Posted on 04/17/2006 3:44:47 PM PDT by Paddlefish
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Mikhail Kalashnikov, designer of the world's most popular assault rifle, says that U.S. soldiers in Iraq are using his invention in preference to their own weapons, proving that his gun is still the best.
"Even after lying in a swamp you can pick up this rifle, aim it and shoot. That's the best job description there is for a gun. Real soldiers know that and understand it," the 86-year-old gunmaker told a weekend news conference in Moscow.
"In Vietnam, American soldiers threw away their M-16 rifles and used (Kalashnikov) AK-47s from dead Vietnamese soldiers, with bullets they captured. That was because the climate is different to America, where M-16s may work properly," he said.
"Look what's happening now: every day on television we see that the Americans in Iraq have my machine guns and assault rifles in their armored vehicles. Even there American rifles don't work properly."
Some U.S. troops in Iraq have reportedly taken to using AK-47s in preference to the standard-issue M-16. The Cold War-era gun, renowned for its durability and easy handling, is plentiful in Iraq.
(Excerpt) Read more at today.reuters.com ...
I carried one for two years.
I don't know why my artillery unit had them, but they were cool. Clunky and not very sexy, but they worked.
"...That second consideration applies if and only if your [opposition force] gives a damn about living through an engagement or saving wounded comrades. Jihadis may not fit that particular bill..."
You've made a very good point. These dimwit Jihadis only seem to understand brute force and overwhelming firepower. If they start to see their terrorist buddies with their heads exploding like watermelons, they might get the notion that continued fighting with vastly superior U.S. soldiers is dangerous to their health.
~ Blue Jays ~
yes - from what i hear, they are really unfond of .50BMG
You've managed to convince me that you don't have even the most basic clue as to what you are talking about. FMJ, aka Military Ball, is specifically designed to stay in one piece for maximum penetration. It is specifically designed not to fragment. Check out the mil-spec on it sometime. You couldn't possibly be more wrong.
The only modern combat ammunition that is designed to fragment is pre-fragmented rounds, and these are not in use in any army in the world. I don't know how in the world you are calling that crap "combat" ammunition. It is designed so that it will not penetrate the interior walls of your house and kill your kids instead of an intruder.
One of the hardest things to do with a high-velocity round is to get it to expand, while staying together. Rifle rounds, like pistol rounds, are SPECIFICALLY designed to retain as much mass as possible for as long as possible. Military Ball ammo does NOT fragment except for extreme conditions. The only exceptions to FMJ staying in one piece are extremely thin walled varmint rounds.
You don't know anything about rifles, pistols, or the ammo used in either. You sound like you are getting all of your vast amount of knowledge from Myth Busters or something.
What?!
I specifically stated that "Pistol rounds are designed to retain as much of the original mass as possible".
And your next three sentences confirmed EXACTLY what I said. Read my post (carefully, this time), then re-read what you posted.
M-16 rounds, unlike pistol rounds, rely on fragmentation as a "primary wounding mechanism". Punching a neat .223 hole doesn't do much if it misses a) vital organs, b) parts of the CNS (central nervous system) or c) veins and arteries. Military FMJ rounds WILL NOT expand in soft tissue, so fragmentation is the only alternative.
People who know what they're talking about realize that the limitation of M-16 ammo is that it fails most when it fails to fragment in human tissue. The next thing you'll be spouting is that M855 is "armor piercing" because of the tungsten rod.
Here is an excellent source from people, like me, who have considerable experience with wide range of 5.56mm ammunition:
www.ammo-oracle.com
I reload TENS OF THOUSANDS of rounds of 5.56mm, 9mm, .40SW and .45ACP every year and consider myself firmly aware of the abilities and limitations of most common ammunition.
And it's not "pre-fragmented" ammunition, it's
"frangible" ammunition, like the Hornady TAP round, which was based on their varmint rounds.
You come off like a jerk and you have the knowlege that proves it.
Oh, and when you go to that site, please note the pics of MILITARY BALL 55gr FMJ that fragmented in ballistic gelatin. Hardly "extreme conditions".
Uh duh, using a scope on someone standing at a bus stop or filling their tank (non-mobile) tends to help put a round in a spot that will kill the target. When you squeeze the trigger on a SAW or M16 in combat you don't always have the time to aim for headshots. When you hit them in the trunk of the body, the minimal damage done to drugged up jihadi's is like a pinprick. They remain a threat until hit in the head or heart, or until you've put enough ventilation in him to make him look like swiss cheese.
Now if we had the luxury of a (dialed in) scoped shot, we too would have been one shot one kill. It's a little difficult though when you need to provide covering fire for a bunch of unarmed civilian truck drivers and you have to cover from your 7 oclock to your 11 oclock, while the occasional RPG comes at you from your 3 oclock.
Ouch.
I didn't know he was still alive.
You have no idea what you are talking about, and you obviously have not seen the kind of damage a .223 can do inside a torso. Who is talking about headshots? The .223 is capable of explosive fragmentation. The 7.62x39 is not, and the .308 only very marginally. (There are complete physics models floating around that can accurately predict the terminal characteristics of cartridge/barrel combinations). For this reason, the .223 effectively delivers more energy and damage to the target than the 7.62x39, even though it has less at the muzzle. There is more mythology and anecdote than substance in the firearm world, unfortunately. Which is why there is a huge market for science-free voodoo in firearms.
There is a lot of big cartridge bravado, but not a lot of substance to back it up. Humans are not hard targets, and anything larger than a pistol bullet has sufficient penetration to do the job just fine. There is an old guy I know with more life-and-death trigger time than anyone else I've ever met, and on an endless range of weapons, who actually preferred the .30 carbine above all else over the decades (no accounting for taste). While I would find that to be a pretty questionable choice myself, he made the observation that the people he shot reacted pretty much the same way on average no matter what military firearm he was using, so cartridge stopped being a deciding factor in weapon selection. There is probably some good wisdom in there somewhere.
There is no man-portable Hammer of God weapon. You can find plenty of stories of people taking multiple .45 shots to the torso and head(!) without going down. I've seen enough bizarre failures to stop or penetrate with phallic-compensation uber-cartridges (and gobs with mediocre cartridges like the .308) that I understand the limited utility of anecdotes. Bullets are not a reliable way of killing people. As assault weapon cartridges go, the .223 is pretty damn good, though I suspect more by accident than design.
I don't know which ammo maker you work for but you lost me.
I spent 13 months in Iraq(03-04), 10 months in Bosnia(01), 1 year is Korea(90), time in Panama(98-99) and El Salvador(87).
In Iraq, I spent 16-18 days straight running convoys from Balad to Scania, through the heart of the Sunni Triangle, and through the now famous "Triangle of Death" south of Baghdad. As a platoon sergeant, I did everything from team leader, driver, SAW or .50cal gunner, mission leader, TOC operations etc.
I have enough stick time of the various weapons systems that we used, and I have read the reports of others in my platoon/company and what they dealt with.
You mention the DC sniper, then you say, "who is talking about headshots?" You mention "tumbling is a myth"; I was referring to the 'tumbling' that occurs inside the target once hit. You now reference that after stating that "tumbling" is a myth.
Everything I state is from my personal experience and the troops that served with me. None of this is theoretical for me. You can show me whatever ballistics reports you want, but when you hit Haji and he keeps shooting, and you shoot him again and again, then finally he dies and is no longer a threat, then that in my mind means the round is NOT effective.
Bullet manufacturers spend years developing new rounds for the specific purpose of AVOIDING core/jacket separation. The UN treaty which calls for full metal jacket ammunition did so for the specific purpose of ELIMINATING expanding/exploding/fragmenting ammunition from the battlefield.
One reason that soldiers in Iraq are carrying the M-14 (or the AK-47, to get back to the article) instead of the M-16 is because the .223 cannot penetrate a cinder block and kill the guy on the other side, while the .308 or 7.62x39 can. If the FMJ round was designed to fly apart at contact with human flesh, there is no way that it would penetrate a cinder block AND STILL BE INTACT.
CAN Ball ammo separate? Yes. Of course it can. Even the jacket of the Nosler Partition can separate from the core. Are either FMJ or Nosler Partitions designed to do so? HELL NO! The position that you are taking is utterly and completely absurd.
You claim to have loaded 10s of thousands of rounds of ammunition. Anybody can say that, and I don't believe a word of it. How can you possibly have loaded ANY ammo and know so little about either its design or its performance? I'm not buying what you're selling.
Talking to you is a waste of time. I'm done.
"The purpose of the 7.62mm "open-tip" MatchKing bullet is to provide maximum accuracy at very long range. Like most 5.56mm and 7.62mm military ball bullets, it may fragment upon striking its target, although the probability of its fragmentation is not as great as some military ball bullets currently in use by some nations. Bullet fragmentation is not a design characteristic, however, nor a purpose for use of the MatchKing by United State Army snipers. Wounds caused by MatchKing ammunition are similar to those caused by a fully jacketed military ball bullet, which is legal under the law of war, when compared at the same ranges and under the same conditions. The military necessity for its use-- its ability to offer maximum accuracy at very long ranges--is complemented by the high degree of discriminate fire it offers in the hands of a trained sniper. It not only meets, but exceeds, the law of war obligations of the United States for use in combat.
Good.
Leave.
You obviously have no experience and don't know what you're talking about. I'll take my decades of experience in the military, shooting my own AR-15s and reloading my own ammo AND THE FACTS and let you RUN AWAY.
BTW, most military ammunition (specifically, 5.56mm and 7.62mm) DOES NOT survive the penetration of walls, especially the clay and brick of the middle east. Fragments are all that remain. How do I know? I've tried it in a controlled environment. They shatter and produce spalling from the brick and mortar. Fragments of those smaller bullets are all the penetrate. When they really want to cut through a building, they use the M-2 .50cal machinegun because the 500gr projectile survives (mostly).
Again, go and LOOK AT THE PICTURES of fragmented 55gr and 62gr 5.56mm bullets. They speak for themselves and you cannot, no matter how hard you try, refute that.
Current testing with shorter barreled weapons like the M-4 have met with differing opinions, because the 14.5" barrel fo the M-4 is considered (by some) not to produce the velocities required for reliable fragmentation at intermediate (200m) combat ranges. That, specifically, is why the USMC has chosen the 20" barrel of the M-16A4 over the M-4 as a standard-issue weapon. They specifically mentioned FRAGMENTATION when they refused the M-4 carbine.
Yes.
Go away.
One more thing:
The reason the US military uses the Matchking (I reload about 1000rnds of 69gr MatchKing EVERY YEAR) is that it's a more accurate round. When you pour and swage an open-tip bullet, you get more consistent results from round to round. FMJ is poured from the base, leaving inconsistencies in the bullets. The open tip of the MatchKing is considered minimal and not a "wounding mechanism", which is why the US Army Judge Advocate General (JAG) has approved them for use over existing Hague protocols (which we observe).
The reason the BTHP (Boat Tailed Hollow Point) doesn't fragment like FMJ rounds is that the base is jacketed, leaving very little from for the pressed lead to go. The base catchs the force and holds it together. In an FMJ, the lead is free to fragment and bleed out the open tail. However, when either of these rounds hit a brick wall, they shatter without fail.
But really, I don't think you'd know the difference from FMJ and BTHP, so why bother.
Just .. Go away.
"By better do you mean bigger and heavier?"
Basically, yes.
My buddies are clammoring to get on the list for a shotgun.
Haji covers himself up with body armor and the local Yellow pages and a man hole cover while driving his suicide car. He needs to die instantly.
Save issue with the 9mm, IMHO. The .40 or .45 would have been a much better choice.
Is this the "will penetrate a steel pot at 500 meters" argument?
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