Quote:
Originally Posted by ArmySGT.
My problem is not with 5.56, it is with the M855 round.
The 55 grain m193 cartridge was a lead core with a full metal jacket. It would flip end for end when travelling through meat creating great wound channels. Sometimes the nose would separate from the base and angle away. This would create to wound channels.
The Hague conventions on ammunition made a mistake mandating pointed ammo as that can cause a more grievous wound than rounded nose.
Anyway the 62 grain M855 is Armor Penetrating with a tungsten rod surrounded by lead. It is balance for it length.
It doesn't yaw and drives right through like an ice pick. Small tight wound channels with small disruption of blood vessels. The damn Fedayeen using opiates in battle in OIF 1 seemed to keep going when hit. They didn't feel it whacked on pain killers but, certainly died later.
It is why Mk 262 and SOST is working better. The Insurgents are not wearing body armor and the M855 goes right through them.
Unofficially it is taught now to shoot for the pelvis or scapula to make an incapacitating bone break. Skirting legality though.
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I know a lot was made in the media about the alleged use of opiates by insurgents in Iraq but I've never seen a lot of evidence to prove that it was the norm and not just an odd occurrence here and there.
However I have seen lots of evidence first hand of the M855 round over-penetrating and doing relatively little damage on wood, metal and more importantly, on feral animals (particularly goats).
The M855 round (specifically the Australian version of it) was in use with a number of Agricultural Protection officers in Western Australia in the early 1990s for culling feral goats, cats, foxes and dogs. They were using semi-auto versions of the F88 Austeyr (or it could have been that the full-auto lock-out was permanently fixed, I can't remember), the rifles and ammo were supplied direct from the Small Arms Factory, Lithgow.
The M855 round would drill right through the goats and they would stand there, look at you and then run off a couple of hundred metres to hide in the scrub only to bleed out later. Even gutshots didn't drop them with the 5.56mm.
I can tell you, those goats were not using opiates - well, as far as I'm aware but you know what some of those radical goats are like, long beards, shaggy hair, don't bother to wash, berets & turtlenecks and using any kind of weed they can find, bloody hippies and beatniks the lot of 'em!
I tend to believe that a lot of the problems with dropping Fedayeen in OIF1 came down to over-penetration/low damage of the 5.56mm M855 ammo and the fact that the Fedayeen were very well motivated by religious belief rather than the idea that they were 'hopped up' on drugs.