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A 10 lb. battle rifle sounds good until you have to carry that thing.
7 mags is a basic load. I also have to carry a radio, extra batteries for the radio, water, food, map, map markers, protractor, notebook, pens and that doesn't include my body armor (front, back and side plates), helmet and other things that I cannot even remember right now.
With the elevation in AFG, mountainous terrain, heat/cold, what makes you think guys want to carry more weight?
All that @#$! looks cool until you have to carry it for a nice 12 mile walk while also looking for guys that want to kill you.
Oh come on! All that stuff is easy... from our comfortable chairs at home.
It always seem bass-ackwards to me that the State Dept. spends $600,000 to increase its facebook likes, while the soldier is stuck with a 50-yr-old cartridge that was questioned by many from the beginning. Now there is much improved stuff out there, such as the 6.5 Grendel. Take a look at this table comparing the 5.56 out of an M4 to the 6.5 Grendel.
At 200 yds, the .556 M4 round is down to 469 ft lbs while the 6.5 Grendel is still at 1102. I'm not too much of an expert here, but 469 ft lbs is about what you get out of a 9mm handgun, and likely will not penetrate any body armor. The difference is that the 6.5 Grendel has a much higher ballistic coefficient (BC).
ft lbs of energy has little to do with penetrating body armor. Projectile (bullet) design is a far more important factor. Coupled with velocity, design not weight of the projectile is the primary factor in defeating body armor.
A 9mm bullet fired from a pistol can indeed penetrate body armor if the design of the bullet is optimized to do so.
Also, there is no such thing as knockdown power when it comes to rifles. The energy imparted by a bullet fired from a rifle or pistol can't knockdown a human, the human falls because of other philological affects to them.
To prove (or better yet-disprove) the myth of knockdown power, simply take whatever rifle or handgun you prefer and fire it at a human sized silhouette, it won't get knocked down. It might sway a little but that is about it. Make sure to use a material for the silhouette that will be sure to absorb and not deflect the energy from the bullet impact.
That doesn't mean one cartridge or caliber is any better or worse than another, it depends on the use but knockdown power? There is no such thing until things get a lot bigger. There is a lot of misunderstanding when it comes to power and ammunition. While 1000 ft/lbs might seem like a lot and comparing that to the weight of say a 180 pound man, you'd think the 1000 ft/lbs should easily take the man off his feet. It doesn't work that way. The amount of energy is dissipated in such a short time it doesn't have the duration to knock the man down. It would be quite different if the bullet could sustain the 1000 ft/lbs over a longer period of time, even as short as 1 second but it can't.
The argument over bullet caliber and weight will never be finished because once you buy into the myths it is hard to back up and see things for what they really are. Then there are the Shooting Times and Guns magazines and similar. They are little more than ad sellers and when you read what Ayoob and his cohort Sanow wrote you'd probably start throwing out those gun magazines.
And it is super heavy so either soldiers carry less ammo or start to drop other essential gear.
Meh. No soldier ever feels he has enough ammo.
Still, we were expected to go into battle with 5 x 20 rounds plus what we'd carry for the MG-3 - admittedly, that tended to amount to several hundred rounds per man. If plan A calls for firing more than 100 rds/soldier with no resupply, perhaps it's time to line up a plan B.
And it is super heavy so either soldiers carry less ammo or start to drop other essential gear.
Still, the supply side should be taken care of, which was sorta the point I was making.
Also, the FN-FAL is astonishingly close to what the Brits call "squaddie-proof" - it's virtually impossible for soldiers to break, and that's a damn rare quality in a piece of military gear. Soldiers can break anything.
Last edited by Dane_in_LA; 08-26-2013 at 03:25 PM..
You can ask for more rounds. 7.62 is twice the weight as 5.56 for just the ammo, let alone the increase in rifle weight.
A combat load out can easily be over 100 pounds and soldiers frequently carry more. A standard load out is 8 30 round mags, plus one in the gun plus what ever side arm. That is 270 rounds of primary and probably 45 rounds of secondary. Then you get to carry that around all day long.
I was just answering the question posed by the OP, not advocating a move back to .7.62.
If your troops are exhausted at the end of a day because their battle load was too heavy, you are making them carry too much crap. A troop loaded up with 100 pounds of anything can't do a whole lot until he loses it. Meanwhile, the enemy was running through the bush in their underwear and ran back in just as fast, because they could.
Woodrow Wilson's VP Thomas Marshall famously said in a Senate debate, "what this country really needs is a good 5 cent cigar.'
In the same vein, why is it so tough for us to produce a decent battle rifle? I got to thinking about this after reading the late Chris Kyle's book, American Sniper. In the book he talks about the SR-25, an AR-10 type rifle that is issued by the Navy. He said that it had a reputation for jamming, and 'other issues.' He liked the concept, but concludes that the gun was 'never one of my favorites.'
I have owned and shot M1As for quite a few years. I consider them reliable, although reputedly it is a design prone to 'parts breakage.' The big disadvantage in today's world is in optics mounting. The M14 was designed strictly with iron sights in mind. There are solutions to this--the best appears to be the Sage EBR stock. M14s with this stock have been sent to Afghanistan, and reportedly this system was so popular that troops did not want to turn them in for maintenance, for fear that they wouldn't get them back. The downside is that the M14 with Sage stock is a 15 pound gun. Hardly ideal. I have one of the old Prof. Ordnance AR's that weighs 3.9 pounds, almost 1/4th of an EBR. Granted it is .223, but it hints at what is possible.
Why is it so tough for the gun industry to produce a reliable, reasonably priced, reasonably light battle rifle that can accept modern optics, and weighs no more than 10 lbs (or even less).
I think you better stick with the 5 cent cigar and forget about a 10 pound battle rifle. A ten pound battle rifle is too heavy considering all of the other gear a soldier needs to carry. Have you carried an M14 all day? Armchair "quarterbacks" are a dime a dozen...
Also, there is no such thing as knockdown power when it comes to rifles. The energy imparted by a bullet fired from a rifle or pistol can't knockdown a human, the human falls because of other philological affects to them.
I don't believe I ever used the term 'knockdown power.' Obviously if a bullet could knock down a human target, the recoil would also knock down the shooter (Newton's 3rd law). Also philology is a branch of linguistics, and 'affects' is a verb, not a noun. I think you meant to say 'physiological effects.'
I think you better stick with the 5 cent cigar and forget about a 10 pound battle rifle. A ten pound battle rifle is too heavy considering all of the other gear a soldier needs to carry. Have you carried an M14 all day? Armchair "quarterbacks" are a dime a dozen...
Again 10 lb is just a round number I tossed out. Yes I have carried an M1A(civ version) all day, and I am a small guy. I run marathons and weigh all of 135 lbs (130 when in peak fitness). My M1A weighs about 8.5 lbs actually. I think many an M4 weighs that much with rails, scope, offset red dot, flashlight, etc.
Granted, the M14 EBR now used by the military actually 15 lbs, but that's because it is a kludged-together system. That's why I say we need something new. We need a good rifle with the functional ability of the M14 EBR, but with 5-8 lbs of excess weight trimmed off.
That's why I say we need something new. We need a good rifle with the functional ability of the M14 EBR, but with 5-8 lbs of excess weight trimmed off.
Under normal operating conditions (See Note), exactly what functional abilities would replacing the current M16/M4 standard with this lightweight M14 give than the current issue rifles do not?
One other point I'll mention is while you may be able to shave weight off the rifle, you cannot shave weight off the ammunition, you can carry 240 rounds of 5.56 NATO in 8 magazines for ~8lbs of additional weight, to carry 240 rounds of 7.62 NATO ammunition in 12 magazines will weigh 18lbs.
Note:
Normal operating conditions are in a fire-team of four, section/squad of 8+, or Platoon of 30-40 with standard issue small arms and ordnance i.e. a selection of the M9, M16/M4 (with and without an underslung M203), M14 variants, SDMR, SAW, M67 Frag Grenades possibly an M224 light mortar fire-team or section, plus required ammunition and of course the most dangerous weapon in any infantry unit a radio.
One final point I'll draw attention to is that most of the rifles you've provided weights for those are clean and empty, a loaded 20 round 7.62 NATO magazine is around 1.5lbs, and a ranged optic won't weigh much less than 1lb fitted (i.e. with mount, batteries etc.) so whatever those figures are at minimum add 2.5lbs for something that's vaguely useful.
I recently bought an AR and built it to .264 lbc. Very impressive ballistics and the right compromise of the nato rounds imo. The 6.8 is also a good round.
Last edited by 1AngryTaxPayer; 08-28-2013 at 03:55 PM..
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