Keith,
You said,
Umm, my twelve year old enjoys shooting my FAL. If anyone can't handle the recoil of a modest round like the .308, they should be handling a typewriter in the rear instead of a rifle in the field.
Does your FAL weigh 6 1/2 pounds? My M4 does. Don't you think a 6 1/2 pound 7.62x51 battle rifle might be a little hard for anyone to handle? How's your FAL do on full auto? Easy to control? One of the big reasons the 7.62x51 isn't general issue is that no one could build a rifle light enough that was controllable with full auto fire.
You ask;
Then I ask again, why don't military snipers use the .223? You simply don't want to admit that the .308 does more damage and penetrates intervening objects better than the .223.
First off, no one in the US military shoots .223 or .308. Yes, there is a difference between .223 and .308 and 5.56 and 7.62 mm. While they are for all intents and purposes interchangeable, they aren't the same rounds.
The reason military snipers use the 7.62x51 is that the 5.56x45 does not have the range for the mission. echosixmike is correct in that most military sniper engagements are close enough that the shot could have been made with 5.56x45mm. However, the sniper has an 800 - 1000 meter mission that can't be done with the 5.56x45 round. SOF snipers have had some very successful engagements with 5.56x45 SPRs shooting MK 262 mod 1 ammunition. The SPR is a specially built M16 from the NSW lab at Crane Indiana. Kills have been made at ranges that you would not believe possible with a 5.56mm weapon with this combination.
Snipers have a different mission then the basic rifleman. That's it, the reason they use 7.62x51.
It may be that within the larger picture, wound lethality takes second place to other considerations like the amount of ammo that can be carried, etc. And that may be true, though if I was in a firefight I'd be hard to convince - I'd want a larger caliber vs more bullets!
Go to Shawn Dodsons excellent Firearms Tactical Website. There is a link at TFL, don't know if there is one here or not. Once there, find the link to Dr. Fackler's work on military rifle rounds. You find, that both M193 and M855 have a better terminal effects then M80 ball. The 5.56x45 rounds break at the cannelure and fragment when they hit at velocities above 2500 fps. Not all 5.56x45 rounds exhibit this, just M193 and M855 and those bullets that are constructed identically. M80 ball which is the standard US 7.62x51 round does
NOT fragment. It penetrates deeper before it yaws, then normally exits sideways. The wounds are not as severe as those caused by M193 or M855. There are 7.62x51 rounds that do fragment like M193 and M855, but they are not issued to the US military, IIRC the West German and Austrian 7.62x51 ball fragmented and gave similar terminal effects to the 5.56x45 loads.. It's not the caliber, it's the way the bullet is constructed. There have been on and off reports of lethality problems with current issue M855. M855 has a small air pocket between the jacket and the steel penetrator. There have been problems making the bullet with that air pocket from the start way back in the late 70s. My guess is that those problems
may be related to production problems and some current M855 being not exactly to spec.
It's not quite as simple as bigger bullet equals bigger hole.
Jeff