Chainsaw2
Member
I've been told that some of the russian ammo has steel jacket rounds. I understand that most of it is steel cased, and this may be causing some confusion. Is there such a thing as steel jacket slugs in 5.56 ammo?
jim
jim
Exactly this, and I can confirm, Golden Tiger is the same.Use a magnet and know for sure!
Most Russian-made rifle ammo (and a lot of their handgun ammo) uses both a steel CASE and also uses a bullet with a steel JACKET. The jackets are usually very soft mild steel and have a super thin copper wash that gives them the copper color. If it's Wolf, Barnaul, or Bear, you should assume the bullet is steel jacketed unless you can show differently (same for Golden Tiger but I've never seen .223 from that brand.)
Incidentally properly made steel jackets cause very little additional wear vs. copper. Roughly half of US-made, US-military-spec 7.62x51mm NATO (aka .308) FMJ ammo has copper plated steel jackets as well. (I'm not aware of any US-made 5.56 NATO ammo using steel jackets.)