View Full Version : M855 at 500 Y
Even at 500Y, no joke on the jello. I know M855 does not have the best rep for accuracy, but seems like if you do your job, have the right set up, it will do its job. I have no experience shooting at those distances so can't comment one way or another:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDFo2QmRhk8
Now that's a gun video I'll actually watch... when I get home though.
WickedWillis
08-05-22, 11:37
I wonder how drastically the performance changes dropping under an 18" barrel. I know M855 is pretty well appreciated on here.
I wonder how drastically the performance changes dropping under an 18" barrel. I know M855 is pretty well appreciated on here.
My understanding is the M855 designed to perform well from the M4, vs M193 which was designed to perform best from longer M16A1s per my discussion with Ash Hess (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygLIA4qDAk8&t=2991s). I also posted a vid of the M855 from a 7.5" pistol in the dedicated thread on loads for SBRs/PDWs, and it seemed perform well enough for it's design. So, I suspect performance well under 18" per design and I'm sure sure if there's any performance improvements from 18" barrels.
Terminal performance suffers with lost velocity. Hitting an E-type at 500 with M855 isn’t particularly hard, though.
He's shooting left handed. How can we possibly take this man's test seriously? (j/k)
Many dismiss the 5.56 as too diminutive for humans. ( I was one of them) Ask around to those that know, the 5.56 (in various bullet configurations) has killed a lot of people. It'll do it's job if you do yours.
He's shooting left handed. How can we possibly take this man's test seriously? (j/k)
Many dismiss the 5.56 as too diminutive for humans. ( I was one of them) Ask around to those that know, the 5.56 (in various bullet configurations) has killed a lot of people. It'll do it's job if you do yours.
Talking with someone from NSW the other day and I asked his thoughts on the 6.8 conversion, and he said "everyone I shot with the 5.56 stayed dead."
A deep talk on terminal ballistics and such it was not.
The deficiencies of M855 are way overblown, and its benefits are way underappreciated. Most of it boils down to urban legend started by the guy who wrote Black Hawk Down.
The issue with it ice picking is something that affects all FMJ Spitzer type bullets. They have to enter the target at a slight angle in order to tumble, and whether they tumble and to what degree depends on the magnitude of that angle, which just boils down to luck. That said, the more stabilized the bullet in flight, the less yaw, and the greater the likelihood that it's going to enter 90 degrees to the target and either fail to tumble partially or completely.
What testing has shown though is that M855 from a 10" barrel, at least at close range, is as good as any other FMJ. It almost always tumbles in gel from that barrel length and range, suggesting the yaw is adequate under those circumstances. So for our uses, it's actually pretty decent. Where things go off the rails is from a 20" barrel at intermediate ranges, which obviously isn't applicable to 99.9% of us.
The steel penetrator also does give it some pretty good capability in terms of penetrating car doors and other light barriers that other .223 bullets can have issues with. Again, that serves our purposes quite well. It's highly unlikely you would ever need actual AP capability, but on the other hand it's highly likely that an intruder might take cover behind your refrigerator, car in your driveway, etc.
Mainly, though, it's very high quality ammunition that's fully sealed at a very affordable price. Hardly anyone can afford to stockpile Mk262 or Gold Dots, but everyone can afford (or could) to stockpile a few thousand rounds of M855.
M855 was hitting $1ea plus at the height of the last fairly recent panic...seems to be settling around $.50 today.
My last purchase was at $.35 & not sure we'll see those prices again.
The deficiencies of M855 are way overblown, and its benefits are way underappreciated. Most of it boils down to urban legend started by the guy who wrote Black Hawk Down.
In fairness, the Author of Blackhawk Down did EXTENSIVE research. So the portrayal of anything in the book was as reported to him.
What testing has shown though is that M855 from a 10" barrel, at least at close range, is as good as any other FMJ. It almost always tumbles in gel from that barrel length and range, suggesting the yaw is adequate under those circumstances. So for our uses, it's actually pretty decent.
Yaw is one thing... but frag and energy dump are another. I loaded a 77 OTM to approximately the speed of sound and it yawed, didn't frag, and penetrated deep enough that I lost the bullet. In other words, yaw itself doesn't translate into much more cavity or energy dump.
The steel penetrator also does give it some pretty good capability in terms of penetrating car doors and other light barriers that other .223 bullets can have issues with. Again, that serves our purposes quite well. It's highly unlikely you would ever need actual AP capability, but on the other hand it's highly likely that an intruder might take cover behind your refrigerator, car in your driveway, etc.
I'd be much more comfy with a Bonded Gold Dot. The penetrator apparently works good in some specific circumstances, but I've never realized it. I shot it in auto glass against a bunch of other non-bonded bullets. None of them were worth a crap.
Mainly, though, it's very high quality ammunition that's fully sealed at a very affordable price. Hardly anyone can afford to stockpile Mk262 or Gold Dots, but everyone can afford (or could) to stockpile a few thousand rounds of M855.
M855 is a rugged round. But Iraqgunz used to get the warning notices electronically on Lake City production issues. And he told me you'd be surprised at how many issues there are with our Mil ordnance. (More American Mediocrity in motion)
I look at M855 like a decent back up stash round. Does nothing particularly well, but ANY reliable rifle ammo is valuable and appreciated.
I look at M855 like a decent back up stash round. Does nothing particularly well, but ANY reliable rifle ammo is valuable and appreciated.
That's how I view it. Good bulk stash ammo. Would not choose it as primary SD/HD ammo, especially from SBRs/PDWs.
But Iraqgunz used to get the warning notices electronically on Lake City production issues. And he told me you'd be surprised at how many issues there are with our Mil ordnance. (More American Mediocrity in motion)
Do you think the Norma SS109 is better?
M855 was hitting $1ea plus at the height of the last fairly recent panic...seems to be settling around $.50 today.
My last purchase was at $.35 & not sure we'll see those prices again.
The last time I bought any it was about 25 cents a round. I hear gun and ammo sales have fallen off of a cliff over the Summer, so we could very well see prices for Lake City back in the .30s. Now that manufacturing is cooling down across the board, the raw materials might be coming back down in price.
In fairness, the Author of Blackhawk Down did EXTENSIVE research. So the portrayal of anything in the book was as reported to him.
It's been a few decades since I read it, but I remember him kind of sensationalizing the whole thing. Their complaint was that their M16s weren't dropping guys like the Delta operator with the M14 sniper rifle, and of course no one ever stopped to think that maybe his shot placement was a tad bit better. Not that they could have examined the bodies or anything, but Delta are the absolute best shooters in the world to begin with, and this was the dude they picked to be their sniper. I imagine the guy was a veritable rock star when it came to shot placement.
Yaw is one thing... but frag and energy dump are another. I loaded a 77 OTM to approximately the speed of sound and it yawed, didn't frag, and penetrated deep enough that I lost the bullet. In other words, yaw itself doesn't translate into much more cavity or energy dump.
I honestly don't know if the OTMs are intended to frag or not. It's pretty much just an FMJ with its jacket on backwards so my guess is likely not.
I'd be much more comfy with a Bonded Gold Dot. The penetrator apparently works good in some specific circumstances, but I've never realized it. I shot it in auto glass against a bunch of other non-bonded bullets. None of them were worth a crap.
Naturally Gold Dots would be preferable, price being equal, but before things went crazy God Dots were like a buck a round and M855 was a little over a quarter a round. It was originally designed to penetrate Soviet helmets, so it can go through metal barriers that FMJ like M193 cannot.
M855 is a rugged round. But Iraqgunz used to get the warning notices electronically on Lake City production issues. And he told me you'd be surprised at how many issues there are with our Mil ordnance. (More American Mediocrity in motion)
Certainly doesn't surprise me, but I've had good luck with it. Anything bought for defense or stockpiling should have good quality components and be sealed. Other options close to that price have lesser quality primers and powder, and they load them weak to save money. Obviously a boutique manufacturer like Black Hills is probably better in the QC department, but within the same price range I've found M855 to be a very viable option.
I look at M855 like a decent back up stash round. Does nothing particularly well, but ANY reliable rifle ammo is valuable and appreciated.
......................
I look at M855 like a decent back up stash round. Does nothing particularly well, but ANY reliable rifle ammo is valuable and appreciated.
My sentiments also. I have quite a bit of it and I use it for plinking or zeroing for other, much better and thus more expensive 62gr loads (M855 to get on paper, then XXX to fine-tune the zero).
It's been a few decades since I read it, but I remember him kind of sensationalizing the whole thing. Their complaint was that their M16s weren't dropping guys like the Delta operator with the M14 sniper rifle, and of course no one ever stopped to think that maybe his shot placement was a tad bit better. Not that they could have examined the bodies or anything, but Delta are the absolute best shooters in the world to begin with, and this was the dude they picked to be their sniper. I imagine the guy was a veritable rock star when it came to shot placement.
I suspect it's more an issue of us using a round designed for a Soviet enemy we anticipated might be wearing body armor on the battlefield but instead we ended up shooting naked Africans. So in many, many cases the round simply clean holed through them and they continued to shoot at you. The vast majority died later after a magazine or two of returned fire. The guys who found bone or got good hits on internals got better results.
That said, I always love flight time at 500 yards and beyond.
The question is will it penetrate SAPI and ESAPI.
The question is how well does it penetrate a ESAPI.
I don't think it does. ESAPI is rated for anything short of .300 WinMag (IIRC).
Ahh, I think I get the jib of your jive. ;) M995 might do it but good luck finding any. I don't even think .mil types play with it. Maybe SMU folks but I don't think it's common.
OK looking at the standards ESAPI is up to revision J and is rated to stop 3 rounds of M995 AP. I am starting to think the A zone on a IPSC target should be scored as a miss,
I suspect it's more an issue of us using a round designed for a Soviet enemy we anticipated might be wearing body armor on the battlefield but instead we ended up shooting naked Africans. So in many, many cases the round simply clean holed through them and they continued to shoot at you. The vast majority died later after a magazine or two of returned fire. The guys who found bone or got good hits on internals got better results.
That said, I always love flight time at 500 yards and beyond.
That was the hypothesis put forward by someone the author may or may not have interviewed, but there are problems with it. The main problem is not one single body was recovered to show that the M855 had failed in even one single case. Neither was any body recovered from the Delta sniper's targets to show that his rounds were any more lethal, irrespective of shot placement. The Occam's explanation in this case is that the Delta sniper was making solid A zone hits, vs. the rangers with their iron sighted M16s. I'm not saying Rangers are bad shots by any means, but we're talking semi pro vs. the literal best of the best in terms of combat marksmanship.
People also have faulty ideas about how 223 behaves in human targets. In muscular tissue, the results are far less dramatic than say a head shot for example. So whether the bullet tumbles and frags or not isn't as massive of a determining factor as most people assume. That is, if it strikes an inelastic tissue like the brain, whether it tumbles or not is pretty much irrelevant. Whether it makes a small hole through someone's head or takes half their head off is irrelevant in most cases; either way, that person is likely out of the fight.
Likewise, when you're talking about the extremely elastic, muscular tissues of the A zone and its organs, it's also somewhat irrelevant whether it tumbles or not. A miss is still a miss. If the bullet fails to directly strike an organ or major vessel, the chances of a successful stop are probably remote. The main thing people fail to appreciate is that humans aren't solid like a block of gel. We're made up of all kinds of little bags all contained in one big bag, and those little bags are extremely tough and can move around a lot. If it fragments, there's always the chance that one of the fragments will pierce a major vessel, but that's not always going to produce results, and even more seldom will they be immediate. The main problem with the fragment strategy of bullet design is that things tend to follow the path of least resistance, which is around organs via the intersecting tissue planes. You always hear about how bullets and fragments of bullets that entered a shoulder end up found in someone's hip, and the assumption is that they travel in a straight line through all that tissue. When in reality they simply skate around gliding through the body in the spaces between organs.
There are always outliers, but for the most part, if you don't directly strike a vital organ or major vessel your target is not going down. He may have a nasty gaping cavity somewhere in him that's going to be irreparable and cause him to bleed out on the operating table hours later, but that's not going to prevent him from shooting back at you. And in the vast, vast majority of cases, it wouldn't have mattered what you shot him with (range notwithstanding). Whether it was 9mm or the nastiest 7.62 hollow point you could find, the basic equation is highly unlikely to change. Good hits to the A zone are highly likely to succeed, and misplaced shots are highly likely to fail. The only reasonable way a bullet itself can be said to have failed is if it either doesn't penetrate deeply enough, or if it veers off course because it doesn't have enough energy to power through bone and tissue planes in a straight line.
The question is will it penetrate SAPI and ESAPI.
Even an old delaminated SAPI plate is likely to take an entire magazine of M855 to get pass throughs. If I remember right, a SAPI plate can actually take an M2 AP without pass through but fails the back face deformation and therefore can't be level iv rated. Honestly, there's not much out there that's available to us civilian types that can defeat milspec armor, and for that matter I don't know if even M955 would do it or not.
The same can be said of almost any ceramic based commercial armor, as well, even the cheap brands. You can get ceramic plates for as little as a hundred dollars that will easily defeat almost any rifle round available on the commercial market. This is a growing problem because more and more criminals are turning up with body armor. It's something that hasn't historically been a problem in the past because armor used to be expensive and hard to find, and criminals were rarely confronted by armed victims. That dynamic has been flipped on its head over the last decade, though. Not only are more people armed than ever before, with better weapons than ever before, but now criminals can get extremely effective armor for next to nothing off of Wish. I expect in years to come that "armored robbers" will become the rule rather than the exception.
Now what M855 absolutely CAN defeat is polyethylene armor, which represents a massive market share of cheap commercial armor. One of the caveats to the cheap ceramic based armor is that it's extremely heavy, whereas you can get cheap, ultralight polyethylene armor for under a hundred dollars a plate. While there are a few polyethylene plates that can stop M855, they are around a thousand dollars a plate, so unlikely to be found on your run of the mill bad guy.
Unfortunately, though, almost all AR500 steel armor can easily defeat M855, so no help there. Outside of legit AP rounds, the only thing that can defeat AR500 is something going over about 3k FPS, namely a point blank hit from M193 from a 20 inch barrel. And unfortunately, the cheap, concealable nature of AR500 makes it perhaps the most common commercial armor you're likely to find out there. It's extremely heavy, but your average thug doesn't care about that. What can, however, defeat AR500 is M855A1, at least from a 16" barrel at close range. Hopefully that will become more available going forward, or something similar to it. It's not without its issues, though, besides its expense. It accelerates wear due to the high pressures, and you have to use a special magazine to get it to feed right, and those magazines are said to be garbage. The only ones available on the commercial market are from Center. Allegedly, the ones made by Okay are better, but they're unobtainium at least for right now. I have heard that the third gen pmags will feed M855A1, though, so if you managed to find some then maybe that's a viable solution.
Blackhawk Down guys should have been using 9mm so they could blow lungs out.
Even an old delaminated SAPI plate is likely to take an entire magazine of M855 to get pass throughs. If I remember right, a SAPI plate can actually take an M2 AP without pass through but fails the back face deformation and therefore can't be level iv rated. Honestly, there's not much out there that's available to us civilian types that can defeat milspec armor, and for that matter I don't know if even M955 would do it or not.
The same can be said of almost any ceramic based commercial armor, as well, even the cheap brands. You can get ceramic plates for as little as a hundred dollars that will easily defeat almost any rifle round available on the commercial market. This is a growing problem because more and more criminals are turning up with body armor. It's something that hasn't historically been a problem in the past because armor used to be expensive and hard to find, and criminals were rarely confronted by armed victims. That dynamic has been flipped on its head over the last decade, though. Not only are more people armed than ever before, with better weapons than ever before, but now criminals can get extremely effective armor for next to nothing off of Wish. I expect in years to come that "armored robbers" will become the rule rather than the exception.
Now what M855 absolutely CAN defeat is polyethylene armor, which represents a massive market share of cheap commercial armor. One of the caveats to the cheap ceramic based armor is that it's extremely heavy, whereas you can get cheap, ultralight polyethylene armor for under a hundred dollars a plate. While there are a few polyethylene plates that can stop M855, they are around a thousand dollars a plate, so unlikely to be found on your run of the mill bad guy.
Unfortunately, though, almost all AR500 steel armor can easily defeat M855, so no help there. Outside of legit AP rounds, the only thing that can defeat AR500 is something going over about 3k FPS, namely a point blank hit from M193 from a 20 inch barrel. And unfortunately, the cheap, concealable nature of AR500 makes it perhaps the most common commercial armor you're likely to find out there. It's extremely heavy, but your average thug doesn't care about that. What can, however, defeat AR500 is M855A1, at least from a 16" barrel at close range. Hopefully that will become more available going forward, or something similar to it. It's not without its issues, though, besides its expense. It accelerates wear due to the high pressures, and you have to use a special magazine to get it to feed right, and those magazines are said to be garbage. The only ones available on the commercial market are from Center. Allegedly, the ones made by Okay are better, but they're unobtainium at least for right now. I have heard that the third gen pmags will feed M855A1, though, so if you managed to find some then maybe that's a viable solution.
I never had any issues with M855A1 feeding from any magazines, ran it thru Gen 2 & 3 PMAGs, and issued mags with tan followers. The only issue I ever had was with either the M855A1 or MK262, shooting out of a really dirty and dry gun (was doing a torture test) popped a few primers and got a case stuck in the chamber.
I never had any issues with M855A1 feeding from any magazines, ran it thru Gen 2 & 3 PMAGs, and issued mags with tan followers. The only issue I ever had was with either the M855A1 or MK262, shooting out of a really dirty and dry gun (was doing a torture test) popped a few primers and got a case stuck in the chamber.
Interesting. So it didn't chew up the feed ramp from the non EPMs?
Interesting. So it didn't chew up the feed ramp from the non EPMs?
Not that we noticed, during that deployment I only shot maybe 30 mags worth mixed between the two ammos in question along with some regular M855 from various manufacturers, mostly radway green. Being that this was from back in 2013, I can’t go back and look at the M4s for any wear and tear to them, but I can check the mags and see if there’s any damage to them, but I think they’re fine as I still use them regularly to this day, especially the PMAGs
I routinely shoot M855a1 with a variety of mags, including green follower, tan follower, EPM, and M3. They all seem to work, although that does not mean that the newer ones aren’t better. I haven’t attempted to reproduce the study.
I’ve tested M855A1 against AR500 steel 5/8” targets, and they did not penetrate at 50yds. Didn’t seem close to penetrating. 16” barrel. I don’t know if this means anything about AR500 body armor, which I don’t recommend.
You mentioned bullets entering the shoulder and exiting inferiorly. In cases that I am familiar with, that occurred because the shootee was prone, and body armor doesn’t usually protect that specific entry.
I routinely shoot M855a1 with a variety of mags, including green follower, tan follower, EPM, and M3. They all seem to work, although that does not mean that the newer ones aren’t better. I haven’t attempted to reproduce the study.
I’ve tested M855A1 against AR500 steel 5/8” targets, and they did not penetrate at 50yds. Didn’t seem close to penetrating. 16” barrel. I don’t know if this means anything about AR500 body armor, which I don’t recommend.
You mentioned bullets entering the shoulder and exiting inferiorly. In cases that I am familiar with, that occurred because the shootee was prone, and body armor doesn’t usually protect that specific entry.
He may have been referencing the ages-old 5.56 myth.....shoot 'em in the hip and it comes out their shoulder. IIRC it originates from the early 60's DARPA reports from Vietnam, several years before the big U.S. buildup in 1965.
He may have been referencing the ages-old 5.56 myth.....shoot 'em in the hip and it comes out their shoulder. IIRC it originates from the early 60's DARPA reports from Vietnam, several years before the big U.S. buildup in 1965.
I thought it was shoot them in the hand and it came out their a$$? :dance3:
He may have been referencing the ages-old 5.56 myth.....shoot 'em in the hip and it comes out their shoulder. IIRC it originates from the early 60's DARPA reports from Vietnam, several years before the big U.S. buildup in 1965.
I thought it was shoot them in the hand and it came out their a$$? :dance3:
He may have been referencing the ages-old 5.56 myth.....shoot 'em in the hip and it comes out their shoulder. IIRC it originates from the early 60's DARPA reports from Vietnam, several years before the big U.S. buildup in 1965.
The one I always hear is about .22 and how it's so deadly because it "bounces around."
Myths aside, though, surgeons routinely find bullets and fragments a long ways from their trajectory, in seemingly inexplicable ways. It's because the human body is a really tough sack full of lots of smaller, yet tougher sacks, and they're all highly elastic and slippery. When bullets start to slow down or fragment, it's kind of like hitting a patch of ice on a curve in your car while decelerating. Sudden, wild, and unpredictable changes in trajectory are par for the course.
So let's say you hit someone just an inch shy of their A zone. If the bullet fragments or causes a large enough stretch cavity to create permanent cavitation, the expectation among the general public seems to be that you have a pretty good chance of stopping that person. That either the stretch cavity will damage organs and vessels not in the bullet's direct path, or that fragments from it would pierce them. But the challenge to that notion is that the organs and vessels are simply displaced by the stretch cavity, and bounce right back into place unharmed. And fragments are likely to be diverted around organs and major vessels, causing them to fail at their intended purpose. So they might have a giant gaping wound in their chest a mere inch from their heart, and they might have hundreds of smaller ruptured blood vessels that will prove fatal, and they might have a chest full of fragments...but their heart, major vessels, and spine may all be relatively unharmed.
That's why I and many others disfavor anything that's designed to fragment. It takes surprising inertia to negate the effect of human physiology on bullet trajectory, so you don't want to intentionally remove inertia from your bullet on the very remote chance that one of those tiny little fragments might be the showstopper.
P.S. going back to the decelerating car analogy, consider that a bullet when it strikes a person decelerates from 1-3k fps to 0 fps in a matter of about 9 inches and a tiny fraction of a second. It doesn't take much of a "shove" to send that bullet off in a completely new direction, and it's inertia alone that enables it to overcome those little "shoves" as it passes through the various layers of a person's anatomy. It's even more stunning when you stop and think that at that point it's basically in a frictionless environment.
That same thing applies to fragments to a lesser but still very large extent. They are ejected from the projectile at very high velocity and decelerate to zero within just a tiny fraction of a second.
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