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
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