So why the 223?

[cottonmouth]

Well I am "over there" and I feel fine with .223/5.56. My kit is set up to hold ten thirty round mags plus one in the rifle. When it's 130 degrees I'd hate to have the extra weight of 7.62 to be honest. 5.56 does the job just fine, a human just can't digest it!

J.B.

 

[Redneck with a 40]

Why the .223? Because it a cheap, fun centerfire cartridge to shoot, from target shooting to varmint control, its excellent. Also, I feel the new Mini-14's are excellent defense carbines, especially if you live out in the country. Who can argue with 30 rounds of .223 in a magazine? That's nasty!

Recoil and muzzle blast are also very mild, plus you have a myriad of guns chambered for it.

 

[Shadow Man]

I'll check that out W L Johnson, thank you sir.

 

[W L Johnson]

Good grief! I haven't been been on that site in a while and it looks (sounds) like they added some very loud ads. Make sure your volume is turned down.

 

[mcdonl]

Well I am "over there" and I feel fine with .223/5.56. My kit is set up to hold ten thirty round mags plus one in the rifle. When it's 130 degrees I'd hate to have the extra weight of 7.62 to be honest. 5.56 does the job just fine, a human just can't digest it!

Thank you.

Someone else mentioned that the military does not always pick the best but picks the best compromise. This is such a true statement. There have always been, and will always be other supporting gunners in service when the run-of-the-mill battle rifle does not fill the bill.

My brother, a vet and I had this conversation at the range just the other day.

 

[Shadow Man]

Good grief! I haven't been been on that site in a while and it looks (sounds) like they added some very loud ads. Make sure your volume is turned down.

Haha thanks for the heads up. The site keeps switching me to some virus adware thing...kinda frustrating.

 

[W L Johnson]

The site keeps switching me to some virus adware thing...kinda frustrating.

Never seen that, are you using Internet Explorer? Firefox doesn't do that, well, mine at least.

 

[Shadow Man]

Yeah, internet explorer. I'm not a very computer savvy guy, so I just use what comes standard on these things. However, I was able to fight the adware long enough to read the link, so I stand (sit) corrected: thank you for the correction sir.

 

[devildog32713]

In many states it is illegal to hunt deer with a 22 caliber rifle(.223)...it's in-humane and doesn't kill the small animals quick enough. True.

It can be done though, and in my state, the only requirement for deer hunting with a rifle, is that it is centerfire. But not my first choice for deer.

 

[tominct]

To nitpick the OP.......
I remember back in the 70s when it was very hard to find sporting rifles in .223. The closest available was the .222 Remington. I wanted a bolt gun then in the military caliber (ammo was real cheap on the milsurp market) but couldn't find one.

Nowadays, try to find a new rifle in .222,

.223 won out not because it was dramatically better (the 2 cartridges were very similar ballistically) but simply because the .223/5.56 was the military standard.

 

[trigga]

it may appear to be a dinky round but at over 3000fps, the .223/5.56 is no play thing when it collides. very accurate round.

 

[NG VI]

As far as "boots on the ground and rifle in hand", there's a big difference between securing a base perimeter and going outside the wire looking for trouble. The USAF has only three frontline combat jobs - Combat Control (CCT), Tactical Air Control Party (TACP), and Combat Weather (SOWT). These guys are often assigned outside of the AF, usually with the Army, working outside the wire, fighting side by side with their counterparts from the other services. In fact, TACPs are assigned to Army bases, they live and deploy with the units they support. There's only about 1000 total CCT, TACP, and SOWT.

What about their combat medics, the combat air medics, I don't remember the name of the unit/group?



I think the .223/5.56 has some other advantages too, namely higher velocity is always better in a rifle made for relatively shallow targets like people, and higher sectional density is better no matter what. The .223 allows for pretty decent SD, pretty long for caliber bullets compared to other intermediate cartridges. Try loading a 6.8 SPC with lighter/shorter bullets than it ordinarily uses. It is already in the shallow end of its boresize, where the .223/5.56 is using fairly long for caliber bullets. That to me is a huge advantage, because weapons do not cause damage purely with bore size, the length and speed of the bullet matters an awful lot. I think a slightly wider bullet with slightly more propellant behind it would be absolutely perfect for a combat rifle, but the .223/5.56 is pretty decent as is.

How a bullet interacts with its target is at least as important as and probably more important than how wide it is or how heavy it is or how much energy it packs. A long, skinny bullet that penetrates, yaws, then splits in two and wreaks havoc on its target is better in my understanding than a wider, shorter bullet that penetrates its target decently but doesn't tumble or break up into large fragments, and doesn't have a lot of velocity to maximize its wounding.

Even going to a wider bullet doesn't change the fact that it is an intermediate cartridge, it just changes the set of sacrifices accepted. I'd rather keep the velocity and sectional density high than take a wider bullet and give up both speed and sectional density.

 

[BurningSaviour]

Para Rescue is the unit you're thinking of. I'd dare say they're not exactly the "norm" of the Air Force, though.

 

[Deus Machina]

I have to agree and reiterate on a few points.

It's a relatively low-blast, low-recoil round. Which is great, for the burst and full-auto fire of the military.

It's easy to carry a lot.

A proper bullet will still do some nasty things. Not quickly on its own, but three or four in a target speaks pretty clearly.

IMO, it's because the military was looking for a round while remembering the Germans and fearing the Russians. A trained, civilized, military--and that's an important word--force like that wears body armor (albeit however mild) and tends to their wounded.

Now, I don't know if the 5.56 was designed to wound rather than kill, but that's what it does. And we may as well make the most of it.

A wounded soldier makes for a better immediate effect than a dead one. He becomes Priority #1, and three people stop shooting at you right now, which is better than one stopping and the rest taking a hit to morale.

The problem with this is that we haven't fought much of a trained, military enemy since WW2. Our current enemies are untrained, non-military, and--for lack of a better term--uncivilized. They fight to the death, and leave their wounded where they fall. Which makes 5.56 look less effective.

On the other hand, getting shot three or four times from anything will usually start taking the wind out of sails pretty quick.

 

[Shadow Man]

Not quickly on its own, but three or four in a target speaks pretty clearly.

Exactly, and that coupled with a low recoil system makes your (necessary) follow-up shots a breeze. The only problem is fighting in an urban (or jungle) setting where you may only get one shot before the target dissapears into a crowd or into a maze of 12th century-style buildings (all with roof access, and interconnected roofs) and allyways. It can be a real PITA. However, with increased lethality will come (almost garanteed) increased weight and less overall ammunition capacity. It is a real compromise, and no system or round is going to be perfect for everything, until they develop the Bad-Guy-Seeking-Cover-Busting-Civilian-Dodging-Alternating-Hypersonic-Subsonic-Match-Grade (BGSCBCDAHSMG) FMJ round. So, until then, you decide your caliber need based upon your mission, if you have that option.

 

[C-grunt]

In my experience, even single 5.56 rounds are effective at taking the fight out of a guy, with a good hit. Only good body and head hits are effective. Anything short of a cannon doesnt work very well if you hit the bad guy in the forearm.

 

[NG VI]

Well if you nail a guy center mass or anything near it then even if he melts into the crowd he isn't likely to get back into the fight anytime in the next three years.

 

[Art Eatman]

Always think of battle doctrine and tactics. The U.S. had a different doctrine than the Soviets, and that's why we use something like the M16 instead of something like the AK-47.

Over-simplified: The .223 is effective for a control zone of some 200 meters around a position while the primary weapon, the radio, is used to call in artillery and/or air strikes. The cartridge is adequate for that task, and the lighter weight allows for a larger ammo supply to be carried by the soldier. In Vietnam, we generally did not do mass attacks with the use of large numbers of armored vehicles. More of the use of small units, to seek and find.

OTOH, the Soviet assault doctrine generally called for artillery, to be followed by tanks which were accompanied by large numbers of infantry. The infantry would swarm fixed positions and begin firing at close range. Generally, Soviet infantry personnel were much less technologically sophisticated than US personnel.

 

[Shadow Man]

In my experience, even single 5.56 rounds are effective at taking the fight out of a guy, with a good hit. Only good body and head hits are effective. Anything short of a cannon doesnt work very well if you hit the bad guy in the forearm.

True enough C-Grunt, a solid hit will usually do some damage, but anything less than a perfectly solid hit (even 2" off) will not take the fight out of the target. I'm talking an immediately disabling shot, heart, spine, CNS, etc. Especially not with the M855 round. I can still vividly remember it not working on several occasions, while the target dissapeared or detonated IED's. Now, all of that changed with the MK262; with that loading, even a less than stellar COM hit would produce results. They were not one-shot guaranteed kills by any means; I've never seen a small-arm that could do that, not even the .50BMG, but they did give results.

Well if you nail a guy center mass or anything near it then even if he melts into the crowd he isn't likely to get back into the fight anytime in the next three years.

Too bad that doesn't really hold true, and even if it did, it's not an attitude I can adopt.