In Somalia in 94, we were authorized to hunt down some wild boars that were goaring local villagers next to an abandoned army barracks that we were doing MOUT training in.

Just my luck, I managed to come up on one, a medium sized female. I am a very good shot, I can hit a chemlite from 25 yards at night with the standard issue Beretta, a boar is a much larger target. I drained a full mag into that boar from 15-20 yards away with a 9mm. I emptied the entire mag into it, and it still kept coming, and I managed to hop up onto the tailgate of our Hummer. It died a few minutes later. We inspected it afterwards and it had taken several rounds to the head and they just didn't phase it.

Bring back the 1911, and the M-14 with a larger capacity and finally rid the earth of the Mattel-16 and all of its variants.

One more thing, I have several friends who work private security in Iraq, and none of them use 5.56 weapons. The AK47 is far more reliable and accurate, especialy in desert environments.

The rationale given for using the 5.56mm round, that it would incapacitate 3 troops, and not just 1, is no longer upholdable, given the suicidal nature of our opponents these days. A serious review of the military's small arms is in order.

I found this article a year or two ago -- about "blended metal" ammunition being used by some "private contractors" in Iraq that is claimed to be drastically more lethal than normal 5.56mm ammo, though official tests dispute the claims. I've heard nothing more recent on the topic, but it probably merits more examination, since the problem isn't being addressed by any other means.

The .45cal M1911 was supposedly adopted in part because of the experiences of troops facing "fanatic" Moro tribesmen during the Philippine Insurrection. Perhaps that's another lesson that has to be re-learned every century or so. There are high-capacity .45cal pistols around today, which would address the chief perceived advantage of 9mm, though shooters with smaller hands sometimes find the grips of such .45s too fat.

Did they actually say 'in the head'? To me, 'aim higher' would mean emphasizing the area above the so-called 'center of mass'. On human silouette targets this is often shown as centered around the lower sternum. However, many people feel this means the 'vascular triangle' (really a quadrangle): from the top of the sternum to the nipples, thence to the lower sternum. Here are the heart and great vessels, trachea, and region of the upper vertebral column near the midline. The shock of a bullet, even passing through here, will often stop the heart plus, of course, massive bleeding. Even with this, a bullet that just leaves a hole by passing straight through, a person can often move several steps or more before collapsing (witness #1's wild hog).

The culprit here is the Geneva Convention which outlawed dum-dum bullets as 'inhumane', a crazy idea when you're trying to kill somebody. A round that mushrooms or fragments on impact is better for relatively close combat because, as you said, a high-velocity round often just passes right through--the idea is for the round to spend all its energy in the enemy's body, not fly on down somewhere else.

It may be that the Army is saying, in effect, aim up here instead of the pit of the stomach. Of course, I don't know what they're taught. Unless they're stationary, hitting someone in the head, even with a rifle, is not so easy. The talk here seems to be failure to stop a moving target, ie someone coming at you--that would be a very tough head shot.

I don't know the ballistics but I was surprised the 855 has more inertia, given a lower muzzle velocity. It must be only a little slower, given that the equation usually favors velocity.

Agree with #1 that the 1911 Colt should replace the 9mm and I understand that is in process--not sure, of course.

From Final Historian comes the understanding I always had for the rationale behind the smaller caliber -- the three from one principal.

It seems to me that the recommendation to "shoot 'em twice" also basically says "carry twice as much ammo, too." Are they silent on whether they have an expanded magazine in the pipeline?

I've no idea whether using two 5.56mm rounds is better or worse than something else; there's a host of possible pros and cons. But if this is what is needed and they aren't going to change the basic weapon in use, they ought to at least have another setting for two round bursts instead of three and have that the basic setting in wars with this kind of enemy.

#1 Gabriel
The suggested ammunition for wild boar is 12 ga. solid lead slug, or really big buckshots. Some manufacturers offer streamlined slugs with a polymer sabot for an initial velocity in excess of 400 m/s...

So the XM8 has been cancelled? How long are the top brass (or the Congress?) going to wait before actually fixing this light weapons problem?

FWIW I served Vietnam era, but stayed stateside. However, I had at least three separate individuals relate this information about the M16 round to me back in the 70's. The saying went that as the NVA/VC charged past, you had to tap them on the shoulder and say "you're hit".

Seems like government that cared could have done something about this in 40 years.

#7:

Sadly, standard issue ball ammo is all we ever got, unless I was using the Barett .50. Our XO did bag a boar with the Hummer mounted .50 cal and put a round through its gut. It still managed to run 50 feet before collapsing. Nasty little buggers.

I am confused. I read the reference on wound ballistics (fourth paragraph below the picture of the 30-06 and 5.56 rounds).

There is quite a bit of info about the 855 and 193 rounds. Both actually fragment extensively on impact and cause large areas of tissue damage (so much for my rant abt dum-dum bullets). However, this only occurs at the higher muzzle velocities (ie, closer range). As velocity drops and farther ranges, the bullet does not fragment and then just becomes a small-diameter projectile.

It's emphasized that both rounds did well in FBI tests but the main point seems to be that tissue destruction with either of these rounds is great, at fairly close range. I was left puzzled as to what the exact controversy is.

If anyone with good knowledge of military firearms reads that reference, I'd be interested in your opinion. If, as stated in the beginning, the 855 is not 'doing the job'--why not? The reference seems to show the opposite, in that it's not just passing straight through.

Did I miss something?

Strange times. The Army says the M855 is fine. Meanwhile, SOCOM are tendering for a replacement from arms companies.

As for the M9, fortunately the Army is looking to replace it. And, better yet, they are looking at off the shelf options, including:

• Para-Ordnance's P14.45 and P12.45, both in .45

• Heckler and Koch's USP45, in .45

• The Glock 21, in .45

• Two new Springfield Armory pistols in (you guessed it) .45

Gordon Daugherty

RE dum-dums, as I understand it, they don't penetrate building materials all that well. That was one of the complaints about the M855, especially following the nasty close-quarters stuff in Fallujah.

This "guy"http://www.nicedoggie.net/2006/?p=840#comment-22844 has the best description of the 5.56 round I've ever read.

The most recent NRA American Rifleman 'zine has an article on the SOCOM handgun selection process. Unfortunately, they don't seem to have this online at all.

The reason for this setting is that on unrestricted full auto firing the fourth and subsequent rounds wind up going skyward, a symptom of full-auto handheld guns since the Thompson submachine gun.

I am not sure I agree with this completely. Muzzle rise on successive rounds does occur, though it can certainly be ameliorated with proper training and practice.

(A further quibble: the Colt 1911 pistol in full auto is even harder to handle than a Tommy gun, for obvious reasons; and ISTR the 1911 shipped first... :) )

I believe the main factors to be overall accuracy -- not muzzle rise, but muzzle wander (I learned to keep a full-auto 9mm Uzi on target to about 100 MOA in an afternoon, and 100 MOA kind of sucks -- it's almost two full degrees) -- and the tendency for infantry to "spray and pray" the way they see action movie protagonists do it, rather than fire short bursts using ingrained habits of trigger discipline.

The question re: straight full auto equipped 11 Bravos is: does their job include suppressive fire, or does it not? Isn't that the SAW guy's job?

The 3-round-burst is a tradeoff that makes aimed multi-shot fire under stress a little less impossible, and doesn't require tricky trigger discipline to keep from wasting ammo in an aimed fire situation.

That said, any additional complication in a weapon tends to be, well, a complication.

I think that given the limitations of 5.56, every small unit operating in the field should have some 7.62 firepower -- and I don't mean a precision rifleman, necessarily. But that weapon difference would be obvious and those guys might get singled out for special attention by the bad guys.

Ain't nothin' simple.

Both the M16 and the AK47 are assault rifles, that is, they are rifles that are chambered for a round that is intermediate in power between a pistol round and that of a traditional battle rifle. Such weapons typically do not have an effective range beyond 400 meters. The idea was that the average conscript was incapable of hitting anything beyond that range, so why bother to equip them with a weapon that was "better" than the soldier who was firing it. And because it was a low powered round, the recoil would be less, allowing the soldier to keep up a high rate of fire.

In essence, the whole concept of the assault rifle was to provide a weapon geared toward poorly trained draftees, who probably didn't want to fighting a war at all. But our army is not made up of such people anymore. Its time to put away the assault rifles and give our military a more powerful rifle which is more suited to the needs of professional soldiers.

"...the Colt 1911 pistol in full auto is even harder to handle than a Tommy gun..."

A Colt 1911 on full auto!

This would be some kinda gun. It would be like a handheld BAR or something. Nutin' like a big old full auto Colt with a 40-shot clip in it to put the fear o' God into them bstrds.

Full auto and pistols is for the movies, not combat.

On a side note, I still don't know why the XM8 Project was canned, at least in my view its modularity provided promise.

Thankfully SOCOM has the SCAR. Man I'd like to play with that baby.

Yeah. Sorry if that wasn't clear. A full auto .45 don't make much sense.

The SCAR looks awesome. For those of you like me who don't keep up on mil news, looks like there is a weapons wiki on the web. You can find the SCAR at http://wiki.bf2s.com/weapons/scar-h

You would think that at least in the non-computerized versions, DOD would have a pretty good grip on how to outfit soldiers for various combat situations, but no. It looks like they lost the USMC small wars manual and a lot of institutional knowledge about insurgencies as well.

The 5.56mm is simply inadequate. The military is making a huge mistake sticking with it. Amplifying the first comment, the M16 design is flawed - the rifle is a self fouling piece of junk.

The M14 in 7.62mm would probably be overkill, and heavy, but the XM8 with the 6.8mm would have been a big improvement over the 5.56.

Of course, it might cost as much as one Air Force plane to give every Soldier and Marine the best infantry weapon in the world.

On the "full auto .45" thing:

I saw a video clip of a guy who made the trigger too light on his Colt, so that the kick from the first round triggered the second, the second triggered the third, and so forth.

Luckily, there was nobody standing immediately behind him (the last round hit the ground to his rear).

No caliber save a .50 has 'knock down' power.
In combat, with stress, few are sure where their rounds go.
People can go minutes with their hart but a pile of flipping goop.
The US military has been putting metal into flesh for a long, long time. They are not making a mistake.
I personally knew of a man shot at mere feet by a .45 and didn't stop until the fourth shot was placed in his face. The other three were within 15 feet.
The 5.56 is designed to work under all conditions, at all ranges, by all servicemen. Individual performance may vary.

1) The Army's development institution (Picatinny) is broken beyond repair and should be closed (as was the old Springfield Armory) - it's not developing new weapons. 2) Contrary to what was stated above, the technology and design behind the M4/M16/AR15 is 50 years old (google up Eugene Stoner) 3) A number of improved weapons are available (or could be in 1-3 years) in the private sector right now. The only problem for the military is that they haven't been designed by big defense manufacturers like H&K, etc.

There's nothing wrong with 5.56mm.

I don't know who it was that claimed the ak47 was more accurate, but that's right out of 'er. The m16 deffinitely has better accuracy; it's been shown time and again. Even the discovery channel did a segment on it.

Oh, and as far as I know, the current verison of the m16 is the M16A4, not the A2. I've never used one myself (the last time I worked with US soldiers, they gave me an M4), but if I remember correctly the US troops were using the M16A4.

As for fouling and jamming of the M16 variants, I've never had a problem with that either. It all comes down to weapons maintanance. Take care of your weapon and it will take care of you.

And, finally, the comment about the bullet "passing right through" ignore the ammount of cavitation created by it's passage. I've got some really good pictures of a firepower demo we did a while back using blocks of plasticine. Looking at them you can really clearly picture the way the shockwave would move your insides around. The biggest problem is that extremely hyped up men will keep moving even after taking a fatal shot due to their adrenalin high, regaurdless of the type of round. A .50 HMG round will drop them, but anything short of that, inlcuding the Ak47 round and even an M60 round, won't drop them immediately unless it hits something really critical.

Double-taps should be SOP at anything under 100 meters anyway. Ditto for aiming for above the center of mass. I know that every time I've done any sort of urban combat we've always double-tapped targets.

Oh, and BTW, there's a 6.8mm conversion kit for the M16. Something like that might be worth looking into for special operations units, but introducing it into general service would be a logistical nightmare.

And the XM8 was a piece of junk; let's not start THAT debate again. Integrated battery powered optics with no backup? Creating a requirement for a brand new granade launcher? Come ON! I'm glad they scrapped it.

To Echo the comments of #23 one need only look at the Dragon Skin debacle to see how flawed DoD procurment is.

Wasn't this a problem for troops way back in somalia? I remember reading about this problem in black hawk down.

Alex --

The M16 is garbage for a combat weapon. Stoner was a target shooter and made a target shooter's weapon. It has many advantages, lightweight, low recoil, easy shooting, very good at punching paper at the range. Couldn't ask for more.

But it's design (direct gas on the bolt) is garbage for a combat weapon. Utter garbage. In combat, you can't stop to clean your weapon. You might not be able to do so for days on end.

Mikhail Kalashnikov designed a combat weapon. Great gaps of space designed deliberately to trade reliability for accuracy (you can't have optimization for both at the same time, choose one).

Experience in Afghanistan, Somalia and Iraq show the weakness of the M-16 and .223 besides the garbage design (quick clean your AR-15 after shooting, you have to take the bolt apart to clean out the firing pin when it's full of carbon junk!!). That's lack of reach ... the type of wars we are facing requires our guys to be able to have superior range (they are outnumbered) than the AK-47 and enough lethality to defeat light cover. Which the .223 lacks.

It's a garbage weapon and garbage caliber. The M-14 in plastic stock should be light enough and far more reliable, able to outrange the AK-47.

In engagement after engagement with the enemy, our guys suffer needlessly because they don't have a superior rifle that can outrange the AK-47 (M-16 is about equal in range).

In a conversation with my Marine son recently back from Iraq he had told me of insurgents taking as many as 10 rounds of .223 before going down. He said the main reasons they use the M16 is because it is cheap and they can carry lots of ammunition. He also said the 9mm is only good for civilian target practice. He and his fellow Marines talk about this all the time. They want a bigger diameter bullet in their personal weapon.

Yeah, this he-said-she-said sort of stuff has been around since the dawn of time. I can just picture a bunch of centurions bitching about their short swords not having the same reach as the huns battle-axe.

Jim, the M-16 has higher accuracy, and higher accuracy means better range. I'd hate to have to use an AK at anything past 200m. I've used an M-16 variant at 500. Your mileage may vary.

And you're absolutely wrong about the type of wars we're fighting these days. The author of the article got it right. Most infantry engagements these days take place at less than 100 meters. Most insurgents can't hit a target even at that range, so they certainly won't shoot at us from 300. If you were really worried about long-range engagements, it'd be a better idea to go the route of the russians and attach a sniper or two to each platoon. Your riflemen and machinegunners lay down supporting fire and advance on the loacation while snipers provide overwatch and drop targets of opportunity.

You're right about the gas-on-bolt design being....."less than optimal", however, the "In combat, you can't stop to clean your weapon. You might not be able to do so for days on end" line of reasoning is irrelevant in current operations, and wouldn't be true under most combat conditions either. In current ops soldiers get a chance to clean their weapons on a daily basis. Even if we were fighting trench-warfare style, and under attack for days straight, it's not a problem to say "alright, support weapons are providing cover, start cleaning weapons in your fire-teams. one man cover, one man clean". Doing a very basic clean of the M-16 should take no more than 3-4 minutes.

And, ofcourse, there ARE ways to eliminate the problem. It's a fairly simple matter to replace the current gas-tube system with a small piston system. I'm fairly sure there's already a conversion kit available to do that.

And don't shoot skinny people. the thought processes of those in charge, no matter the group, always amuze and bemuse me.

Gad - what does Jeff Cooper call the M-16 in 5.56? "The Poodle Puncher" (aka not good for anything but shooting poodles)

M-14, an NICE rifle. Another real option - Go with what Gene Stoner's original design - looks like a large M-16, but it's in 7.62×56 (aka .308 Winchester) - but slightly different than the M-16, it doesn't tend to JAM Look up the AR-10

Okay, I stay out of these conversations for a variety of reasons. But one comment that doesn't seem to be addressed here at all.

The 9mm was adopted as a NATO standard under the assumption that a lot of operations were going to be SASO rather than force-on-force. Insurgencies fall in the middle of the two. That means balancing combat effectiveness with reduced collateral casualties in the civilian population.

Betch beans to bacon that's a serious consideration for the DOD brass. Tough set of tradeoffs involved.

And yeah, the Beretta isn't my favorite even in 9mm. I can outshoot ours with my Sig P229 in 9mm easily. However, when I am really out of practice or tired, the heavier Beretta has some stability to it and I managed to score in the Expert range on my first try with an M9 after not having shot at all for 5 years. (Don't get me started on NY's handgun control process.) So again the issue is, who is the target shooter around which the Army's decision should be made? SOCOM are a whole 'nuther group than your basic Joe who doesn't get to the range all that often. S/he may be professional, but that isn't the same thing as practiced with the gun.

Now, if they adopted the Sig and issued the swappable barrels and cartidges, units who anticipate combat could move up to the .40 S&W on the same frame and get a lot of the stopping power of a .45 without the logistical and training issues associated with that caliber. Just sayin' ....

There is no quick fix to this conundrum. The M16A2's chamber is designed for the longer M855 bullet, as is the SAW's. So the older M193 round can't just be reissued.

Actually the old M193 can be reissued, M193 will fly out stable from a M-16A2 barrel. With that said there is such major problems with U.S. Army acquisition of infantry small arms that the process should be taken completely out of their hands and placed with SOCOM. So far SOCOM is the ONLY entity within the U.S. Armed Forces that has had the courage to redesign the M-16 to use a gas piston and actually issue it. This has been a known defect for 40+ years. With all of that said there is a trade off neccessary with the 5.56 round. That compromise is immediate bullet deformation with object penetration. You cannot get both from this round.

Robin Burk makes some excellant points. The sidearm for the military is chosen for its suitability to a lot of non-combat and non-expert uses. The exceptions are really so few that having them procure special weapons is far more reasonable.

Related to that is the fact that what is the most suitable infantry arm is not necessarily the one most suited to the best marksman in the unit.

Um, guys the issue here is velocity.

The M855 was optimized to work in the old full-sized M16's (20" barrel) which yields much higher bullet velocities - leading to tumbling & fragmentation & more 'stopping' wounds. The M4 (14.5" barrel), which is a great package because of lightness and improved mobility - has a lower muzzle velocity, which means that often the bullets are travelling below the threshold for tumbling and fragmentation, and essentially become high-velocity 22's.

Having said that, the subject of 'poodle-shooters' comes up often on the gun lists that I subscribe to, and everyonw who has BTDT is happy with them as compared to the available alternatives. No one wants to go back to the heavy ammo load of the .308, and the 6.6mm and other loads are not yet proven in weapons.

This is kind of like Ford vs. Chevy...a religious war.

A.L.

There was a book I read on the M16 that pointed out how the arsenal (Springfield I think) messed it up. They did everything they could to destroy the M16. They changed the rifling for a higher twist to reduce the drop at 400 yds in arctic conditions (this in a rifle intended for a tropical war). This increased the stability which reduced the tumbling and in a round that small seriously reduced the imact at close range. The also sent the rifle over to Nam with ball amunition which fouled badly causing the troops to be without a usable weapon in the midst of a firefight. I think Stoner warned them about this but was ignored. Criminally negligent in my view.

The problem with auto is the high rate of fire, you wind up emptying a magazine when you only meant to fire a short burst.

Auto on a Colt 1911 is often a symptom of a worn trigger sear (or any automatic for that matter).

I grew up doing quite a bit of hunting in rural NH and to hunters .223 Remington or 5.56mm is a varmint load. Varmints are smaller than humans and it wasn't considered proper to hunt deer using varmint loads because you were too likely to cause a non lethal wound that might cripple or take a long time to kill the animal. So the soldier's complaints make sense to me and the story of the wild boar being undeterred is exactly what I would have expected by the time I was 10 years old. I still wouldn't want to take one on with a varmint round. I don't know the subtle differences in the ballistics among the military variants and am not commenting on those at all, but on the general class of flat trajectory high velocity .22 ammunition. I would speculate that the flat trajectory means soldiers don't have to compensate for much midflight elevation and that it was chosen partly because aiming is easier. Also an Aussie soldier I know pointed out that the idea is to wound the enemy not kill them because a wounded soldier ties up more enemy personnel than a dead one. True for conventional war but in Iraq I think that isn't the way it often works and that enemy wounded tie up our medics. That said, in reading various complaints by soldiers I have thought that if I were a combat soldier in Iraq I'd be down at the range experimenting with those three round bursts trying to work out the best techniques. Like when head shots were feasible and was there any pattern to how my aim moved during a burst so I could make sure I did the most damage with my bursts. If a guy like me without military training is thinking that way, I'm sure the guys risking their lives every day have worked out a lot more.

I wonder if an upgraded-caliber Tavor might be a good choice? Israelis have been fighting the same kind of folks for a long time now, and could probably use the economy of scale to help equip their own forces..

Full auto and pistols is for the movies, not combat.

I tend to agree.

Also, mea culpa: on reviewing my data, I was wrong about the timing. I believe Star (of Brazil) made some select-fire 1911s in the 1930s, but that's after the production of the Thompson.

Those things having been said, I will point to the existence of the 9mm (not nearly as jumpy as a .45 would be) Glock Model 18 -- and its employment for very special situations such as DEA and Secret Service details (not combat, not movies either) -- and leave the matter there.

Now, I don't claim to be an expert or anything, but I was under the impression that the current ammo used in the M-16 is designed specifically so that it won't tumble, as it was expected to be used against Soviet troops with body armor rather Iraqi insurgents.

I have a p229 in .357sig and absolutely love that round. Plenty of anecdotal evidence from law enforcement punching through car doors to take out an assailant to back it up to. What's also nice about .357sig round is that there are clips that support both 9mm and .357sig ammunition. So, one would simply need to drop in a different barrel and swap out the ammo in the clips.

Was out blinking cans with a friend who had a 92fs. We put down a cinder block and his was making nice dents while I brought the whole thing down into a pile in less then one clip.

Specifically, in regards to the report indicating that 2 rounds in succession is needed to bring down a target. I wonder if the Russians discovered the same problem with "light" assault rifle rounds and therefore added a 2-round burst feature to their new Nikonov AN-94 "Abakan" (5.45×39 mm): "The [two round burst mode is] fired at very high rate of fire, and a trained shooter can make a single hole in the target at 100 meters in this mode. This allows for significant increase in lethality, stopping power and body armour penetration over the single shot mode, with the same "single shot" accuracy." -- http://world.guns.r$u/assault/as08-e.htm

Otherwise, I think the M16-A* is a terrific weapon that has contributed greatly to the American success of countless battles.

In essence, the whole concept of the assault rifle was to provide a weapon geared toward poorly trained draftees, who probably didn't want to fighting a war at all. But our army is not made up of such people anymore. Its time to put away the assault rifles and give our military a more powerful rifle which is more suited to the needs of professional soldiers.

I hate to advocate logistics complications, but wouldn't it be a good idea to keep the things available, in case we get into something where we need a whole lot of soldiers quick and don't have time to train them well?

Can't we just compromise between the 7.76mm and the 5.56mm. Both groups should just meet half way and adopt the 6.66mm round. More stopping pwer then the 5.56 yet lighter then the 7.76mm. Not to mention it is easy to remeber and just sounds cool.

The 6.8 SPC is what some spec ops have been experimenting with, on the M-16 chassis.