Why did NATO adopt the 5.56 when it's hitting power was worse than the 7.62 ?
- Thread starter kiwitt
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Yes, that was a little less clear than it should have been - hopefully my post above makes my point more obvious. The action, round and barrel are perfectly capable of accurate fire, but my objection was that the sights, firing position and shooting philosophy usually applied to the HMG (in my experience, which as Commodore and Cav Scout have demonstrated is very different to that of those for whom these are everyday weapons) cancel out those advantages. If you fit a telescopic sight to the HMG and give it to somebody willing and trained to use it as precision rifle, it should in theory be more accurate than most sniper rifles - using the traversing and elevating mechanism (T&E), as Cav Scout says, means that you essentially take the human element out of the hold and release process of shooting. In other words, versus a shooter with an ordinary sniper rifle, you've got a round less susceptible to wind, that flies (potentially) faster than that out of a standard rifle (the MVs are certainly in the same order of magnitude), fired from a more stable position, with therefore a more certain point of aim. However, that's not quite the same as giving it to the bloke on top of the Landy, fitted only with a great big circular thing at the back and a little blade at the front, and telling him to hold it out in front of him and engage the enemy. That's not to say that he won't put down a tight group, mind.
EDIT: Interestingly, I just found an American graphic comparing the effective ranges and group sizes of various rifles. The .50 anti-materiel rifle actually has quite a large group size - about 2 MOA, which is roughly twice that of the .338 Lapua equivalent - at 800 yards, but what seems to mark it out is that the group doesn't widen all that much at longer ranges - they claim it's only 2.5 MOA at 1500 yards, which is really quite respectable (in competition target shooting, a bullseye is around 2 MOA). Have to admit I find that surprising given that the MV is only supposed to be a touch short of 2800 fps (slower than my .308 match rifle rounds, which would hold about 1 MOA at 1200 yards if I stuck the thing in a vice) and must surely be more affected by drag than any comparable bullet.
Probably due to the very large difference in the mass of the projectiles. By the same reasoning in WWII and shortly afterwards first the .303, and then even the .50 were phased out as armament on fighter aircraft. The 20mm simply flew straighter for a longer distance.
MilesGregarius
Half-baked Renegade
I don't think that was as much a consideration as the need for heavier projectiles to punch holes in the better protected aircraft that came in to being. The rifle caliber MGs, even fairly early in the war, were proving inadequate for bringing down most post-1940 aircraft.
It's not the size, per se, but the shape that matters - for example, the .338 Lapua (which is about 8.6mm and used in newer sniper rifles) is often loaded with unusually long, thin bullets imaginatively called VLD (very-low-drag), which fly much flatter and lose speed much more slowly than ordinary rounds. My guess is simply that those sizes became (reasonably) standard simply because we need a standard, and those worked well for 'smallish' and 'biggish' - also, because they were originally based on successful cartridges being manufactured for the civilian market, namely the .223 Remington and the .308 Winchester. It should be noted, though, that they're certainly not standard for sporting rifles (which often use calibres beginning with a 6) or outside the western world. Russian rifles often use different, usually shorter cartridges - so the bore diameter is the same but the length from the tip of the bullet to the face of the bolt is much smaller, so they're not at all interchangeable. In the west, the NATO 7.62mm round is 51mm long, but in most of the rest of the world it's 39mm long.
Bugfatty300
Buddha Squirrel
Because those two calibers were ubiquitous and considered an industry standard in the US. If you come up with a strange caliber like 6.32mm for a new cartridge and firearm then you'll have to find or develop a lot more new factory tooling to go with it.
No, not really.
I read someone recently who was talking about the newish 6.5mm Grendel round and answering the question of why didn't the US or NATO adopt that, since it's better than the 5.56. His explanation was that it may be better, with characteristics 5 or 10% better in all categories, but that wouldn't justify the vast expense of the changeover where many military organizations have a total of many millions of weapons already using the 5.56. It's just too big of a cost for 5-10% improvement in performance.
Bugfatty300
Buddha Squirrel
Well, better is a matter of context. The Grendel was designed to turn a little AR-15 into a long range target rifle. It's an ingenious cartridge but it doesn't have much of a selling point for military use. 5.56x45 has it's own niche which the Grendel was never intended to fill.
hobbsyoyo
Deity
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Form beat me to it - only I thought the USSR switched over to AK-74's and only keep AK-47's in stockpile and not for front line use. Notwithstanding all the other armies/groups that still use old AK-47's.
Another factor is that it's a huge advantage not to be the only people in a combat zone using a certain type of ammunition, or even a certain weapon. That way, you can take spares from allied forces - this is the point of the relatively new STANAG kit, which makes ammunition, magazines and I think a couple of other bits interchangeable between (in theory) all of NATO's basic combat rifles. That was the main reason that Britain did not adopt the EM-2, which was made in the fifties, did use an intermediate round and was broadly similar in concept to the SA-80 family which are now the British standard. However much it would have been better for us to use it, that did not outweigh the foregone benefits of inter-operability with other NATO forces. In some cases, you can even use ammunition taken from captured enemy troops and positions. If you were forced to take their weapons because you were too short on ammunition and were using a markedly different round, it would make friendly fire extremely likely.
Precisely - an SA-80 (or even an SLR) sounds quite different to an AK-47, and after a while you get quite good at working out what is shooting at you and where it is. It's also possible to tell the difference between British troops firing SLRs and other people firing the almost identical FAL, because British rifles didn't fire on automatic. A few returnees from Afghanistan have also noticed that friendly fire tends to be quite distinctive - it's usually much heavier and more accurate than anything that the enemy there can provide, which is I suppose comforting for everyone not immediately under it.
Bugfatty300
Buddha Squirrel
You can also call the difference between a British L1A1 and a foreign FAL by whether the bullets are travelling at 2,700 feet per second or 820 meters per second.
In those days the army seemed to measure speed in greased gazelles - as 'treeline and back, at the speed of a thousand greased gazelles - move!' So about 100,000 GGs?
Phrossack
Armored Fish and Armored Men
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Interestingly, both France and Germany are looking to replace their standard-issue rifles pretty soon. It'll probably be the HK 416 for both, as there doesn't seem to be any talk of designing a new rifle. This comes at the same time that both are looking to design replacements for their main battle tanks, especially since both countries' tank-manufacturing corporations just merged with each other.
Taking back the Infantry half kilometer
http://www.scribd.com/doc/27765477/...istan-Taking-Back-the-Infantry-Half-Kilometer
Is a 2009 run down on US weapons and training, it faults both and makes suggestions on how to cure the faults.
Good history of US doctrine dealing with weapons.
Hope these aren't repeat links, checked the 4 pages and didn't see it mentioned.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/27765477/...istan-Taking-Back-the-Infantry-Half-Kilometer
Is a 2009 run down on US weapons and training, it faults both and makes suggestions on how to cure the faults.
Good history of US doctrine dealing with weapons.
Hope these aren't repeat links, checked the 4 pages and didn't see it mentioned.
hobbsyoyo
Deity
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This brings to mind the old adage that the military perfects methods of fighting the current war just in time for the next one. I'm not sure that the peculiarities of the Afghan war will apply more broadly in the future and given the pending US/NATO pull-out, I'm not sure it's worth the effort to fix.
I think it should be noted that the old SLR and other .308 service rifles weren't all that good in long-range firefights anyway - the problem was less the capability of the rifle and more the fact that very few soldiers can hit a target from 600m with a high-recoil cartridge in a combat situation. 5.56mm has the huge advantage that it's incredibly easy to shoot with - you can get away with murder, technically speaking, that will make you spray all over the place with a larger cartridge. Not to mention that the British approach always said that long-range firefights ought to be only brief, because you always want to move close to the enemy where it's easier to kill them.
Basic training in the US covers firing the M-16 at man sized targets at 500m. I'm assuming advanced infantry training does even more of that. So the core of the training is there. But as FP points out, aimed shots by common infantry with standard infantry weapons at those ranges is rare. It's not that easy to hit a target over open sights at that range under any circumstances. When the enemy is shooting back, I'm sure the soldiers are reluctant to expose themselves that much. Which means you probably need a scoped rifle at those ranges. And that's specialized soldiers and training.
