Is the 5.56 bullet to small for street fighting?

Question

From a hunting stand point, the 5.56 .. 50 grain bullet is good for small game and for larger game, something around the 30 cal or 7.62 with a 180 grain bullet is better. It also seems from the many videos of the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan that most of the shots are over 100 yards. In hunting it's, chose the target, chose the bullet and chose the cartridge to get the bullet there at 300 yards for a clean kill. Reference "The Game Rifle" by Bob Hagel. Professional hunter for 30 years.

Answer 1

Several points to make vis-a-vis your post:

(1) The M855 greentip is a 62-grain round, not 50 grains. It bears reminding that 5.56x45mm NATO and .223 are different animals, even if you think the specs are the same (they aren't).

(2) 7.62x51mm NATO is an excellent round, but my combat load already equals or exceeds my body weight. Two of my M14 mags take the same space as 3 of my M4 mags; that's 40 rounds vs 90 rounds of capacity. With an M4 alone, I'm packing 12 mags on my person on average for a total of 360 rounds. With a maximum of eight M14 mags (and anyone who has carried them knows how bulky they can get) I'm looking at 160 rounds. Considering MOUT burns up 5-10 times more ammunition, I really don't feel that giving up 200 rounds is anywhere near worth it when I'm facing AKs, RPKs, PKMs with much higher rates of fire.

(3) Equating combat to hunting (especially MOUT, which is where all the real action is now that most of the world's population is urbanized) is groundless. Most infantry combat is under ranges of 150m; the vast majority of serious small-arms engagements are at 50m or less. Anything beyond that is covered by either armor or indirect.

The big problem with 5.56x45mm NATO is that we're transitioning to all-M4s. The M855 greentips were meant to be fired out of the full-length barrels of the M16A2, so we've lost a great deal of velocity (hence, killing power) for no real gain. This is why the Marine Corps has resisted transitioning to M4s except for certain units. You can make up some ground with M262s (a 72-grain round) but the fact of the matter is, the people in charge of the guns don't really talk to the people who churn out the ammo.

That being said, I will happily use M855 greentips. My gripes are with shoddy 30-round mags with crappy followers, bent lips, and other defects; a gas system that blows carbon right onto my bolt face, a weak extractor spring (together with the gas system) which kicks back the bolt on extraction prematurely, leaving the casing in the barrel; and other wonderful defects that suck up my time on weapons maintenance and looking for solutions on the civilian market (thank you, 2nd Amendment). Since we're in the business of killing human beings and not grizzly bears, there is no merit in the "let's get the biggest, baddest round possible" on its own terms.

After all, being black on ammo will kill you just as good as any other threat out there.

Answer 2

There are military people (big surprise) who actually study this stuff. The 7.62x51 is too much and the 5.56x45 too little for the ideal compromise in a military rifle. The 30-06 with a 180 grain bullet is great for hunting elk or African plains game, but that hardly correlates to military needs. What you want in a military round is enough to keep the bad guys off you but not so much that it's a burden to carry around, and there really is a point of diminishing returns when you're humping a few hundred rounds of combat load. Probably the best cartridge design ever for a perfect balance was a 7mm round developed by the British in the late 40's/50's, but the US forced the 7.62x51 on NATO, so it never got off the ground. The 6.8mm SPC was designed with that in mind, but it was restricted by its primary design feature, that it be able to fit in the M4 US carbine, so even it is a tad on the small side, and they did try 7mm (ideal) only to find that in the M4, the 277 bullet worked out better.

Answer 3

The military is now looking into weapons that use a larger bullet like the 6.8mm.

7.62 have greater range and stopping power but are also innacurate.
5.56 have greater accuracy and weigh less, thus allowing a soldier to carry more ammo.
6.8 sounds like a could compromise between the two.

Answer 4

It's good for wounding, which in normal combat means taking out three with one shot (the target and the two needed to carry him away). In the present conflict, where the unharmed and ambulatory scamper off leaving their dead and wounded behind, a clean kill might seem preferable.

Answer 5

The military develop a new assult rifle that use 6.68 bullets. The 5.56 don't have enought kinetic enery so the 5.56 only wound the enemy. The 6.68 was develop to kill the enemy instead of wounding them.