Lai wrote:
First of all the conclusion is just ludicrous. When throughout the article it is emphasized that research has pointed out that there are some quite serious issues with the 5.56, that we don't know nearly enough of the effectiveness of small arms ammunition, and throughout the paper there hangs a negative atmosphere; how can you end your paper with and I quote:
"Soldiers and leaders everywhere should take heart from the fact that despite all the myth and superstition surrounding their rifles and ammunition, they are still being provided the best performing weapons and ammunition available while the armaments community works to develop something even better."
It's written in Career Officer Speak©. It's the language of "Speak just enough Truth to make a point - but make sure to cover your ass (CYA), in case someone of higher rank might disagree with your observations". The real data is in the numbers and such - the weasel-work CYA is in the "forward looking statements" and apologetic nice-nice fluff text, such as you quoted.
Frankly, I hadn't really noticed it until you mentioned it. Guess I just filter that out without noticing anymore.
Lai wrote:
They also claim that the full power 7.62x51mm NATO benchmark rounds preformed roughly similar in terms of "effectiveness" in CQB situations. I at least am simply not buying that. I have no doubts that such were the results of their tests, but then the tests are flawed.
The human body can take horrific amounts of damage before it stops functioning. Outside of central nervous system or core circulatory system hits (heart, artery, etc), the majority of incapacitating hits are a result of psychological factors. It's often not how bad you're hit, but how bad you
think you're hit. And, if you don't even realize you're hit, you're likely to keep moving until you bleed out or someone points out your wounds.
Compare the reactions of a PCP-addled robber, a fanatical jihadi, disciplined soldier too focused on saving others to notice his own wounds - to an untrained civilian that might faint after just
seeing someone bleeding profusely. This is also a reason why religious fanaticism and/or aggression-inspiring drugs have been used in combat for millenia.
A grazing 5.56 or 5.45 shot might not even be noticed in the middle of combat. There's plenty of other minor objects bouncing off of you.. reflected fragments, concussion waves, near miss bullet shockwaves, kicked up rocks and dirt, ejected brass, movement of your vehicle, your equipment bouncing around as you move, your own body slamming into walls/ground/objects as you maneuver, etc, etc...
Though, get hit with something large like a .338 Lapua or .50 BMG, and it's definitely going to stand out as a remarkable event.
As a less extreme example; A grazing non-core bullet hit might be ignored as "incidental junk" as above - a core hit against your body armor will not. THAT is often described as like being "hit in the chest with a baseball bat" or "kicked by a horse". It's non-fatal, but it definitely cuts through the combat clutter.
Lai wrote:
Finally, it is also stated that ultimately there are only two options for physical incapacitation, being the destruction of central nerve system tissue and desanguination, the scale of the temporal and permanent wound cavities carrying being the prime factors for the latter. The topic of hydrostatic shock is left completely undiscussed. While that may be a matter of belief, there is also no mention of what causes the temporal and ultimately permament wound cavities.
I think they are partially accurate, but missed the larger point.
There are indeed
two options for physical incapacitation.
1) Make the target physically incapable of physical action. Disable the central nervous system, circulatory/respiratory system, or dismemberment.
2) Convince the target they're out of the fight. Most people will cease being "in the fight" once they realize they've been shot. Just have to hit them hard enough, so that they feel the hit through the combat-anasthesia called adrenaline.
And, I really don't think someone needs to desanguinate (bleed out) before they fall over dead or fainted from blood loss. If their body can no longer usefully circulate their blood through the heart and lungs, they are going to fall over sooner than later.
If nothing else, thinking someone that is heart/lung shot is going to keep fighting is going to work less spectacularly than telling a heart attack victim to "just walk it off, you'll be fine".
Lai wrote:
Does not a bigger bullet transferring more kinetic energy create a much bigger temporal, and thus permanent wound cavity? While the difference may be insignificant when looking at "hole size" the difference in ability to create a large wound cavity may be substantial.
The "big hole" proponents seem to miss two obvious consequences of their theory that (I think) have much more bearing on the effectiveness of a round.
1) Bigger hole and bigger wound cavity profile = somewhat better chance of hitting some life-essential part (heart, CNS, artery, muscle root, etc)
2) Bigger bullet = more kinetic energy, so the target knows they're hit and should be expected to politely fall down now.
Where the smaller bullet somewhat makes up for this is in accuracy of shot placement, and fragmentation effects. A small 5.56x45 generates almost no felt recoil, and can be accurately employed from less than optimal firing positions. One can fire 30 rounds from an M4, one hand on the grip and buttstock against the shoulder - and put all the rounds into a man-sized target at 50 meters. Comparatively, the 7.62x51 firing M14 is wildly uncontrollable in full-auto fire.
To get controllable accurate sustained automatic fire from a 5.56x45 weapon, you need a weapon about the weight of an M4 weighing 8lbs (depending on toys mounted to it). To get controllable sustained automatic fire from the larger 7.62x51, you need something substantially heavier, like an M60 weighing 25lbs.
So, for incapacitation of a target, small rounds need to be more accurately placed. Big rounds have a little more lattitude in where they can hit, but they more than lose that advantage if placed in a too-light automatic weapon. The bigger the round, the heavier the weapon OR the slower the rate of fire. This is why the M4 isn't firing .338 Lapua rounds, to use an extreme example.
Lai wrote:
That said, when following the line of thought as said out in the text, the article also raised some questions:
Might a solution be found in designing a small calibre round, but one of which the actual bullet is longer, as it would increase the damaging potential of a bullet when it yaws, even if, especially if, only slightly?
I do not think that line of reasoning would work from an engineering perspective. To get a long bullet to be accurate, you need a faster spin rate (meaning faster barrel twist rate). The faster the spin rate, the more stable in flight AND when entering a target. You can, however, utilize that rotational energy to burst-fragment the round on impact with some sort of impact sensitive nose design.
Also, I'm not so sure that bullet yaw has a great influence on lethality. It's turning the bullet, yes, but it's not suddenly transferring the kinetic energy to the target. That sudden "punch" is what causes damage - be it from the sudden deceleration of a mushrooming hunting round, or the fragmentation of a round into many small, sharp pieces.
Look at the literature on hunting bullets - they're designed to stay in one piece, but "mushroom" out and expand suddenly on impact. The bullet hits, the nose expands thereby increasing frontal area and thus drag.. this newly wide, flat object decelerates very quickly, dumping it's kinetic energy rapidly into the target. The target being a very small precise window, generally the heart and lung of the animal. This is the normal game hunting shot - used to drop an animal pretty much where it stands, and to minimize damage to the rest of the musculature (meat).
And, hunting rifles aren't influenced by big contracts or government sponsorship. If a rifle and caliber doesn't work for that one individual hunter, he goes and finds one that will. In this, the opinions voiced by hunters are much simpler to sort through - lacking institutional bias, monetary compensation, or career implications. But, the big bore hunting rifle is only closely related to a sniper's engagement envelope - not a 11B infantry troop needing an assault rifle.
Lai wrote:
Does not the good old AK still p0wn all in CQB, not because it fires a bigger more powerfull round, but because it fires a slower round that will yaw more easily. Also (I'm not sure of this though) a round fired from an AK has a less stable trajectory (unless a genuine Russian 7.62x39mm steel core M43 round is used) and as such will again yaw easier. If true, would it not also be (part of) the reason why the 9mm Luger Para round, famed for its stable trajectory, proves unsatisfactory according to some operators?
An AK-47 is not a precision weapon. It is designed to be in the hands of marginally trained conscripts, throwing volumes of lead in the general direction of a target, and reliably continue to throw inaccurate volumes of lead regardless of the conscript's lack of cleaning or maintenance.
Cheap weapon, cheap ammo, for an army that views the lives of it's soldiers as cheap as well.
The 7.62x39 is truly an assault weapon round. It is a linear descendant of the StG44 (Nazi Germany's original assault rifle). Compared to the full-sized battle rifle rounds of the time (7.62x63, or 30-06 as an example), it is a similar bullet propelled by a reduced powder charge. Same bullet, less recoil, less total weight per round of ammo. So, the 7.62x39 is a step down the same path of reasoning as the 5.56x45, just not as dramatic.
If your Army is hordes of ill-trained conscripts, the AK-47 is a perfectly designed weapon. If, on the other hand, you live in a rich nation where soldier's lives are more keenly valued - you spend more money training your fewer troops, and you buy a rifle that's more precise but perhaps requires more training in marksmanship and maintenance. So, AK-47 for hordes of conscripts and jihadi - M16/M4/G3/SA80/Sig556/SteyerAUG for the Western World.
AK-47 "wound ballistics" = send a fuck-tonne of lead in the general direction of the enemy, a few of them are bound to hit something important eventually. And, considering the money spent in training & equipping ONE western soldier, even a 20:1 kill ratio in our favor costs us more dollars than the other side spent.
Lai wrote:
Last but not least: could (low level protection) body armour, in some situations, actually decrease your survivability rate as it decreases the chance of a through-and-through and increase the chance that the round will yaw and/or fragment within a critical depth inyour body?
It is a fringe possibility, I'd guess. I highly doubt it though. The mechanics are just too iffy. If a round is going to hit armor, it's either going to punch through with a significant loss of overall energy - or it's going to get stopped completely. The odds of it penetrating the armor and then perfectly expanding at the instant it breaks through the armor, THEN causing more damage to the target .. are small.
The big exception to this is a depleted uranium round hitting the side of a tank or APC. THOSE things are nasty. Impact on armor superheats the DU penetrator - DU penetrator throws molten armor spall into the crew compartment, ignites the powdered DU fragments, flash-heats the interior of the crew area to steel-melting temperatures and insane Turret-popping pressures - then punches an exit hole out the other side, causing all of that cooked & pressurized material to be sucked out the 3" hole on the exit side. crew, loose material, small objects - all sucked out the 3" hole in a few microseconds, into a jet of blackened debris cone. NOT a happy place to be.
Last edited by rdx-fx (2009-02-04 15:53:33)
