There was a report in the British news paper The Telegraph that was picked up by Guns & Ammo. Long story short: a survey of 50 British Army soldiers who have fought in Iraq and/or Afghanistan are unhappy with the 5.56 NATO round for their SA-80 bullpup rifles.
Those squaddies say exactly what I have been saying for decades about the 5.56 NATO round: that its effective range is only 300 meters, no matter what the manufacturers and the governments whose militaries use it claim. I first heard this complaint in a hospital ward at Fort Devens from wounded soldiers recuperating there - I also learned a whole lot of profanity when I asked the guys what they thought of the M-16, and was given a rundown of everything wrong with the Army's then-new toy.
Her Majesty's Government insists, of course, that the 5.56 NATO round "has been proven to be both accurate and powerful." But there's no getting around the fact that the cartridge is an evolution of the .223 Remington - and that round was developed to shoot small varmints at intermediate ranges, not kill people with one shot center-mass as the 7.62x51 NATO round, the .30-06, the .303 British, the 8mm Mauser and 7.62x54R rounds were; and with an effective range of 500 to 600 yards - call it 500 meters.
There are five major terrain types the Army thinks about for battle, and the 5.56 NATO cartridge is inadequate for three of them - grossly inadequate, in fact. The post-World War II studies that talked about how many soldiers actually aim and shoot in combat and the average range of engagement in that war are what led to the concept of the intermediate cartridge for fighting at intermediate ranges. The thing is, only two of the five (urban warfare and jungle warfare) have fighting taking place at intermediate ranges. The other three (forest, desert and arctic) require the ability to hit and kill at 500 yards or more, and that's outside the actual reach of the 5.56 NATO round no matter how many duckspeakers claim it isn't. Given their druthers, I'm sure our cousins across the pond would rather have the L1A1 FALs that won the Battle of the Falklands back.
HM's Government insisting that 5.56 NATO is both accurate and powerful is doing a disservice to the soldiers of the Queen. Of course, the US Defense Department has been doing a disservice to the US troops saddled with the Poodle Shooter in the same caliber for more than 40 years, so why should our British cousins be different?
You don't design your battle rifles for optimum conditions. You design them to perform in the worst conditions possible, and then thank God when those conditions aren't as bad as what you thought they would be. The 5.56 NATO round violates this rule. It needs to be consigned to the trash heap of bad military ideas and replaced, before its inadequacies get even more of our and our allies' soldiers killed.
http://www.gunandgame.com/forums/ge...oldiers-claim-5-56-nato-round-inadequate.html
Those squaddies say exactly what I have been saying for decades about the 5.56 NATO round: that its effective range is only 300 meters, no matter what the manufacturers and the governments whose militaries use it claim. I first heard this complaint in a hospital ward at Fort Devens from wounded soldiers recuperating there - I also learned a whole lot of profanity when I asked the guys what they thought of the M-16, and was given a rundown of everything wrong with the Army's then-new toy.
Her Majesty's Government insists, of course, that the 5.56 NATO round "has been proven to be both accurate and powerful." But there's no getting around the fact that the cartridge is an evolution of the .223 Remington - and that round was developed to shoot small varmints at intermediate ranges, not kill people with one shot center-mass as the 7.62x51 NATO round, the .30-06, the .303 British, the 8mm Mauser and 7.62x54R rounds were; and with an effective range of 500 to 600 yards - call it 500 meters.
There are five major terrain types the Army thinks about for battle, and the 5.56 NATO cartridge is inadequate for three of them - grossly inadequate, in fact. The post-World War II studies that talked about how many soldiers actually aim and shoot in combat and the average range of engagement in that war are what led to the concept of the intermediate cartridge for fighting at intermediate ranges. The thing is, only two of the five (urban warfare and jungle warfare) have fighting taking place at intermediate ranges. The other three (forest, desert and arctic) require the ability to hit and kill at 500 yards or more, and that's outside the actual reach of the 5.56 NATO round no matter how many duckspeakers claim it isn't. Given their druthers, I'm sure our cousins across the pond would rather have the L1A1 FALs that won the Battle of the Falklands back.
HM's Government insisting that 5.56 NATO is both accurate and powerful is doing a disservice to the soldiers of the Queen. Of course, the US Defense Department has been doing a disservice to the US troops saddled with the Poodle Shooter in the same caliber for more than 40 years, so why should our British cousins be different?
You don't design your battle rifles for optimum conditions. You design them to perform in the worst conditions possible, and then thank God when those conditions aren't as bad as what you thought they would be. The 5.56 NATO round violates this rule. It needs to be consigned to the trash heap of bad military ideas and replaced, before its inadequacies get even more of our and our allies' soldiers killed.
http://www.gunandgame.com/forums/ge...oldiers-claim-5-56-nato-round-inadequate.html
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