Gun Porn!

And Big Army is moving slowly, I suspect because LSAT is still kinda "out there" and there are Grognards in Big Army who will be all "Muh 30 round magazine!".

To whit: Standard US Army doctrine is each soldier has 7 mags of 30 rounds each = 210.

7 mags of 20 rounds is 140.

The other issue is weight. While the MMG/LMG is lighter than a M249, the carbine has yet to really get competitive with the M4/M16 in weight:

• 7.5 lb (3.4 kg) with 30 rounds - M4
• 8.79 lb (3.99 kg) (loaded) - M16

• LSAT carbine: 9.7 lb

Worryingly, they omit the M4's weight on the comparison slide.

There. There it is, There is stupid, then their is 'ARMY STUPID.

AK-47 (30 round mags). M-16/M-4 (30 rounds), SCAR MK 16 (30 rounds), AK-74 (30 rounds). Firing AK from the prone.

I guess she has people who look that up.

The two weapons she's sighting are either the SCAR-H or the M14 EBR that's used as a DMR rifle. NONE of her examples are standard rifles.

If she had asked any infantry 1SG or Company commander she would have gotten her answer.

I have a feeling some are trying to stonewall this

edited 26th Mar '17 10:00:37 PM by TairaMai

How many 6.5mm Grendel or 6.8mm SPC rounds fit in a 30 round 5.56 STANAG mag anyway? (Not touching 458 SOCOM because nobody has heralded that as the future to my knowledge)

6.3 and 6.8? 28 rounds I think.

Though the CT 6.5mm rounds could reach 30 rounds with a redesign of the magazine or magwell.

What's the purpose/appeal behind the switch to 6.5mm beyond 'well they don't let us equip everyone with full power rifle cartridges anymore but we have to go BIGGER.'

5.56 is too tiny, 7.62 NATO is too big is the logic. We never invented any equivalent to the 7.62x39mm to switch back to instead.

And judging by the poor performance of all our 6mm rounds and the .300 Blackout, we still can't.

edited 27th Mar '17 11:57:33 AM by LeGarcon

Is the 5.56 too small, or is this the classic doctrine of fixing something because it isn't a problem yet?

And larger for what? To defeat a new generation of armor? Cause worse wounds? Grease new palms?
I thought the trend was for ammunition that would be lighter to carry through urban and bush environments.

Not necessarily true. Some rounds do need more mass for better performance at range provided they still have the velocity to go with it. It is more of a case of the right round for the right job. This has gone a bit sideways with the EPR ammo the US military is now using.

I know the Russians like to use 7.62x39mm in woody and urban areas as 5.45 has a tendency to ricochet.

Well, the US Military did address some of the shortcomings of the 5.56 by improving the projectile rather than acquiring a new one.

So, it still being complicated to find a round fills the gap between the 7.62 and 5.56 NATO while being good enough to compensate for the shortcomings of both rounds.

It is frankly a wild goose chase. Both rounds are fairly different from each other as are the weapons that use each round. This is further complicated by introduction of the EPR rounds which are in both 5.56mm and 7.62mm flavors. Other ammo such as the SOST/Brown Tip used by the USMC also help partly negate some of the downsides of a smaller lighter high velocity round.

You might find something middling but it won't really be the wonder round.

Garcon: I find that really hard to believe. Especially given the 7.62x39mm and 5.45mm both use similar construction. That is steel penetration cores for their bullets. The construction and shot angle of the rounds is what is the most likely factor that determines whether a round will ricochet, not caliber. The 5.45mm rounds have a larger variety of ammo including a Russian equivalent of "Black Tip" ammo.

The 6.5mm CTSAS is a new round. It's not existing off the shelf stuff. It weighs only a couple grams more than a brass 5.56mm but has ballistics and range more akin to 7.62mm NATO. (While being a lot lighter and less recoil.)

From the carbine it fires what was it a 122 gr projectile at 3000 feet per second from a 16 inch barrel. Good speed, good ballistics, more punch than 5.56mm especially if the projectile itself were further refined (lessons from EPR?) and it's lighter than 7.62 NATO to boot.

That's one of the driving reasons behind the CTSAS MMG (Medium Machine Gun). A weapon that's much much lighter than a 240 but can reach the same ranges with similar shot power.

That's always what I've heard. 5.45 likes to bounce a bit in urban and wooded areas so they use 7.62 there. But 5.45 has a longer range so they use that in the open instead.

Probably an excuse for using their stockpiles of 7.62x39 rounds and arms laying around and avoid using their budget on newer stuff.

For the CT Rifle/Carbine, I am sure they will need to work an entirely new gun from the ground to the top if they want to use the CT 6.5 rounds, that AR-15 upper with the gizmos on the bottom doesn't seem to be the optional configuration for the CT rifle and a dedicated rifle made from scratch to accommodate the CT rounds would probably be lighter than the current model.

Tom: We to wait a while to see if 6.5mm actually delivers beyond the limited production. EPR has had enough time to be used in combat and multiple tests to verify its efficacy. Though taking a page from the EPR design is a good idea in general.

Garcon: Like I said that makes no real sense. Both stocks of ammo would have roughly comparably ricochet risk because of certain design commonalities. Forested areas are not as ricochet prone as say the deserts of Afghanistan, mountain areas, or urban environments.

Isn't the actual bullet bit of the currently in-test 6.5mm more akin to the 6.5mm Grendel round?

So I went on a quest to find out why the 6.5mm Grendel is called that.

Turns out it's because the inventor wanted a more powerful bullet than his last invention, the .50 Beowulf.

Har har.

He needs to reread his mythology and retake his physics lessons.

Both 6.5mm and 6.8mm have been touted as "Der Uber-Cartridge" by fanboys and some of who still think that the 5.56mm is a "poodle shooter".

The older 5.56mm/.223 rounds do have barrier issues: wood, sandbags, car doors, windshields, heavy vegetation (jungle or rainforest) all did slow down or stop the pre-M855 [Green tip]/ FN SS 109 rounds.

But the US Army haz M 855 A 1 and the USMC haz Mk 262 and SOCOM has Mk 318: all are improvements over the rounds were stopped by windshields or just punched holes in targets.

But the quest for a round that's like the 7.62 but not as heavy continues.

The problem is one of math (210 rounds in 7 mags for 5.56 vs. 140 rounds for 7.62 in seven mags).

Semi serious question. Why don't we just produce our own batches of 7.62x39mm? That sits comfortably in the middle, hell the .300 Blackout was an attempt to match it's ballistics and stopping power (which failed).

First off (aside from the not-invented here syndrome), the west has different standards of primers and powders. 7.62x39mm is famous for a lot of corrosive ammo.

The 7.62 NATO was really developed after World War One. We already had a 7.62 when the Soviets made theirs.

A lot of 7.62x39mm is very dirty. AR rfiles that shoot it are few because you'll spend a lot of time cleaning it. Or have feeding issues, or gas issues.

edited 29th Mar '17 11:01:30 PM by TairaMai

You can make complete 7.62x39mm bullets, from base to tip, using western-manufactured primers, propellants and cartridges. All the dimensions for the cartridge cases are easily available - in fact they're on the round's wikipedia page as I type, and brass doesn't change its chemical composition at the Russian border. The only thing easier in this age of CAM and CAD than making the stuff would involve a brewery. As in "organizing a piss-up in a brewery".

The only real reason why we don't is that it wasn't invented here.

Think we'll ever swallow our pride and just do it?

It's actually being done.

However, the recreational market still prefers Russian surplus (there aren't that many people running 3 gun and other competitive shooting with 7.62x39 platforms), so the economies of scale are questionable.

Nah I mean like, for the US military to actually adopt and use 7.62x39mm weapons in substantial numbers.

Rare SR-47 aside.