Posted on 06/30/2010 8:53:34 AM PDT by Joe Brower
U.S. Army Begins Shipping M855A1 Enhanced Performance Round (M855A1 EPR)
By David Crane
6/25/2010
The Army announced today it has begun shipping its new 5.56mm cartridge, the M855A1 Enhanced Performance Round, to support warfighters in Afghanistan.
The new M855A1 round is sometimes referred to as 'green ammo'.
The new round replaces the current M855 5.56mm cartridge that has been used by U.S. troops since the early 1980s.
The M855A1 resulted in a number of significant enhancements not found in the current round, officials said. They explained these include improved hard-target capability, more dependable, consistent performance at all distances, improved accuracy, reduced muzzle flash and a higher velocity.
During testing, the M855A1 performed better than current 7.62mm ball ammunition against certain types of targets, blurring the performance differences that previously separated the two rounds.
The projectile incorporates these improvements without adding weight or requiring additional training.
According to Lt. Col. Jeffrey K. Woods, the program’s product manager, the projectile is &'the best general purpose 5.56mm round ever produced'.
Woods said its fielding represents the most significant advancement in general purpose small caliber ammunition in decades.
The Enhanced Performance Round contains an environmentally-friendly projectile that eliminates up to 2,000 tons of lead from the manufacturing process each year in direct support of Army commitment to environmental stewardship.
Woods said the effort is a clear example of how “greening” a previously hazardous material can also provide extremely beneficial performance improvements.
Picatinny Arsenal's Project Manager for Maneuver Ammunition Systems manages the M855A1 program.
Project Manager Chris Grassano called the fielding “the culmination of an Army enterprise effort by a number of organizations, particularly the Army Research Laboratory, Armament Research Development and Engineering Center, Program Executive Office for Ammunition and the Joint Munitions
'The Army utilized advanced science, modeling and analysis to produce the best 5.56mm round possible for the warfighter' he said.
The M855A1 is tailored for use in the M-4 weapon system [Colt M4 Carbine and Colt M4A1 Carbine/SBR (Short Barreled Rifle) platforms] but also improves the performance of the M-16 [M16 assault rifle] and M-249 [FN M249 SAW/LMG] families of weapons.
A true general-purpose round, the M855A1 exceeds the performance of the current M855 against the many different types of targets likely to be encountered in combat.
Prior to initial production, the EPR underwent vigorous testing. Official qualification of the round consisted of a series of side-by-side tests with the current M855.
Overall, the Army fired more than 1 million rounds to ensure the new cartridge met or exceeded all expectations. The M855A1 is without question the most thoroughly tested small caliber round ever fielded, Woods said.
The Army has recently completed the Limited Rate Initial Production phase for the M855A1 and is beginning the follow-on full rate production phase where plans are to procure more than 200 millions rounds over the next 12-15 months.
The M855A1 Enhanced Performance Round is the first environmentally-friendly bullet resulting from a larger 'greening' effort across the Army's Small Caliber Ammunition programs. Other greening efforts include 5.56mm tracer, 7.62mm ball and green primers.
Soldiers in Afghanistan will begin using the new, improved round this summer.
No, I won't be holding my breath....
“....environmentally-friendly projectile...”
...ding....ding....ding
...a red flag goes up for me when I see wording like that.
Whatever...Im sticking to my MK262 Mod1 and Le Mas ammo stash. Drops a deer like a 7mm Rem Mag.....doesn’t even kick or twitch.
I just loves that depleted uranium!
Keep this stuff. I’ll take SS109 or better yet, 30’06 Black Tips.....
I would be happy to see Q3131 back to $300/1000.
Just switch the Phaser off “stun” to “kill” and be done with it!!!
Not for you and I, only for the government. Looks like it has a tungsten or tungsten alloy penetrator as the core. Wouldn’t want us to be able to effectively engage bad guys wearing body armor would you?
This sounds more like good old fashioned bullshit than anything else. They replaced the steel core with a sttel tip and it looks like they increased the mass of the steel. They’d have increase the length of the bullet a bit to maintain the original bullet mass, so it would get an improved ballistic coefficient. They also took the lead styphnate out of the primers. Big deal, they went back to fulminated mercury. If they came up with a new priming compound, it would be impressive.
Whoo hoo, green bullets!
TIGG welding electrodes are 1/8” tungsten rods. Let your imagination run amuck!
Bismuth alloy.
Nawwww....phasers are just too ‘sterile’ Zap’em once and poof, they’re gone....takes all the fun out of a .50 MaDuce hitting the target hard.
Why do you think a change in penetrator material would change the effectiveness when engaging body armor?
Effectiveness in soft body armor penetration has basically to do with two things - the shape of the bullet (pointier the better) and the velocity of the bullet (V50). That’s why those pointy little .17 HMR bullets will go clean through a level IIIA vest that a 9mm or regular .22 round would bounce off of.
Unless you’re talking about hard armor, of course, and I don’t think the bad guys have much of that. Virtually any round shot from a rifle (excepting .22 LR or an extremely anemic handload) will penetrate both IIA or IIIA soft body armor.
M885 is specifically NOT classified as “armor piercing” by the DOJ or the BATF(E).
You can buy it wherever you can find it.
“Black Tip” M995 is the real AP round, and you can’t get that anywhere.
Boy I'd love to see the details on that.
Jason Gillis, a former Army staff sergeant, first witnessed the M855’s shortcomings in 2004 on the streets of Baghdad. He was a squad leader with 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, on patrol when a vehicle began speeding toward his unit.
After several warnings, “both of our M249s opened up instantly, forming a crisscross pattern of tracer that met at the vehicles engine compartment and wind- shield. Within seconds, riflemen and grenadiers were executing magazine changes while the vehicle kept rolling and finally stopped 10 meters from my lead troops,” Gillis recalled in an e-mail to Army Times. He is now a free-lance writer who often focuses on military small-arms issues.
“Assuming the driver was most likely riddled beyond recognition, we were all astounded to see the driver emerge from the vehicle completely unscathed,” Gillis wrote. “Closer inspection revealed that the M855 ammunition had failed to effectively penetrate the vehicle’s windshield despite the fact over 400 rounds were expended at extremely close range and on target.”
I guess the M855 is perfect for our war in Afghanistan where our objective is to "not hurt anyone".
I would still like to see a more powerful weapon as the main battle rifle. I don't think a lighter round will have the energy at long range to effectively stop a threat.
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