope with different conditions, not one weapon to deal with multiple spectrum of circumstances. Yes, it is a very stupid answer and full of holes in logic, but it is how things actually works, and because of that, sometimes it becomes very difficult to explain to people who are seeking simplified conclusion.
 
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Old Grunt       11/28/2007 8:18:31 AM
So, first hand accounts of 5.56mm failing to perform are to be treated as gospel, but first hand accounts of 5.56mm performing satisfactorily are to be treated with suspicion and considered Kool-Aid inspired drivel ... nope, no bias there.
 
As for all these M14's that so many seem to think have been flooded into theater, we've only sent ~1100 into the conflict, and that amount is split between the OIF and OEF theaters.  Best estimates is that only about 2/3 are still in operational condition.  It seems the magical M14 doesn't like the desert any more than the M16 does.
 
I see the AAR's from the combat theaters every day and rarely, if ever, is there a complaint about the performance of the M16 family of weapons.  In fact, since 2003 there have been a total of 19 complaints about the M16 series (contrast that with 116 about the 9mm, 83 about the MK19, 70 about the M14, 27 about the M2HB, and 11 about the .50 sniper system), 15 of those complaints come from CSS units and deal with reliability issues (stoppages, difficulty of maintenance).  Of the 4 from combat arms soldiers, 3 come from soldiers in the grade of E-3 or below.  2 are complaints that they had to shoot (at) their opponent multiple times before they stopped.  The one complaint from the combat arms NCO was that he felt the M4 needed to have the fully automatic option engineered back in. I have left the final complaint until last because it is the only one that supports the 5.56mm penetration deficiency issue.  It comes from a PV2 in a light infantry unit and I will quote his complaint "I spotted an insurgent hiding behind a stone wall, he was about 350m away from me.  I fired an entire magazine into the wall where I thought he was and not one round went through.  This rifle sucks!"  The only question that I have is where was that clown's Team Leader?
 
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Yimmy       11/28/2007 6:01:39 PM
 The one complaint from the combat arms NCO was that he felt the M4 needed to have the fully automatic option engineered back in. 
I didn't realise it was ever removed?  I thought it was only the M16A2 which had the 3 round burst function? 
 
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YelliChink       11/28/2007 7:01:27 PM
The one complaint from the combat arms NCO was that he felt the M4 needed to have the fully automatic option engineered back in. I have left the final complaint until last because it is the only one that supports the 5.56mm penetration deficiency issue.  It comes from a PV2 in a light infantry unit and I will quote his complaint "I spotted an insurgent hiding behind a stone wall, he was about 350m away from me.  I fired an entire magazine into the wall where I thought he was and not one round went through.  This rifle sucks!"  The only question that I have is where was that clown's Team Leader?


For the unmarked part:
Well, from my limited understanding of how burst action work in M16A2, can't he just file down burst sear to make the burst into auto, then claim that it was natural wear when under inspection?
 
For marked part:
 
LOL
 
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Horsesoldier       11/28/2007 10:50:53 PM


 The one complaint from the combat arms NCO was that he felt the M4 needed to have the fully automatic option engineered back in. 


I didn't realise it was ever removed?  I thought it was only the M16A2 which had the 3 round burst function? 

The M16A2 and M16A4 both have the three round burst setting (the rarely seen M16A3 is full auto).  On the carbine side of things the M4 has the three round burst, M4A1 has the full auto option.
 
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Horsesoldier       11/28/2007 11:06:58 PM

Glad to hear you've had good success with the 5.56. But that doesn't mean a lot of others haven't. The fact remains there are plenty of ballistic deficiencies. The good guys in Army SF didn't develop the 6.8 SPC because they had nothing better to do. Nor is it just on a whim that so many M14's have found their way to Iraq and Afghanistan decades after it was officially replaced by the M16. Perhaps the effort to develop and field heavy bullet 5.56 loads is governmental foolishness at the taxpayer's expense?

 

I love Eugene Stoner's baby in just about all varieties. It's a great handling, very accurate carbine much more reliable than many of its critics concede. I own a Rock River M4gery myself and plan on another full-size weapon in the near future...just not in 5.56mm.


 
I'll go ahead and chime in on the 6.8mm Rem SPC topic, though I won't be saying much that hasn't been said already by other posters.
 
1) Why was 6.8 Rem SPC developed?  5th SFG(A) wanted a round with better long range terminal performance and barrier penetration than M855 green tip 5.56mm.  There was not a complaint with close, CQB range, lethality from 5.56mm, but they wanted a round that would perform better out in the 200-400 meter range.
 
2) Is 6.8 Rem SPC currently in use? It was field/combat tested some years back.  The results were not sufficiently better than 5.56mm to justify the downsides, logistically speaking.  SOCOM was ready to go it alone on the caliber issue, but 6.8 Rem SPC just was not enough of an improvement to justify the loss of ability to piggy back Big Army/Big USMC supply systems, etc.
 
It is not currently in service to the best of my knowledge with anyone.  In my current duty position I get to see all kinds of cool SOF toys and such.  I work with ODAs from 5th SFG on a fairly regular basis.  I've yet to see them show up to train with anything chambered in 6.8 Rem SPC, nor talked to anyone from the unit who was part of the field test.  Long story short, 6.8 Rem SPC's military career is hugely overstated on the internet.
 
3) If we needed 6.8 Rem SPC in 2002, why don't we need it now? We started issuing sniper rifles and DMRs firing 77 grain Mk 262 ammo, which will get out out there on range.  It actually makes 0-600 pretty boring on the range when paired with an ACOG.  With better optics and a good ballistics table it can go further than that.  But it has its own drawbacks and limitations compared to M855.
 
4) Then why have so many troops switched to the M14?  As OldGrunt already discussed, there ain't that many M14s out there.  This is another horribly overhyped internet story -- not a rumor, exactly, but wildly exagerrated.  And the ones they did deploy have pretty generally underwhelmed a lot of the end users, so much so that the AARs from the Marines issued the thing were so uninspiring that the USMC decided their DMR requirements could be met by a scoped M16A4.  The Army made the same decision.  Neither is really a ding on the 7.62x51 round, as the complaints about the M14 were mostly platform specific, not caliber specific.  It appears that the shortest lived service rifle in US history was, well, short lived for a reason, and a whole new generation of shooters in combat are learning that internet rumors and gun magazine hype don't mean a damn thing compared to actual real performance.
 


 
 
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Wade777    Wade777   11/29/2020 9:38:05 PM
TRiple_C your concerns, judging by the questions you are asking, are right on the money. We lost a lot of young men in Vietnam because the Army switched over to the M-16. The light weight 5.56 round starts to tumble as soon as it hits a limb or piece of bamboo being deflected who knows where, which makes penetration even worse in thick jungle fire fights with an enemy who was shooting back with mostly 7.62 AK's. that's one of the major reasons many point men who lived long enough to know better, traded for an M14 as soon as they could get their hands on one. In a fire fight in thick jungle it was all about whose bullet would penetrate thick jungle better so the enemy would hang in close and shoot us to pieces while we would shoot back but not able to gain fire superiority because our light weight rounds would be deflected all over the place. I really don't think that the Military has learned their lesson about 5.56 round yet. There is a reason why our enemies use the 7.62 round.  https://www.iam777.org ;   
 
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