the problem with is that bay law we have to use full meltel jacket ammo witch at close range just gose through a man.At the range in the incadent abouve the soluder should have used his pistol

Good read, good links. I hope this thread doesn't devolve into a, "AK-47s are better than M-16s because this one time, I was playing CounterStrike..."

The issue is much less that a short barreled rifle does not allow the round to get to as high a velocity as a longer rifle, and much more that as Richard Kammler pointed out our military uses full metal jacket rounds. A full metal jacket round does not significantly expand when it hits a body which means it will not transfer much of its energy into the body.

RK said that a pistol might have been more effective. Our military carries 9 mm pistols (mostly), as do many police forces here in the USA. While the 9 mm is somewhat larger than the 222 round used in the M4 (0.3" instead of 0.22") it has much less power behind it. Yet many of our police forces find it satisfactory and with the right ammo it gives about 80% one shot stops. That right ammo, however, is hollow-point. This is what anti-gunners love to call "dum-dum" bullets, and our military is not allowed to use such ammo.

Hollow point bullets expand drastically when they hit the body, and transfer most of the energy of the bullet into the body. This is why someone hit by such a round has a small entrance hole but a very large area of damage inside the body. By contrast full metal jacket rounds such as our military uses are much more likely to punch a small hole right through the body, and do little damage to any part of the body not in the direct path of the bullet.

That is the main reason the M4 rounds in the incident you mention failed to stop the terrorist. Unless a lucky shot hit an organ that would cause instant incapacitation, this is what happens when full metal jacket rounds are used.

Most of our police forces have learned this lession, but our military has not yet learned it (or is afraid to face up to the anti-gun crowd for using effective rounds).

InformedChristian Thank you for clarifying my post for me some times I foget to make all my thoughts into words.

So, here's acomment from the past. I was a marine & initially trained on the 7.62mm M-14, a modernized M1. In Vietnam, with the 20" M-16, we had the same problem. We did everything we could to ditch the M16 & use an M14 if we could.

This issue came up a hundred years ago in the Phillipine Insurrection (against Muslim terrorists, as you may recall). The Krag-Jorgenson rifle & .38 cal revolver lacked stopping power & the Moros did not go down. Enter John Browning; he designed the M1911 .45 cal automatic & the .30 cal MG. The Springfield Arsenal contributed the M1903 .30 cal rifle. Amazing how we must re-learn the same lessons.

By the way, what happened to the M8? That design seems robust & chambered in a 6.8mm or 7mm would be quite a weapon.

IC,

Military units cannot use hollowpoint or softpoint ammunition due to treaty obligations (1899 Huage Declaration) more than 100 years old, that to my knowledge, have not been breached by any nation's convenional military forces.

DS,

Not sure what stopped the XM8 program, but I would't be surprised if the underperformance of the 5.56 NATO in the short-bareled M4 might have them reconsidering all of their options.

All the standard small arms issued to US troops have inadequate stopping power. The lack of stopping power of the 5.56mm was justified by the claim that the bullet was understabilized and would tumble after impact causing a major wound. Then the gun was redesigned to stablize the bullet. The round is universally banned in the United States for deer hunting as being inadequate to humanely kill game. It is also inadequate as a close range round. Not only is it the standard round for the infantry rifle but also for the squad machine gun, SAW.

The 9mm was supposedly adopted to be compatible with NATO. Many ex-military, myself included, think that it was adopted when the Army's population of females began to grow, particularly in the non-combat arms. It was felt that the 9mm was easier to handle than the reliable action and unquestioned stopping power of the .45 Cal Colt Auto. As an old marine supposedly said, any caliber of pistol will do as long as the first number is 4!

The .40 cal and .45 cal are rapidly taking over the law enforcement market because of their proven stopping power against druggies. I suspect that Jihadists are in the same category of difficulty to stop. The 9mm is only adequate with specialized self defense ammo that the US will not issue for political reasons.

For a time it looked like the 6.8mm would be adopted with the new rifle being evaluated. Not any more. Also, there was an RFP that asked for bids on 450,000 .45 cal pistols. RFP was cancelled.

A small number of M-14's have been issued to sniper teams but that is not the answer. Nor is the M5. It just does not have the power. It can easily be converted to 6.8mm but the Army is not interested in spending the money!

I never understood the humanity of full metal jacket rounds. I suppose people felt that having chunks of thier buddies blown all over them was a negative, a feeling I have for bullets that go through both of us.

Hollow point or soft-tipped rounds won't go through armor as well (or walls, brush, etc). I would think as we fight in more civilian populated areas, we would prefer the gore to the collatoral damage.

I couldn't my hands on any 240B in Iraq. We were a medical unit running our own resupply convoys. We had M2's and M249s. The 240B is a 7.62 round and was referred to as the 'poor man's 50 cal.' The problem I had was the 249 had a reputation that it would not penetrate an engine as a 50 or 240 could. As a result, during an escalation of force, my instructions to troops if a vehicle did not stop were to fire into the round in front of the vehicle, fire into the engine, and then put three rounds 18 inches behind the steering wheel.

This entire escalation takes place in less than 6 seconds and is really borne out of the Geneva Convention. The escalation gives us a chance to determine the status of a non-uniformed individual without lighting up civilians.

What they were discovering (my unit never had to fire into a vehicle so we discovered nothing other than we really wanted 240's)was that in the second phase, the 249 rounds would bounce off the engine and start killing folks in the passenger compartment.

"Where were you hit, son?"
"Somewhere between Geneva and the Hague, sir!"

The Hague Conventions prohibition on the use of expanding projectiles does not apply in Iraq (or in any action against terrorists) since combat is not occuring between two signatories to the Convention. American forces are serving with the express permission of the lawful government of Iraq, it is an internal state matter and, just like domestic law enforcement here, the US and Iraq forces could legally employ non FMJ rounds.

"The .40 cal and .45 cal are rapidly taking over the law enforcement market because of their proven stopping power against druggies. I suspect that Jihadists are in the same category of difficulty to stop." BobQne

Exactly. In the Phillipine Insurrection, the Moros would not go down despite being repeatedly hit. In the RVN, my first platoon sergeant carried a Thompson. He had more stopping power than all the M-16's in my fire team. More than once I saw an officer drop his M-16 & use his M1911.

We have a great military these days. Why is this such a problem?

There's another factor not yet mentioned here, even by vets of the current conflict-

The Mk262 round was developed precisely to address the problem with carbines firing the NATO load.

The NATO load, IMO, is the problem. We should just tell NATO to get fucked, and let the morons in Brussels catch up to ourselves and Israel. As also mentioned, we aren't fighting another Geneva signator- so bring on the BTHPs.

Fragmentation is what makes the 5.56 round deadly- velocities needed to fragment an FMJ projectile are not attained from a barrel of less than 20". The Mk262 was developed to provide reliable fragmentation (read: energy transfer) out to 300 yards, which is well beyond the majority of engagements experienced by combat teams in Iraq, from the barrels currently fielded by infantrymen ranging down to 10.5".

The purpose of the 6.5/6.8 rounds currently under development is to provide a platform which could conceivably be adapted to not only anti-personnel, but also certain anti-materiel and sniping purposes without requiring the use of a specialized sniping weapon.