Why the .223/5.56?

[me1911]

Just curious why the military picked 5.56 as the general rifle caliber of choice? Out of all the calibers that could have been chosen, what was it about the venerable .223 that lead them to choose it over the others? It went from yesterday's .308/7.62 (the M-14) to today's .223/5.56 (M-16). Quite a drastic drop in caliber. Evidently not performance?

Tom

[Paulinski]

Milder recoil that .308, easier to fire full auto, ability to carry more amunition due to smaller size, faster smaller projective would fragment and cause greater wounding. Also back then in the 50's/60's the infantry engagments were thought to be 0 to 300 yards.

Hopefully I got all that right....

[SOWT]

Milder recoil that .308, easier to fire full auto, ability to carry more amunition due to smaller size, faster smaller projective would fragment and cause greater wounding. Also back then in the 50's/60's the infantry engagments were thought to be 0 to 300 yards.

Hopefully I got all that right....


Add we were fighting a jungle war where engagements were closer then you'd get on the plains of Germany or in the desert.

[UVvis]

Also, lower cost of production per round.

[Eurodriver]

Were other calibers available at the time that were in between 308 and 223 and viable military rounds? I know now we have the 6.8, 300blk etc. but what existed in the 50s?

[vicious_cb]

Were other calibers available at the time that were in between 308 and 223 and viable military rounds? I know now we have the 6.8, 300blk etc. but what existed in the 50s?

.280 British, it literally sits perfectly in between 7.62 NATO and 5.56

https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/0811160932cm-1-e1470999761572.png

[Artiz]

Just curious why the military picked 5.56 as the general rifle caliber of choice? Out of all the calibers that could have been chosen, what was it about the venerable .223 that lead them to choose it over the others? It went from yesterday's .308/7.62 (the M-14) to today's .223/5.56 (M-16). Quite a drastic drop in caliber. Evidently not performance?

Tom
There are MANY nice and thick books dedicated to this very subject. You should search for more complete answers on the Internet where more is compounted than this thread will deliver. But I'll do my best to give an answer in a short post.


You should first ask the question, why did every war-relevant country on earth went away from 30cal big power calibers and developped or adopted some kind of small diameter and/or case size, high velocity caliber late into or after WW2?

The answer is lethality, effectiveness, and combat load capacity.

Germany, Britain and the USSR being perfect examples.

Stoner developped the AR10 at Armalite in the 50's, based on the 7.62 caliber the US had just shoved up NATO's mouth essentially by force. He then submitted working samples to Springfield Armory - Ordnance Corps in late 1956 for evaluation, however at the time the ARMY and the MIL weapons mfg/r&d facilities were too corrupted, and too focused on traditional wood-and-steel big caliber guns to realize it was not what ARMY needed.

The AR10 testings (and later the AR15) were pretty much sabotaged from the get go, even tho some specific people found it amazing it went nowhere.

Vietnam was getting to a boil, the M14 (which was what the Garand was supposed to be from day one, but you know... "ARMY") was fielded but failed miserably at it's job because it was too heavy, too big, too unwieldy and too powerful for the task at hand.

Stoner was eventually asked to develop a smaller lighter caliber version of the AR10. Jim Sullivan and Bob Fremont developped the AR15 (from Stoner's AR10) based on the existing small diameter high velocity .222 Remington caliber while Eugene Stoner worked on the AR15 specific caliber with Remington and bullet with Sierra. They came up with the .223 Remington and the 55gr projectile.

The AR15 was presented to and tested by a meaningful Vietnam theatre general who found it so amazing and perfect for the job that he ordered a metric shit ton of of them on the spot. The job being Vietnam and it's people. The Vietnamese were way too small to use the then recently adopted M14's and the jungles too dense, combat too close. The AR15 was the perfect rifle.

The AR15 was adopted, but not without corrupted politics playing the central role in it's initial failure in vietnam.

The .223 Remington was later standardized to the 5.56 NATO, and NATO countries seeing it's effectiveness in Vietnam and through their own testing weren't too long to adopt the caliber.



Many NATO and non-NATO countries were already developping their own smaller diameter/size calibers when the US shoved 7.62 up their mouths, some stayed with 7.62, some later changed to 5.56 or other small diameter high velocity calibers.



Like I said, there are many thick wide books dedicated to this very subject, you're going to find more in-depth information by doing a Google search (honestly, use DuckDuckGo to search instead of Google, because Google is the enemy of the free man).


Chris Bartocci also makes Youtube videos that cover this subject very well (he also wrote books on the AR15).

Here's one of them:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYar4Zf8jH8&t=557s

[Iraqgunz]

Necropost much?


Were other calibers available at the time that were in between 308 and 223 and viable military rounds? I know now we have the 6.8, 300blk etc. but what existed in the 50s?

[RHINOWSO]

Necropost much?

He doesn't get out much anymore. ;)

[Artiz]

Holy shit I didn't even notice that.

Is this a new record?

[Swstock]

11 years old?

[JediGuy]

Necropost much?

Fully eleven years...