5.56 NATO lethality? The Swedish POV.

[Oscar 319]

Here is an interesting PDF from the Swedish Military discussing the never ending debate of the combat effectiveness of the 5.56 round.

http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2010armamen...rArvidsson.pdf

Enjoy.

[Mikey]

Cool slide show. It always made me laugh when I had guys come up to the counter at the shop and ask what good a "pea shooter" like that would do.

Good to see there are folks taking an objective view of things.

I really like the emphasis on training over equipment.

Good find.

Mike

[Entropy]

What's missing from the presentation is any interest in wound modeling. I see accuracy tests, trajectory tests, and penetration of steel plates, but nothing else.

The Swedes have the basic concept down......shot placement is king. It is not always that easy to achieve good shot placement in the chaos of battle though, and sometimes you have to settle for less than ideal hits. In those cases, you need an ideal level of wound trauma to effect wide areas of tissue.

The Swedes don't necessarily have a lot of combat time under their belt with the 5.56. The US military on the other hand has extensive combat time with the 5.56 and has a large enough sample of data to say that the SS109/M855 is not an ideal loading. Sheet steel is really not that common of a battlefield barrier......more common are housing materials and autos(windshields). The M855 does not do very well against windshields, and it isn't that great against a lot of housing materials.

Larry Vickers' experience in Afghanistan along with SOF was that the 5.56 M855 was not performing as needed. Better overall barrier penetration and more rapid incapacitation at closer ranges was desired. OTM loads that were fielded later on improved on the incapacitation part, but it didn't help with barrier penetration. This is what led to the 6.8 developement in 2001:
http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2008Intl/Roberts.pdf

Apparently, the USMC is taking another hard look at the 6.8 SPC. They are not that impressed with Army's new green M855 replacement.

[ForTehNguyen]

this kind of confirms that other thread we have around here, which was about how better training is needed than a new gun like utilizing the 50 yard zero and other techniques.

[TiroFijo]

It is a great presentation. Two things to remember:

1- The swedes (and europeans/NATO in general) adhere to the "non fragmenting/expanding" concept for their militay bullets, to the point that they have changed their existing FMJ bullets that exhibited this behaviour to make them Hague compliant. So only accuracy, early yaw, and penetration matter to them.

2- They have been using "green bullets" with steel core (for both 5.56 and 7.62N) for several years now, with improved penetration over the old lead core bullets.

[DocGKR]

Of course it kind of ignores the fact that at least three major NATO members with significant recent combat experience have programs in place to directly address problems associated with poor terminal performance by 5.56 mm SS109/M855...

[TiroFijo]

Doc, may I ask who are those three? USA, Canada, Germany???

The problem that I see is, for NATO countries (other than USA) their current interpretation of the Hague convention forbids fragmenting/expanding ammo, and they even have purposely changed their existing bullets to avoid this. No matter how much extra horsepower you have with 7.62 NATO of other new caliber, if you are restricted to yaw + penetration for terminal performance the results are going to be somewhat poor.

Current conflicts are against irregular forces, that's why NATO members (other than USA) use open tip ammo to some degree (Mk262, etc.). Even the 338 LM NATO load uses the Lapua lock base bullet instead of the superior Scenar (OTM) bullet, and we are talking about a specialized, long range sniper load here.

The swedes have adopted 5.56 green ammo with better barrier penetration (all they can do according to their interpretation of Hague), and the USA, by far the NATO member with more "significant recent combat experience" have recently adopted the M855A1 that has better penetration than M855. I would guess M855A1 breaks up in a more consistant manner than M855, not depending so much on velocity and angle of attack, but you are the one that knows...

[QuadBomb]

I'm not an expert by any means, but I think that too much gets hand-waved by simply saying "shot placement is king." I don't think you can ask a soldier to consistenly place shots into the heart or CNS at the distances and under the conditions of most combat situations.

Having a rifle round which makes a bigger, more consistent permanent wound channel would increase the area on a target's body that you could hit and reasonably expect to incapacitate him.

[TiroFijo]

And I think we all agree on that. But with non expanding/fragmenting bullets the permanent wound channel does not increase too much if you increase the caliber/mass/velocity.

[Entropy]

And I think we all agree on that. But with non expanding/fragmenting bullets the permanent wound channel does not increase too much if you increase the caliber/mass/velocity.

That and you get limited temporary cavity stretch when using non expanding/fragmenting loads.

I personally think that this presentation is off-base in many ways. The main premise of superior shot placement and penetration are there, but it doesn't address benefits of superior wound trauma in less that ideal shot placement situations.

Kinda like the Euro's use of the tumbling 4.6mm. They have lots of charts, graphs, and holes in steel plates to show its superiority, but once again they leave out the important component of wounding capabilities.