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McDeth
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Pst...give me a BFG 9000....
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Beer? I'm down.
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Gnam
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One thing I'd like to point out is that even if the US officially adopted a 7.62x39 or other larger cartridge weapon, you would still probably have some stories of "freak incidents" where threats take multiple hits and continue fighting. Incapacitation from gun fire tends to be very inconsistent. Even durring WWII where fighting was done mostly with heavy-caliber battle rifles, you still had incidents of people taking lots of rounds to the chest and fighting on. Incapacitation also seems to be as dependant on the phsychological state of the victim; crazed insurgents and drugged up criminals can often take many rounds to put down, while those who are scared, dejected, hopeless, etc may go down in one shot, even from a .22LR. Neither the .45 ACP, nor the 7.62x49, nor the 7.62x51 are going to score instant 1-shot kills all time. Nothing less than a direct hit to the head, heart, or spine, or a .50 BMG is absolutely certain to take down a person instantly.
I'm not saying the 5.56 doesn't seem to have problems, and more incidents of 'multi-shot kills' than other rounds, but I am saying you're going to hear freak stories which can be easily spun to denounce a weapon from any cartridge. War stories tend to be exagerated and sketchy. After all, in that one article, where "We were Soldiers Once....And Young" was quoted, the same soldier who claimed to see the VC survive several 5.56 rounds also claimed that the VC was "lifted off his feet" from his shotgun blast. Nothing you hear is 100% reliable. The only way to draw a conclusion is to look at the data and the trends that persist over time. In many situations where the 5.56 is tested and questions (for example, the case on the shooting range, where bullets were sticking IN the pasty paper targets) the 7.62x39 is not tested alongside the 5.56 (who's to say the 7.62 would not have stuck in those targets also)? Untill the 7.62x39 is put to the same tests, you can't just assume that it will automatically solve everything.
However, I do think the US military should definitely pursue testing of other cartridges. Just like they are testing the 5.56mm XM8, they should be doing tests with 7.62x49 weapons to find suitable options. Hopefully if US soldiers continue using AK's in Iraq, there will also be some hands-on combat experience/data to match all the info we allready have on hwo the M16 and M4 have performed in the field. Too bad it will only be with crappy Iraqi AKs and not fully representative of what the US military could come up with if they used accurized/customized AKs, Russian models, or a new rifle designed around the 7.62x39 cartridge.
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Phoenix
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Well I'm not advocating the US military switch to the 7.62x39 specifically. The round is a good round, but it's got the stigma of being a "Commie" cartridge and politics will always prevent its adoption as a result. I know it'll shoot through 1/8" steel at 200 yards easily, and that's not even using AP rounds, I'm not sure what it would or would not go through at 500 yards. It wasn't designed for long-range work, nor is it touted as a long-range cartridge. That's what the 7.62x54 SVD is for. 
There will always be some variance in damage caused by any round, and no cartridge is a guaranteed one-shot kill unless it's a howitzer. I'm not disputing that at all. However, given both battlefield and street statistics, one basic rule is consistant: The bigger the round, the more energy it delivers, the more likely the target is to go down on the first hit. I've seen street stoppage statistics taken by police departments in relation to all sorts of pistol caliber rounds, and the pattern is the same. If you exclude hollow-point rounds since they deform heavily, the basic rule is the bigger the gun, the harder it hits. Throw hollow point rounds in, and you see a marked jump in effectiveness. A .380 ACP with jacketed hollowpoints becames as effective as .45 ACP ball, and a .45 ACP JHP becomes as effective as a 12 gauge slug. Why? Larger hole = more damage. The more trauma you inflict, the quicker you stop the attack. The same is fairly true for rifles, hydrostatic shock not withstanding, and even that works better with larger rounds than it does smaller ones since you have to have some volumetric displacement to cause the shockwave in the first place.
It's not a matter of whether one shot will KILL the guy or not. One shot from a .22 LR or even a pellet gun can kill someone if it hits in the right spot, it just will take a lot longer to die than getting clobbered with a .50 BMG. I don't think in a combat situation anyone wants to wait for the other guy to bleed to death while he's shooting back though. The goal is stopping the aggressor as quickly as possible, while keeping the weapon and ammunition of a reasonable size and weight, as well as keeping the weapon controllable at fully-automatic fire. If power were the only concern everyone would still be toting around the BAR. There has to be a balance between all these factors in an assault rifle. The .308 is a bit too powerful, the .223 is a bit too weak. The 7.62x39 is a .311 caliber bullet with a shorter case, it does the job it was designed to do and that's tear things up out to 300 yards. The .223 M-16A2 is listed as having an effective range of 800 yards, which is ridiculous. At 400 yards the .223 has no more energy than a .22LR, and a flak jacket will stop it at that distance. I still think the 6.8 SPC should be looked at as an "inbetweener" - a slightly smaller round that's a bit faster than the 7.62, but packs much more punch than the .223. I'd like to see some serious testing done with this round.
As for a 12 gauge lifting a guy off his feet, consider the size and weight of the Vietnamese. If a 12 gauge slug can knock a 250lb deer off its feet I have no trouble believing this at all. 
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  I fly into the night, on wings of fire burning bright...
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Hedhunta
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heh, yeah depending on what the shotgun was loaded with, shotgun shells usually fire a rifled cylinder, basically a 1/2 inch long peice of steel about the size of a .50 cal bullet in diameter, if not a little bigger, VERY VERY high velocity, but because the bullet is flat, it doesnt fly very far and generally just packs a very big wallop. what pho is advocating is knock down power, and personally thats what i want to, if im shooting at someone, i dont want the fifth or sixth hit to incapacitate my enemy, i want the 1st or second shot to do it so i can manage the other 15 guys shooting at me. the 5.56 round just doesnt have the knock down power of the 7.62 round long range aside, generally soldiers dont fire until around 150-200 yards anyways, yeah its nice to be able to ping targets at 300 yards, but when combat effective range is only 150-200 yards anyways, whats the point.
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Gnam
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Yeah, the military definitely doesn't seem to be putting enough priority on testing the 6.8 SPC. Compaired to the 6.8, the XM8 is just a waste of time and money. The main things it improves upon (modularity, reliability) are not really major deficiencies in our current weapons, and it totally ignores the main deficiency pegged on our current weapons. Yet the XM8 has gotten tons of attention, and it sounds like the government is doing tons of testing on it, when it's still going to be shooting the same cartridge people have been criticizing since the 60's.
I'm not the fervant 5.56 hater that other people are, but clearly at the very least there are some things about it that could be improved upon. For that matter, I think the 5.45x39 would probably be a significant improvement to what we have now, given that it actually tumbles the way it's supposed to, while the 5.56 doesn't even tumble at all till it exits the target, in most cases.
As for 12-gauges "picking people off their feet" nothing is going to forcibly knock or lift a target off their feet unless the recoil knocks the shooter off his feet as well. Bullets may drop people, but it's from nervous system damage/shock and the victim losing the ability to stand, not from the victim being knocked over like they got hit by a truck. I'm sure you guys know this, it's just a matter of the wording.
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Woodsman
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The fact is unless nato adopts the 6.8 the army is never going to use it. Its that simple. thats why were stuck with the 9mm pistol cartridge instead of the .45.Unless you can convince the european armys to use 6.8 instead of 5.56 this is all a moot point.
I think we should bring back the B.A.R.
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« Last Edit: 2004-12-12, 05:04 by Woodsman »
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Phoenix
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Killing people and breaking stuff! What kind of work do you think you do during wartime? 
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Woolie Wool
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I know I mentioned this in the chat room, but they began the assault on Fallujah so far, and I found these pics rather interesting:
Caption: Nov. 8: A nightscope of U.S. forces storming the main city hospital in Fallujah, Iraq.
That looks like an AKS-74U, which is a carbine that shoots 5.45mm ammo. |
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Woolie Wool
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The fact is unless nato adopts the 6.8 the army is never going to use it. Its that simple. thats why were stuck with the 9mm pistol cartridge instead of the .45.Unless you can convince the european armys to use 6.8 instead of 5.56 this is all a moot point.
I think we should bring back the B.A.R. The BAR? The SAW is a far superior weapon to the BAR. |
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Phoenix
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The .30-06' BAR shoots through solid brick walls, but has mule-kick recoil and a 20 round box magazine... and it's heavy. The 5.56mm SAW doesn't, but you can tote around more bullets... and it's also heavy. Remember, it's not just the gun, it's the ammo. It all depends on what you want to do with your weapon. You want a lot of "bee-stingers", or you want a few "pick-axes"?
Woolie: No way to tell exactly what rifle he's toting around, could be a 74 variant or a 47 variant. All the more recent shots I've seen from Fallujah show M16-A2's and A4's (the ones with the protruding pistol grip that points down from the forward handguard - they shoot full auto as opposed to the A2's 3 shot burst) being used by Marines, and 2-3 guys per squad with light machineguns. Either the guys in that shot were Iraqi troops, or the US only used AK variants on the initial assault to confuse the enemy since they'd think it was their own people shooting (AK's make a sound very different from an AR), or the imbedded press can't get pictures of US troops with AK's because the US wants to show only US equipment being toted around. I have, however, seen some AK rifle butts sneak into the sideframe of some film footage from time to time where the rifles were held at the "ready" position, not slung over a grunt's back from a captured insurgent.
Really there's no way to know how much of what kind of weapons are actually being used where since you only get pictures from maybe 2 or 3 different squads. This is actually a GOOD thing we don't have too many operational details since the enemy watches the news also.
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I fly into the night, on wings of fire burning bright...
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Woolie Wool
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The only AKS I know of is the 74U, which uses the midget cartridge. That weapon is DEFINITELY not an AK or PK weapon. It is way too short.
Also, for sure some soldiers may be using AKs. They might prefer an AK over an AR. Also, many of the "M-16" rifles shown are actually M-4s, which are shorter than the M-16 and have full-auto fire.
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« Last Edit: 2004-12-17, 20:41 by Woolie Wool »
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