.223/5.56....Too Weak?

The fragmentation range varies depending on barrel length. To answer your question in one word--yes, it's all true.

Flame suit on.

You can ask the ammo oracle:

http://www.ammo-oracle.com/body.htm

For my GT Class in school (GT as in, Gifted and Talented. How the hell did I get picked? Maybe cause I'm a goot shot...), we were told to do a free-range project. Present something to the class. We have been given a month to work on it (very laid back class). For me, I'm doing a comparison Powerpoint (microsoft) and spoken presentation of the history of the 7.62 NATO and the 5.56 NATO. I'm finding out more and more about the 5.56 NATO, much more than I wanted to know about the round our military has been using for forty years. With everything I've pulled up (from soldier's statments to actual tests and even the "doctored" tests handed over to the government), I've changed the name and aim of my project.

"The Overall Ineffectiveness of the .223/5.56 NATO round. History, concept, and conclusion."

In other words, I wouldn't trust it.

Fragmentation has very little to do with the consistent lethality of the .223/5.56 round.

Fragmentation depends on both bullet design and velocity. Some designs will fragment at lower velocities than others. Barrier performance is likewise related to the two concepts above.

See the attachment for a visual test of 5.56 fragmentation at different velocities.

The round does what it was designed to do. In a war/battle, kill a guy and he is out of the fight. Wound a guy and he,and another guy or two are out to recover him.

Ineffective?
Of course, that's why it has become the world standard with the countries that make up NATO and quite a few others. They never really want to hurt or kill anyone, just scare them a bit.
Most people who have seen it's effect on flesh and bone will tell you that it is difficult to tell which service round made which wound.

Adoption by NATO is not a valid criteria upon which to base claims of quality or effectiveness. The british had far better rounds (the 280 caliber assault rifle) and other countries had better designs than the M16.

The same statements made about handgun ammo are obviously fallacious due to american experience with handguns. The standard NATO combat handgun round is FMJ 9mm. Clearly this was not done based upon the effectiveness of 9mm ball. We knew back in the late 19th century that 9mm ball sucked because we used 38 caliber revolvers before switching to 45 acp.

Your reasoning is flawed and the 5.56 is a flawed round for a military rifle:
-small bullet causes light wounds unless it fragments. This is inconsistent at best.
-light bullet with low sectional density penetrates barriers poorly
-cylindrical case walls instead of sloped walls makes extraction and feeding difficult, sometimes impossible with steel cases. Brass cases raise price.

A better round would have been a something in the 6.5-7mm range with a decent sectional density and a velocity in the mid-high 2000s. With a slightly sloped cartridge case wall. Reliable and cheap to manufacture. More range than 7.62x39, but enough of the power to knock someone out of the fight. Being able to hit something at 600 yards is pointless if the bullet wont actually knock them out of the fight without a headshot. 7.62x39 comes close but honestly doesnt have the mid-range (200-400m) performance that you could get to switching to something a bit lighter and faster.

It's easy to put down the current choice in rounds for pistol and rifle used by the US, but they do get the job done.
I'm sure your choice is better, and won't be a bit surprised if you get a call from the Pentagon monday so they can really get the truth about what works best from a ballistics, logistics and engineering point of view.

No it great on small varmints. I would not want to be shot with a 5.56mm, 7.62mm or a 22LR for that matter.

Added: The original idea behind the 5.56 round was that it was not intended to kill the target but only incompasitate, making other soliders who would inclined to tend to the wounded drawing manpower from the frontlines. In principle this only works with modern armies who will tend to their wounded, not terriost, or people willing to die for a cause who will keep shooting if wounded.

jungle said:

It's easy to put down the current choice in rounds for pistol and rifle used by the US, but they do get the job done.
I'm sure your choice is better, and won't be a bit surprised if you get a call from the Pentagon monday so they can really get the truth about what works best from a ballistics, logistics and engineering point of view.

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The US has been a notoroiusly poor decision maker for procurement of small arms the past oh 70 years or so. The market decides what is the most effective from a combat and logistics standpoint. Hence the fact that 99 percent of the warriors on this planet use some AKM variant in 7.62x39.

The entire complaint, often leveled BY active members of the military, is that these cartridges DONT get the job done. Which is why they complain about them. Which is why we give special guns chambered in 7.62x39 or 6.5 grendel or 6.8SPC to the special ops guys. And they use 40 and 45 caliber pistols, just like LEOs and most other civilians in this country.

That is interesting. Which Major powers are building and using 7.62x39 rifles on a large scale now?

There is always ongoing experimentation with various weapons and calibers. Some of it will be useful. In the vacum of a ballistics lab, many rounds are better than the 5.56, but when you look at logistics, fiscal constraints and the many other factors involved I think we have made a good choice.

SPECOPS and real warriors are neat, but only a very small fraction of the fighting force the US fields.

Which Major powers are building and using 7.62x39 rifles on a large scale now?

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None are. The poor terminal ballistics of the 7.26x39 are well documented by now.

Which is why we give special guns chambered in 7.62x39 or 6.5 grendel or 6.8SPC to the special ops guys.

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Except that, well, we don't. Neither the 6.5 Grendel nor the 6.8SPC has seen any field use in the US Military.

- Chris

From reports on military sites, I believe that the Special Forces have stopped using the 6.8 SPC and 6.5 Grendal in combat since they no longer are able to obtain enough ammo. This does not mean they will abondon the project but are putting on the back burner until they can obtain consistant supplies of ammo.

beerslurpy: You been slurping too much. Guess again, re fragmentation being required for consistent lethality.

And fragmentation is based on velocity. Velocity is based on barrel length/distance from target. Once these variables are affected, then the consistancy of lethal hits is affected. Shorter barrels, longer ranges, you do the math. I'm not insinuating that the .223 can't kill a man, or that it can't do it effectively. Yet if I were given the chance, I'd use something different.

EghtySx said:

The round does what it was designed to do. In a war/battle, kill a guy and he is out of the fight. Wound a guy and he,and another guy or two are out to recover him.

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That sounds good at first, but it doesn't make any sense. Ammo can't be designed to reliably produce wounds without killing. Also, there is no evidence that 5.56 NATO was designed to only wound. It was designed to be small and light and still effective, so soldiers could carry more ammo. If the goal of the cartridge was to just wound the enemy soldiers, they could have used 22LR.

There's some more info about this sort of thing here: http://groups.msn.com/TheMarylandAR15ShootersSite/notdesignedforwounds.msnw

Kenshin said:

I've heard that after a 100 yrds, a .223/5.56 bullet won't fragment when it hits the target, and will lose a lot of lethality. I've also heard they have poor barrier performance. Is this all true?

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I don't have any personal experience wrt to human wounds (thank god!!) but I can tell you that I have seen repeatedly what it does to steel plate at 100 yards (both hardened and mild steel) and I don't think it's lost much velocity even from my M4gery. I would say from what I've read maybe 250-300 yards it's lost a bit of effectiveness but even then I think it would tend to ruin someone's day. Just my uneducated .02 ..

Deer Hunter said:

And fragmentation is based on velocity.

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Velocity is only part of the equation. Bullet construction plays a large part too - to use just one example the Hornady 68gr Match fragments consistenly at lower velocities than the 2,700fps often cited for military ammo.

I Was under the impression that at the geneva convention, it was accepted that countries would not use hollow point or frangible rounds due to their "inhumane" damage they cause. Now, I'm no history buff about this, so there is a good chance that I could be wrong. But I have always been under that impression, and that was why we issue ball ammo to our soldiers. I wasn't taking other types of ammo into consideration in my above post.

Also, consistant fragmentation at lowered velocities is what I would like to see with the .223 bullet. A bullet that fragments at lowered speeds "sometimes" isn't sufficiant to be relied upon by our soldiers. But that's my opinion, and you couldn't buy a coke for as much as it's worth.

The Viet Cong and Iraqi insurgents alike are just playing dead. It's a game. 5.56 bounces harmlessly off of thick clothing and callused skin most of the time, and when it happens to wedge itself in an eye socket or something it can be pulled out harmlessly with a pair of tweezers.

But 9x19, .40 S&W. or .45 ACP out of a 3.5"-4" pistol barrel is still lethal, don't worry. It's okay to trust your life daily to a pistol caliber but using a rifle caliber in a rifle platform produces terminal ballistics that won't kill or hurt anybody.

Matter of fact, if you use 2 ply paper targets, 5.56 and .223 bullets will bounce off the paper half the time.

For the 38 Colt/9mm Luger comparisons:

9 mm Luger 123 grs. 1048 fps 301ft/lbs.
.38 Colt Army 148 grs. 763 fps 191ft/lbs.

Not valid.

Deer Hunter said:

I Was under the impression that at the geneva convention, it was accepted that countries would not use hollow point or frangible rounds due to their "inhumane" damage they cause. Now, I'm no history buff about this, so there is a good chance that I could be wrong. But I have always been under that impression, and that was why we issue ball ammo to our soldiers. I wasn't taking other types of ammo into consideration in my above post.

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Rounds cannot be designed to fragment; but there are rounds that fragment due to other design configurations. For example, the same things that make open-tip match ammunition inherently accurate (like a consistent uniform jacket) also make it more likely to fragment and to fragment consistently at lower velocities.

If you have read any of Dr. Fackler's work on the subject you will also see that the former West Germany used to make a 7.62x51mm FMJ ammo that often fragmented violently.

Also, consistant fragmentation at lowered velocities is what I would like to see with the .223 bullet. A bullet that fragments at lowered speeds "sometimes" isn't sufficiant to be relied upon by our soldiers. But that's my opinion, and you couldn't buy a coke for as much as it's worth.

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Almost all of the match ammo I've seen gel shots of shows consistent fragmentation and often at lower velocities than FMJ. Match ammo is also allowed under the Hague conventions because it is not designed as a fragmenting round; but an especially accurate one.

Cabela's now sells a product called "Perma-Gel" which is a ballistics gel that does not melt at room temperature and is stable enough to be shipped. You can buy two preformatted 5"x"5"x17" blocks for $150 or you can buy enough of the mixture to make the same blocks for $130. I'm told by DocGKR that it does not adequately represent temporary stretch cavity and still has a few shortcomings; but it might make for some fun Powerpoint slides in your presentation. It would also allow you to compare some data firsthand.