In this episode of What the Fuck America, a retired army kernel goes head to head with a lifelong fed. Colonel Tucker declares before the court that...
spoiler
...NATO 5.56 and/or (?) 0.223 caliber ammo can decapitate or split the upper body from the lower in a single shot. To support this claim, he makes up a story about a marine and then describes the Iraqi children he saw torn in half.
Did this hero just self report? It also turns out that your average lifelong war criminal doesn't really even need to know how guns work lmao
the colonel who wrote the sur-rebuttal where I cropped the image from believes that the rifling in a gun's barrel is designed to make the bullet tumble upon impact. Below is from his initial 'expert report':
the ballistics expert Fed who wrote the rebuttal asserts the below and may answer your question:
What's weird is this is opposite from the myth I usually see, that 5.56 and other intermediate cartridges are designed to wound and not kill, because allegedly wounding takes 3 soldiers off the battlefield (the wounded and two comrades to get him to safety) whereas killing only takes away 1
I've heard that 5.56 was chosen over 7.62 NATO cause it was about as effective with the added benefit of being small and therefore lighter to carry. I think this accounted for the tumbling myth, but i dont have any background in ballistics to know or believe otherwise.
This is likely the reason (50% more bullets per weight or whatever), but there were a lot of propaganda attempts to get soldiers to like the M16 over the AK47 especially after soldiers had felt like they'd been done dirty.
Increased bullet tumbling, the wounding argument, and hydrostatic shock advantages all feel like variations of this to me, and verifying gun myths was a lot harder back then. Also soldiers tend not the be the brightest bulbs. Such myths would have spread like wildfire as soldiers compared their standard issue to their trophy AKs.
Yeah the M16s initial reliability issues were also the fault of procurement, as I’ve heard they were firing rounds with the wrong powder it was designed for, causing jams or something.
In that position who wouldnt lie to their soldiers to get them to use the weapons they paid so much money to have?
I think you just don't want your junior officers surrounded by people with guns angry at them lol
This is almost always the answer. Logistics is what wins wars. If you can carry more ammo and stack more in a truck than your enemy, you're in a good spot.
Funnily enough the US military is planning on going to a larger caliber (6.8x51 I think?) that's also predicted to wear out the rifle faster.
Just looked up some of the ballistics, and its called .277 sig fury, and outshines 6.5 creedmoor, so yeah. that's a big boi.
80k PSI, made for a rifle designed by the lowest bidder
(The lowest bidder in this case being Sig Sauer, the company that brought cops and security guards everywhere a gun that just kinda goes off sometimes.)
The standard issue length of barrel is going to be 13inches with that thing which makes it worse lmfao it’s the f-35 of rifles.
Edit: it also comes stock with a suppressor which also makes it worse.