Originally Posted by
kjdoski
I've had a limited amount of time to work with the new ammunition, but I have shot both 5.56mm (62gr) and 7.62mm (130gr) variants. Haven't had the opportunity to observe its effectiveness first hand (thank God), but from people I know "down range" at the pointy end of the"Tip of the Spear," it works like gangbusters.
We're switching over from Mk262, which, IMHO, is a BIG improvement over the M855, but is still somewhat velocity dependent for best performance. Since we nearly always have our CQB barrels installed on our Mk16s, we're very happy about this new ammunition design, since it's not supposed to be as velocity sensitive for optimum performance.
We've had 0 reliability issues, and it does seem to be "cleaner" than Mk262, which, IMHO, is the dirtiest military-issued ammunition I've ever shot. Accuracy is more than acceptable - we use a 50m zero on our CQB barrels, and, from an expedient rest in the prone, everyone on my team was able to hold quarter-sized three shot groups with minimal effort. It's not quite as accurate as Mk262, with which I've shot several dime-sized three shot groups at 100m, but it seems markedly more accurate than M855 (with which a quarter-sized zeroing group at 25 meters is considered acceptable).
I was interested to see that the bullet design uses "driving bands" instead of traditional bullet-to-bore contact - that may be part of the reason for its accuracy and increased velocity.
Regards,
Kevin
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