Standard cartridge controversy

BattleRifleG3 · 05-14-2002, 01:01 AM

Ok, so we all have our opinions on which is better, 223, 308, 7.62x39mm; And the people choosing which cartridges become standard issue probably don't give a rip what we think. But we can still think. And I was thinking, what route could we have gone? 308 to 223 is a big step, 30 carbine to 223 is big in different ways. Do you suppose there might have been a good cartridge choice in between?
I wonder if we may have been better off with a 7mm or 6.5mm cartridge with a 80-100gr bullet propelled at about 875-925m/s with about the energy of a 7.62x39mm, but faster and smaller. Maybe heavier bullets could have been loaded for snipers, maybe some with steel cored.

What do you guys think?

jarcp · 05-14-2002, 07:08 AM

I do know for a time the US heavily considered the 7.62x39 round, I don't know why they didn't though.

BattleRifleG3 · 05-14-2002, 08:01 PM

I would think we'd have a serious problem adopting the Soviet cartridge. Maybe one with the same ballistics, but a different cartridge, maybe .308" instead of .311". Though a few of our guys did ditch the M16 and pick up AKs.
Now if we had adopted it, what would we have fired it from? That would be very interesting.

NRAJOE · 05-14-2002, 09:35 PM

SHOULD HAVE STAYED WITH THE .308 ! THE WHOLE IDEA IN A WAR IS TO MAKE SURE THE GUY YOU SHOOT DOESN'T GET A 2ND CHANCE. WHOLE LOT LESS OF A CHANCE WITH .308 THAN .223 . :assult: :nod:

jerry · 05-14-2002, 09:38 PM

True,
I think they wanted the average infntryman to be able to carry lots of bulltets. then it came down to do we really want to kill, or just put the enemy out of action and take away his ability to fight. I think there are more politics at work than ballistics.

Mike southers · 05-15-2002, 08:55 AM

.30 Carbine to .223?? The .30 carbine is not the 7.62 x 51 NATO round, thank God!! Puny little piece of feces that it is.
When we started worrying about excess weight (Nam brought that on when guys almost drowned trying to swim with M14s, 8 magazines, etc.), we should have considered a rework of the 6.5 Swiss or .260 Rem. Both throw up to a 140 grain bullet at good velocities.
Many guys (like myself) had a choice between an XM16E1 which jammed often due to tolerance problems, or using an AK-47 which was not known to jam. Luckily for me, the M-60 gunner went to the mortar platoon. I took the M-60 without a moment's hesitation.

colt45 · 05-15-2002, 09:19 AM

Mine was an M70 in 7.62 later I was issued a second rifle in 50 cal
I'm not saying I never had a M16 just that my spoter usualy carried it not me. We didn't have much use for it unles we need fire for E&E but I saw him make several shots at 500-800 yrds with one shot knock downs don't know for sure if they where instant kills but they where definatly knock downs.
I agree we should have stayed with the larger cal.
We all hear about the 223's short comeings I wounder how this new Russian 5.45 X39 will do? 5.56 or 5.45 they both sound small to me but I'm not in a hurry to be on the other end of one to test it either.
I have heard some disturbing thing from a few fellow jar heads about the poor preformance of the 223 in Afgan. Most tell me its due to the 55 grn bullet used it does not stableize in the shorter A4 barrles they too said they would have killed to have some black hills 77grn. bullets. not that they wern't trying anyway.

Eric · 05-15-2002, 10:29 AM

My work gun is a M4A1 and it constantly jams. We get new ones every two years (they are pretty much shot out by that time). For seven months in Africa I carried an AK47. The AK never malfunctioned once and I shot it ALOT (both full of sand and clean). And for stopping power, that 7.62x39 would knock a camel right off his feet. But, if I was king for a day I would vote for the 6MM, It's a great basturd round. It's just a 6MM bullet loaded into a resized .223 casing. In the early 80's alot of AR style rifles were built in 6MM. A guy once told me that the main reason for this was because it was illegal to transport a weapon chambered in a NATO cartridge overseas. I wonder if that was true or he was just blowing smoke...hmmm. Good Shooting! Eric

BattleRifleG3 · 05-21-2002, 06:50 PM

Mike- I meant that the difference between 30 carbine and 223 was big in different ways. Big and slow vs small and fast, whereas the 308 is big AND fast, just not as extremely fast as 223. I think recoil is similar, as I recently got to fire an M1 Carbine and Mini-14 the same day.

Mike southers · 05-22-2002, 12:16 PM

G3,
I think we should have considered something in the 6-6.5mm range. The .223 was/is not the stopper (check out the change in bullet weights between the M16A1 and the M16A2 (abut 55 grains to 68 grains)) it should be. I would have liked to have seen the 6.5 x 55 Swiss or something similar. Being able to carry extra ammo didn't help a bit when the ****ed rifle jammed after 18 rounds!! Again, something Picatinny Arsenal had their fingers in on the design. Stupidest bunch of engineers anyone ever gathered in one spot.
To this date. if it looks like Mattel made it, I have no use for it.
My beef with the .30 carbine is it shoots an under powered round incapable of stopping most people. The GI's of WWII wouldn't carry it if they could help it. The "grease gun" found great favor because of the M1 carbine.

FEG · 06-14-2002, 07:46 PM

IMHO, 7.62x39 (or something similar) IS the perfect compromise for the military. The grunt can still carry relatively more rounds, etc. I seriously doubt that anyone who shoots for pleasure would want anything less than .308 in combat for themselves. However, to a relatively untrained person, the soft recoil of 7.62x39 is pretty forgiving. Again, .308 has more effective terminal performance, but 7.62x39 still clearly beats .223.

.308 is more attractive to civilians like us, because we cannot experience the horror that is 7.62x51 full-auto from a shoulder weapon... I haven't myself, but the early Vietnam bunch all say that it wasn't a realistic option from an M-14. As long as we are limited to semi-auto rifles, .308 may be a better choice than 7.62x39. Also, the cheap foreign 7.62x39 could dry up at any time, at the whimsy of the BATF.

I like them both! To me, it is rifle's parallel to the eternal 9mm vs. .45 ACP blather. I would hope that no caliber could gain the worldwide military popularity of any of the rounds discussed and fail to perform adequately... (If I have any doubts, it's about .223!)

BattleRifleG3 · 06-17-2002, 04:10 PM

308 and 7.62x39 are my friends. When I want an exclusively target rifle, I'll get a 223.

8mm Vigilante · 07-27-2002, 01:01 AM

i think the military should go back to .308, i mean even with .223 they still train troops to not spray and pray, which to my way of thinking would be the only reason to carry .223, plus the current M16's don't even have a full auto option, so why not just go back to .308 or even adopt 7.62x39, and continue to train the same way, i think that could be a very affective solution.
-Jesse

Indy · 07-28-2002, 12:08 PM

I have often wondered how the M16/ARs chambered for a 243win. handle. Armalite chambers some of their AR10s in that caliber. It may be ideal in a M16 type weapon.
The answer for the Vietnam type war may be the .300 Whisper or 6mm, 6.5mm or 7mm TCU. The Whisper uses a .221 Rem case and the others use a .223 Rem case. The only major change to a M16 would be a new chambered barrel. As many of you know the M16 doesn't meet the same durability traits as an AK. I am not sure we have ever created a firearm that meets the AKs level.
Even if the military would change to a 7.62 X 39 sized round, a squad would still need a M60 or possibly a M14 for more firepower.
Indy

05-14-2002, 01:01 AM	#1
BattleRifleG3 Super Moderator Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Western PA Posts: 11,401 Images: 13	Standard cartridge controversy Ok, so we all have our opinions on which is better, 223, 308, 7.62x39mm; And the people choosing which cartridges become standard issue probably don't give a rip what we think. But we can still think. And I was thinking, what route could we have gone? 308 to 223 is a big step, 30 carbine to 223 is big in different ways. Do you suppose there might have been a good cartridge choice in between? I wonder if we may have been better off with a 7mm or 6.5mm cartridge with a 80-100gr bullet propelled at about 875-925m/s with about the energy of a 7.62x39mm, but faster and smaller. Maybe heavier bullets could have been loaded for snipers, maybe some with steel cored. What do you guys think?

05-14-2002, 07:08 AM	#2
jarcp Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: OKC, OK Posts: 253	I do know for a time the US heavily considered the 7.62x39 round, I don't know why they didn't though. __________________ Reed's Ammunition & Research 1209 SW 129th St. Oklahoma City, OK 73170 www.reedsammo.com info@reedsammo.com

05-14-2002, 08:01 PM	#3
BattleRifleG3 Super Moderator Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Western PA Posts: 11,401 Images: 13	I would think we'd have a serious problem adopting the Soviet cartridge. Maybe one with the same ballistics, but a different cartridge, maybe .308" instead of .311". Though a few of our guys did ditch the M16 and pick up AKs. Now if we had adopted it, what would we have fired it from? That would be very interesting. __________________ Trust is earned, not... GIVEN away. - Worf

05-14-2002, 09:35 PM	#4
NRAJOE Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Toledo,OH Posts: 19,043 Images: 3	SHOULD HAVE STAYED WITH THE .308 ! THE WHOLE IDEA IN A WAR IS TO MAKE SURE THE GUY YOU SHOOT DOESN'T GET A 2ND CHANCE. WHOLE LOT LESS OF A CHANCE WITH .308 THAN .223 . :assult: :nod: __________________ U.S. Army 1976-1979 237th Combat Engineers Heilbronn, Germany

05-14-2002, 09:38 PM	#5
jerry Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 10,870 Images: 9 Blog Entries: 1	True, I think they wanted the average infntryman to be able to carry lots of bulltets. then it came down to do we really want to kill, or just put the enemy out of action and take away his ability to fight. I think there are more politics at work than ballistics. __________________ I'm a down home back woods redneck

05-15-2002, 08:55 AM	#6
Mike southers Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: middle coast Posts: 162	.30 Carbine to .223?? The .30 carbine is not the 7.62 x 51 NATO round, thank God!! Puny little piece of feces that it is. When we started worrying about excess weight (Nam brought that on when guys almost drowned trying to swim with M14s, 8 magazines, etc.), we should have considered a rework of the 6.5 Swiss or .260 Rem. Both throw up to a 140 grain bullet at good velocities. Many guys (like myself) had a choice between an XM16E1 which jammed often due to tolerance problems, or using an AK-47 which was not known to jam. Luckily for me, the M-60 gunner went to the mortar platoon. I took the M-60 without a moment's hesitation.

05-15-2002, 09:19 AM	#7
colt45 Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Occupied Territories of New York (Buffalo) Posts: 2,898	Mine was an M70 in 7.62 later I was issued a second rifle in 50 cal I'm not saying I never had a M16 just that my spoter usualy carried it not me. We didn't have much use for it unles we need fire for E&E but I saw him make several shots at 500-800 yrds with one shot knock downs don't know for sure if they where instant kills but they where definatly knock downs. I agree we should have stayed with the larger cal. We all hear about the 223's short comeings I wounder how this new Russian 5.45 X39 will do? 5.56 or 5.45 they both sound small to me but I'm not in a hurry to be on the other end of one to test it either. I have heard some disturbing thing from a few fellow jar heads about the poor preformance of the 223 in Afgan. Most tell me its due to the 55 grn bullet used it does not stableize in the shorter A4 barrles they too said they would have killed to have some black hills 77grn. bullets. not that they wern't trying anyway. __________________ "A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity" -Sigmund Freud, General Introduction to Psychoanalysis "If guns cause crime, all of mine are defective." - Ted Nugent "Self-defense is Nature's eldest law." -John Dryden

05-15-2002, 10:29 AM	#8
Eric Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: USA Posts: 673	My work gun is a M4A1 and it constantly jams. We get new ones every two years (they are pretty much shot out by that time). For seven months in Africa I carried an AK47. The AK never malfunctioned once and I shot it ALOT (both full of sand and clean). And for stopping power, that 7.62x39 would knock a camel right off his feet. But, if I was king for a day I would vote for the 6MM, It's a great basturd round. It's just a 6MM bullet loaded into a resized .223 casing. In the early 80's alot of AR style rifles were built in 6MM. A guy once told me that the main reason for this was because it was illegal to transport a weapon chambered in a NATO cartridge overseas. I wonder if that was true or he was just blowing smoke...hmmm. Good Shooting! Eric __________________ I told him straight up, "You are an idiot for bringing those two fists to this gun fight." Last edited by Eric; 05-15-2002 at 10:38 AM.

05-21-2002, 06:50 PM	#9
BattleRifleG3 Super Moderator Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Western PA Posts: 11,401 Images: 13	Mike- I meant that the difference between 30 carbine and 223 was big in different ways. Big and slow vs small and fast, whereas the 308 is big AND fast, just not as extremely fast as 223. I think recoil is similar, as I recently got to fire an M1 Carbine and Mini-14 the same day. __________________ Trust is earned, not... GIVEN away. - Worf

05-22-2002, 12:16 PM	#10
Mike southers Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: middle coast Posts: 162	G3, I think we should have considered something in the 6-6.5mm range. The .223 was/is not the stopper (check out the change in bullet weights between the M16A1 and the M16A2 (abut 55 grains to 68 grains)) it should be. I would have liked to have seen the 6.5 x 55 Swiss or something similar. Being able to carry extra ammo didn't help a bit when the ****ed rifle jammed after 18 rounds!! Again, something Picatinny Arsenal had their fingers in on the design. Stupidest bunch of engineers anyone ever gathered in one spot. To this date. if it looks like Mattel made it, I have no use for it. My beef with the .30 carbine is it shoots an under powered round incapable of stopping most people. The GI's of WWII wouldn't carry it if they could help it. The "grease gun" found great favor because of the M1 carbine.

06-14-2002, 07:46 PM	#11
FEG Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Behind the Iron Curtain Posts: 517	To Risk Sounding Like a Broken Record... IMHO, 7.62x39 (or something similar) IS the perfect compromise for the military. The grunt can still carry relatively more rounds, etc. I seriously doubt that anyone who shoots for pleasure would want anything less than .308 in combat for themselves. However, to a relatively untrained person, the soft recoil of 7.62x39 is pretty forgiving. Again, .308 has more effective terminal performance, but 7.62x39 still clearly beats .223. .308 is more attractive to civilians like us, because we cannot experience the horror that is 7.62x51 full-auto from a shoulder weapon... I haven't myself, but the early Vietnam bunch all say that it wasn't a realistic option from an M-14. As long as we are limited to semi-auto rifles, .308 may be a better choice than 7.62x39. Also, the cheap foreign 7.62x39 could dry up at any time, at the whimsy of the BATF. I like them both! To me, it is rifle's parallel to the eternal 9mm vs. .45 ACP blather. I would hope that no caliber could gain the worldwide military popularity of any of the rounds discussed and fail to perform adequately... (If I have any doubts, it's about .223!)

06-17-2002, 04:10 PM	#12
BattleRifleG3 Super Moderator Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Western PA Posts: 11,401 Images: 13	308 and 7.62x39 are my friends. When I want an exclusively target rifle, I'll get a 223. __________________ Trust is earned, not... GIVEN away. - Worf

07-27-2002, 01:01 AM	#13
8mm Vigilante Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: South of Sanity Posts: 498	i think the military should go back to .308, i mean even with .223 they still train troops to not spray and pray, which to my way of thinking would be the only reason to carry .223, plus the current M16's don't even have a full auto option, so why not just go back to .308 or even adopt 7.62x39, and continue to train the same way, i think that could be a very affective solution. -Jesse __________________ Never succumb to tyranny Refuse/Resist! Mauser Kar98k 7.92x57 "Retreat?, Retreat hell, we just got here!!!!"

07-28-2002, 12:08 PM	#14
Indy Senior Member Join Date: May 2002 Location: Indiana Posts: 331	I have often wondered how the M16/ARs chambered for a 243win. handle. Armalite chambers some of their AR10s in that caliber. It may be ideal in a M16 type weapon. The answer for the Vietnam type war may be the .300 Whisper or 6mm, 6.5mm or 7mm TCU. The Whisper uses a .221 Rem case and the others use a .223 Rem case. The only major change to a M16 would be a new chambered barrel. As many of you know the M16 doesn't meet the same durability traits as an AK. I am not sure we have ever created a firearm that meets the AKs level. Even if the military would change to a 7.62 X 39 sized round, a squad would still need a M60 or possibly a M14 for more firepower. Indy