Brain Fertilizer

I've said before that I agree with many of the criticisms of the 5.56mm round for a battle rifle, but that in the final analysis, I think the US military has a specific aim in mind that the 5.56mm fits perfectly:

1) a concept of enemy suppression by rapid fire, allowing maneuver tactics that allow you to get in close enough to kill with other weapons, and

2) a wounded enemy is better than a dead enemy, because it takes more enemies out of the fight to take care of 1 wounded soldier than to bury a dead one.

While the M-14 and the M-1 before it are still loved by those who are gun aficiandos, they were not without their own problems. I think the problems are adequately discussed in these two articles:

Article One
Article Two

However, one other article I read (in a magazine whose name I unfortunately cannot recall) highlighted one aspect of the 5.56mm round that is absolutely unacceptable.

A modern military fire team needs a range of choices with which to engage the enemy. One such necessity is a light machine gun that can provide all the advantages of fully automatic fire (cover, range, penetration) without the added weight of a medium machine gun or the need to carry special ammunition. FN's Mini-ME (also known as the Squad Automatic Weapon and the M249) is an excellent light machine gun: easily portable, fired from a bipod, reliable, accurate, and using the same ammo as the M-16, which substantially reduces logistic difficulties and can actually save lives by allowing ammo to be exchanged between the riflemen and the SAW gunner.

Unfortunately, the 5.56mm round lacks the power to chew through lighter obstacles like cinder blocks and wooden fences the way a light machine gun should. Additionally, the velocity loss of the 5.56mm round means that the SAW's range doesn't really extend beyond that of the M-16. This is absolutely unconscionable.

You can mitigate the shortcomings of the 5.56mm round in the M-16 by being able to carry more, by allowing some troops to use the M-14, by issuing grenade launchers to kill/disable enemies beyond 150 meters. But there is no way to overcome the disadvantages of the 5.56mm round in the M249 without bringing along an M-60. That simply isn't an option in some situations.

The XM-8 (the next battle rifle) uses a gas-piston system rather than the direct gas impingment of the M-16, so the jamming problem should become a thing of the past. I used to think that the new rifle would perform well and silence all but the most adamant critics of the 5.56mm round. Now I'm joining them.

Why? Because even a slightly more bulky bullet mated with a slightly larger cartridge case would, without losing any of the advantages of the 5.56mm round in the personal rifle (low recoil, easy portability due to lightness of the round, flat trajectory), provide the M249 with greatly improved performance in all the aforementioned aspects; to wit: significantly increased range and significantly increased power at longer range to be able to penetrate light obstacles like bricks, wood, and thinner metal.

So why can't we just increase the bulk of the 5.56mm round? Because we've already done that. It helped, but the laws of physics pretty much preclude us from being able to add any more bulk. So why don't we just rechamber the M249 and leave the XM-8 alone? Because the US military is committed to keeping the ammo for the SAW and the basic battle rifle exactly the same, for the good reasons already explained above.

As such, I no longer support the 5.56mm round. I'm not sure what difference that makes, but I thought you should know.

For what it's worth.