The M16 fires the 5.56mm cartridge, and it can hold 30 of them in it's magazine. The AK47 fires the 7.62mm cartridge, but it also has a 30 round mag. capacity. And because of it's heavier cartridge, it has more manstopping power, and both rifles are automatic. So why doesn't the M16 shoot a 7.62mm bullet? Wouldn't that give it more manstopping power?
Not necessarily. If the 5.6x45 works as it should, the bullet tumbles more quickly on impact than the 7.62 (tearing a wider wound channel) and also fragments, increasing the size of the wound, so a hit with the 5.56mm can be more effective. However, it doesn't always work as it should. Neither is optimal IMO. Something like the 6.8mm Rem SPC or 6.5mm Grendel would be better than either. See THIS for much more info. Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum
The M16 vs AK47, Ive seen almost as many discussions and differing opinions on this one as i have the .45 vs 9mm, Its a never ending debate on many a gun forum. One can almost provide endless statistics that show the superiority of each rifle over the other LOL.
M-16 and AK-47 are completely different trains of thought, design and implementation. The M-16 was meant to be used by well trained troops with access to armorers to take care of any problems. The rifle was designed to be a modular style (meaning you can come up with several variations with minimal effort) and give the soldiers good accuracy. It was also designed to replace the 7.62mm NATO cartridge in battle rifles. If the US wanted to keep the 7.62mm then they would have and many in the Army and Marine Corps tried to. There are rifles related to the M-16 that shoots the 7.62mm cartridge, they're called AR-10. The AK was meant to be an easy/cheap to build battle rifle that could be used by illiterate peasants with only a few minutes of training. It has to function in all climates and all weather with unknown quality ammo and little to no cleaning. Accuracy suffers due to loose tolerances and poor sights. The Soviets figured they would win battles by having twice as many troops all firing full auto and hope the enemy can't shoot enough troops to survive. The Soviets also dropped the 7.62mm when they adopted the AK-74 in 5.45mm.
Are you sure? From what I understand the M-16 is far easier to use for an 'untrained peasant' than the AK-47... It has a superior gunsight, lower recoil and is easier to relod, I think in modern variants you just insert the clip and push a button on the side... Not to mention how much more clumsy the safety is on the AK-47... The M-16 really seems like a more user friendly rifle, whereas the AK, while easy to use, is much harder to use well... I am also of the understanding that the AK-47 mechanism is actually better suited to long ranges than the M-16 in single shot fire... The slower, heavier round is apparently more accurate, and is only precluded by the poor sights and the huge recoil... If an experience shooter can compensate for these (or replace the sights altogether) the AK is supposed to become a more accurate weapon...
Amazing how quickly the 5.56mm vs 7.62mm ammunition question slid off into the old "M16 vs AK" debate, isn't it? Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum
The AK by design can't be more accurate than the M-16 and neither can it's ammo. Trust me, been there and done that. The M-16 is also a much more complicated system since it has an upper and lower half and many more smaller moving parts that are held to close tolerances. The M-16's sights are front post and rear apperature. These are much superior to AK post and notch sights but not quite as easy for someone who has no training to learn to use. Not that it's difficult to use the M-16 sights, just not as simple as the AK.
The 'lack of training' issue is more about keeping the weapon clean. The M16 is relatively finicky, and will stop working sooner than the AK47 would if left uncleaned.
there is more to a gun than the size of a bullet. Mainly you have weight issues. A US grunt can carry more 5.56 ammo than an equivalent russain as the ammo is lighter. Also it means that more ammo can be loaded into a plane or ship for tranport thus reducing logistics costs Besides, there is very little difference between being shot by a 5.56 and a 7.62. The target is still almost certain to rendered innoperative either via none fatal or fatal injuries. FNG
But the problem is which round is more likely to hit you. I'd say one of the primary benefits of larger rounds would be the superior penetration of cover... I imagine most soldiers would be trained to fire from behind cover as opposed to standing up out in the open... A 7.62mm round would be able to punch through alot more than a 5.56mm round will, possibly through a thin steel table which would usually stop a 5.56mm round... don't know the penetration values, but I read that in Vietnam, early M-16's would deflect off tree branches whereas AK's would go straight through... Or say the enemy has (very good) body armor... a heavier round would do much more damage, possiblt even wind the target. An even simpler example is that the 7.62mm round will do alot more damage to a soldiers helmet... It's true that if you get hit by either, you're out of action... but its getting hit thats the problem... lighter ammo negates range, heavier ammo negates cover...
The smaller 5.56mm bullet has a big velocity advantage and has a narrower frontal section. This allows for better penetration much like a needle compared to a knife. The Soviets must have thought the 7.62 to not be superior or they wouldn't have adopted the 5.45mm.
The 5.56mm, in its current SS109/M855 NATO loading, has good penetration of hard targets like body armour. However, it is less good at ploughing through barriers like walls. As has been mentioned, the light weight, lower recoil and flatter trajectory of the 5.56mm (and 5.45mm) are all advantages over the 7.62mm. The effectiveness when they hit somebody is more controversial. Sometimes the small ones do the job well, sometimes (especially but not only at longer ranges) they don't. Note that US special forces have recently adopted a new assault rifle, the FN SCAR, in two versions: 5.56x45 and 7.62x51. They obviously don't feel that the 5.56mm is the right choice for all situations. Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum
An interesting article I encourage everyone to read.... 7.62 mm Versus 5.56 mm - Does NATO Really Need Two Standard Rifle Calibers CSC 1986 http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ ... 86/MVT.htm
Personally, I do not care for the 5.56. My understanding is that the military went from the 30.06 to the 7.62 NATO, to the 5.56; the thought being that the 5.56 is more likely to wound rather than kill, requiring one or two buddies of the wounded soldier to care for him, effectively taking three soldiers out of action. I don't know if this is true or not. For either the 5.56 or the 7.63 X 39, ammo is cheap and they are both fun to shoot, but in a real combat situatiion, I'll take the 30.06 of the M1 Garand any time. Neither holds a candle to the '06. One advantage of the 5.56 is that the rounds are easily reloaded, while most all the ammo of the cvommercial 7.62 X 39 I have purchased are Berdan primers, requiring one to buy some new brass for reloading. The military rounds of the 5.56 are FMJ, which I don't care for, but I have dropped deer with the 55 grn soft nose. A lot of performance issues of calibers also relate to the type of bullet being used, so simply saying one is better than the other cannot be held as a truism. - Greg :smok:
That's the theory anyway. Also why military ammunition has more recoild than say hunitng ammunition...small holes mean wounds, put strain on the enemies medical effort/supplies, you win more easily (although in the respect both the 7.62 and the 5.56 are good at that.) At least that's how my grandfather explained it. PS: Will you lot quit smoking already!!!! It's bad for your health! :smok:
You read it often in discussion groups like this, but I have never read any suggestion of it in any of the books or reports I have read on the subject of military ammo. This is the way I put it in Assault Rifle: the Development of the Modern Military Rifle and its Ammunition: "It is worth at the start dealing with one common myth; that military bullets are designed to wound but not kill, the theory being that a wounded man will also take out of the fight a couple of his comrades while they help him to safety. Apart from the fact that soldiers are generally instructed to leave the wounded to the medics and press on, this defies logic. It takes relatively little power to inflict a lethal wound – the weak .22 rimfire target cartridge has killed thousands – but a lot more to quickly disable an opponent, which is what the military is interested in. All of the current military rifle cartridges are more than powerful enough to kill; the argument is over how quickly they are able to disable opponents so that they can't fight back." Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum
