Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Long Range Hunting 223 a bad mistake for the military

Dear Rogue

As for 'talking out my ass'.....I guess that would also apply to the upper echelon that called a bunch of us 'old heads' back to Ft Hood several years ago at the beginning of all this BS in Iraq to teach marksmanship training to several thousand 'ground-pounders' getting ready to be deployed to the ME!! Yeah....we're talking out our ass alright! Tell that to all the men that came through our courses and they'd tell you to stick it up ya ass! Many of 'em had been in as long as 16 years and each and every one we trained/put through our courses walked physically by us and thanked us for what we had taught them; many saying that they had learned more in ten days of our training reference marksmanship than they had been given their entire time in service!! As a matter of fact some of 'your men' may have been a few of the ones that we trained if they were US Army!!

Post a pic dude . . . . .

Sure you took a couple . . . .

No disrespect intended.

BMT

Well just who the hell are "your men", inquiring minds want to know? The average Marine is a passable shot, a lot of them are quite good, and not just the snipers, because the Marine Corps thinks riflecraft is important. The US Army hasn't valued riflecraft and marksmanship for nearly a century.

When MSG Rick Boucher stood up the SF Sniper School at Ft Bragg, all the chitbird colonels at bunker 4 at Benning said, you can't have a sniper school, so he just changed the damn name to SOTIC and kept truckin'.

You wanna know when the "brass" got interested in marksmanship? When a few of their buddies started getting their brains blown out from some Chechens who could shoot.

Yeah, I just got out in January of 2007. I think of my 7 years in, we went to the range 5 times. Don't make me go into how pathetic the range time was.....

Sad.

It has to do with money. Bullets cost money. With defense budgets continually cut, then so does our level of training.

Sharpsman, warrior training center let you had out ammo on a zero range?

I couldn't get off at that time as I was invited being a top level national service rifle shooter at the time. The call back for instructors was for SDM.. a sorta mini version of a sniper and the issues there, mostly that they were bringing the M14 and optics out of the mothballs. Almost none of the instructors had mileage on that weapon and that was the weapon that I started with. It was simply to get up to speed the quickest.
FWIW the folks I dealt with, are the folks who think its stupid to move away from the M4... they, to the last one, tell me if you have an issue with the M4 not doing its job, its certainly not the weapon, but the operator(save for a few cases, and you ahve those with any platform..lemons if you will....)

Jeff

BTW won a couple nice medals in matches over the years at Polk.....

Lack of decent marksmanship training is one issue. Lack of quality range time is another issue. Lack of quality ranges is a huge issue. All this stuff was addressed in that CGS paper some MAJ wrote, "Taking Back the Inf Half-Kilometer". Lots of M855 green tip are woefully inaccurate, not to mention the projectile is designed for the last rifle and two wars ago. All this is why SF put the SPR rifle project together.

This thread has it all; some good info and some myths and downright BS (like GPS satellites in geosync orbits.)

One must realize the military has to work within the parameters of the Hague conventions when it comes to small arms, hence the use of FMJ bullets, which are neither as precise or as lethal as other configurations.

It IS all about the bullet and this is why the .mil has been changing and trying out various configuration. The 55 was designed to yaw and break apart and that needs the 1:12 or 1:14 twist; 1:7, not so much. The 62gr (aka M855 and SS109) has a 10gr steel penetrator in the tip, designed to penetrate Soviet body armor. The new Mk 318 SOST 5.56 has a lead core in front and a copper lower half, sort of like a Trophy Bonded Bear Claw.

Definitely, the 55 and 62 are not long range rounds, but the Ar can certainly get to 1000 yards with the proper ammo, trust me on this. The limiting factor for the AR is the size of the magazine.

Oh, BTW, the caseless ammo had a big problem that was difficult to overcome; heat. I love that recap posted a few pages back that touts the cook-off temperature of the G11 as being so much higher than usual. There is a reason for that; because the G11 gets very hot. When you fire a round in an AR-15, don't pick up the case right away lest you get burned quite badly. On the other had, in a bolt action rifle, you can fire the round, open the bolt and pick the case right out of it without getting bothered. You see in a semi auto, the case takes away a great deal of the heat of ignition before it has time to more from the brass to the chamber walls. The bolt action allows the case to transfer most or all of its heat to the chamber. The G11 had no way to get rid of this heat so it would build up quickly.

The temperatures given are in Celsius and that sort of minimizes that for us Americans. What's 135C between friends? Well when we remmember that 100C is boiling water, we pause. 135C is 275F. The 190C to 240C given as the cook-off range for the G11 translates to between 375 to 464 Farenheit. Why does the G11 ammo need such a high cook-off range? Answer is because the G11 gets VERY hot. I would think the last thing I need is to hug my 300 degree Farenheit rifle in combat.

This is not true, how do you think snipers get by with using Sierra Match Kings? The bullet can be designed for accuracy, you can use an SMK (because the hollowpoint is the most accurate bullet design), you can't use a Barnes X.

The reason big army doesn't use them is cost, combined with extreme ignorance of the importance of riflecraft. This is why SF had to come up with it's own "sharpshooter" rifle and ammo, the SPR project.

Seems as if some of you guys are a little too young to know about FMJ Match Bullets! I cut my teeth on shooting these and when I got with the USAAMU aka US Army Advanced Marksmanship Unit at Ft. Benning this was all we shot through National Match M1s and they were highly accurate! Shooting from machine rest when testing, some of the Frankfort Arsenal Lots of ammo would hold 4" groups through our rifles from 600 yards! This same ammo was used quite extensively in VN and one of my buddies made quite good use of it while there! His name?? Carlos Hathcock!

http://riflemansjournal.blogspot.com/2010/07/full-metal-jacket-match-bullet.html

Sorry to disagree with you, but it is indeed true. The 77gr SMK had to be blessed by military lawyers and the reason they were accepted is that the bullet is not designed to expand. The hollow point is a by product of manufacture as the core is swaged in from the front to preserve the critical base, and the ogive is closed up. There was even an incident recently where a military lawyer barred usage of the Mk262 ammo, until someone higher up explained it to him.

It really does not matter, because the Hague treaties are very specific to the effect that expanding bullets cannot be used if the two combating nations are signatories of the treaty. If one side is not, or another nation joins in the fight and is not a signatory to the treaty, then it's legal to ignore the treaty. The Taliban is not a signatory nation to the Treaty, I don't think North Vietnam was either. Regardless, the US military chooses to abide by the treaties regardless of who we are fighting. I guess from a logistical and training POV, it's the right thing to do, but there are so many far superior bullets.

Very cool.

Post a pic.

BMT

Hey BMT, have you talked to lee latley?

Yeah whatever... you think we are all 18? I have a box of M118 with 173s sittting right here beside my computer... year date of my birth is why it sits here....
But if you think the FMJ of yesteryear holds a candle to current HP bullets... you are not paying attention.. why else do you think that there are very FEW old records anymore... the rifles and ammo continue to get better. 4 inches is a ho hum group at 600 from a cradle.

Now OTOH Carlos was a master woodsman, and a great shooter, just think what he could have done these days with current weapons and ammo. I have spoken with Carlos a few times, I have spoken with his son many times since we all shoot service rifle. Fine family. Carlos Jr would be the first to telll you things have come a long way!

The AMU Ft Benning stays on the cutting edge.... I left more than a bit of my long range 223 ammo there for them to test.... results were a load that shot the ONLY 200 at 1000 with a service rifle ever in competition.

Guess I know a hair about things too.

That's a fact. The graduation rate at SOTIC went up when that crap ammo finally got replaced. When you realize that the worn out M70 and the ammo that Hathcock had access to were, at best a 2moa system, he gains quite a bit of luster.

Take a knee,
You a sotic grad?

The U.S. is not a signature of the Hague Accord

I'd like to know that load......

Class 3-87. MSG Rick Boucher was NCOIC (last I heard, he's still there as a civilian instructor). Lambert, Simpson, and Zavitz were the instructors. Dean McHalis was my sniper buddy.

Those were pre M-24 days, we shot air force pilfered M700's with McMillan barrels and stocks that Zavitz and Lambert built. All our iron sight stuff was done with M14-M21's.

Take a knee

Thanks for your service to this country. I hope we get our country back for you too, its time for us to do our job for once.

Jeff