Military rifle ammunition question

[Onmilo]

I have always enjoyed the irony that it is perfectly acceptable to blow someone into chunks of meat but god forbid a soldier shoots another soldier with an expanding bullet,,,

 

[rondog]

No kidding. Bombs, artillery, mortars, incendiaries, flamethrowers, and sundry other things used against enemy combatants are OK, but bullets - well, bullets must make clean little holes? Ain't buying it.

 

[1911 guy]

There is some truth to the logic. After the Civil War and the Crimean War, certain types of wounds were particularly hard to care for. This is where the ban on use of triangular bayonets came from. Blade and spike remained OK, triangular was frowned upon due to the time it took to heal. The longer it took to heal, the higher chance for infection in the days before antibiotics.

 

[d2wing]

One way to get around it is to use a bullet that tends to yaw or tumble in soft flesh not fragment as some claim. That was part of the idea of original 5.56, for it to not fully stable.

 

[Sun Tzu warrior]

The way I understand the use of FMJ projectiles is somewhat different than what I am seeing stated here.
If you only "wound" a man, with "clean little holes", you remove 3 men from the battlefield;
The one wounded and two others to carry him off the field. If you kill the man with an efficient expanding bullet, you only remove one.
STW

 

[JRH6856]

If you only "wound" a man, with "clean little holes", you remove 3 men from the battlefield;
The one wounded and two others to carry him off the field. If you kill the man with an efficient expanding bullet, you only remove one.

But is this the cause of the accord, or the effect of the accord?

 

[Tirod]

The desired effect isn't after the firefight when the survivors can treat the wounded. It's intent is entirely DURING the firefight. A soldier hit becomes less effective than one unscathed. By hitting more of the enemy, their combat power and ability to take decisive actions in maneuver is substantially reduced.

In other words, you don't have to kill each and every one dead right there. Wounding them is almost equally effective. Even with no field first aid at all, it works.

To do that you have to fire more bullets, more bullets in the air means more hits, more hits means less effective combat power - they shoot back less. If they are shooting back less, then we can maneuver and shoot them more easily with less casualties on our part.

With a definite advantage in firepower and maneuverability, you can flank the enemy's positions and reduce them to captured survivors. They may be wounded more than killed, that accomplishes the exact same thing, and does so even at our expense in caring for them. Our medics are treating them, their medics at the worst simply put them out of their misery.

The "shoot to wound" myth is just that. What we choose to do was double the amount of ammo we were carrying, and that gives us more combat power. That it has to penetrate their cover and whatever they wear goes into the mix, too. Hollow cavity bullets aren't the preferred choice for penetration when a hit is the goal. They are more optimal on soft unprotected targets - which is where they are used most, in the sniper role.

Joe Snuffy needs something that can go thru a dirt block wall or a chest harness of AK mags, and it hasn't changed just because of a treaty we didn't sign.

 

[RainDodger]

It was mentioned above that the steel core military bullets are not as accurate as the Sierras, etc. I can definitely vouch for that.

Just last weekend I took my .30-'06 to the range. I compared hand loaded 180 grain Sierra Match King rounds with hand loaded 165 grain AP bullets that I had pulled from military cases.

Very tight groups with the Match Kings, softball-sized groups with the APs.

Nothing very scientific, but interesting nonetheless.

 

[Jim Watson]

And yet for the first few years after the war, before production of National Match ammunition was resumed and they were using "selected lots" of service ammo; the Army found that good batches of AP were more accurate than Ball.

On the gripping hand, Phil Sharpe shot out a barrel in a few hundred rounds of steel cored AP. I have not seen that mentioned elsewhere.

 

[Vern Humphrey]

One way to get around it is to use a bullet that tends to yaw or tumble in soft flesh not fragment as some claim. That was part of the idea of original 5.56, for it to not fully stable.

I've seen this myth repeated a thousand times. If that were true, it would have to appear in the ROC (Required Operational Capability) document. It doesn't.

The 5.56 was NOT designed to yaw or tumble. The yaw effect is a function of the bullet's streamlined design, not an intentional design feature.