Variant of C7A2, the Different Canadian Sniper Rifle and C9A2

[KevinB]

Rounder - it all depends upon what you mean by effective

I took top in the 300m deliberate at this years NSCC (CFSAC Lite as it were) with a 16" gun.

Ken Fergunson won the entire match with a 16" including the 500m matches...


Acuracy is not related to bbl length no matter how hard some try to beleive that it is (well sight radius on iron sighted guns can hurt the carbien length guns - but a USMC SSGT won the PACFLEET Matches with a M4A1 gun iron sighted in 2003 and took top score in its history)

With the shorty carbines (10&11"ers) I have seen people use them out to 300m - In fact I would state one could easily pass the Inf PWT with one.

IF we talk about bullet fragmention and terminal effectiveness (which is why I posted the ammo oracle link...) which is something the CF tries to avoid like the plague and in fact does not ever teach troops about bullet erminal effects.
10.3" about 10M of fragmentation
11.5" about 15M
14.5" 45M
16"    90M
20    140M

Bullet drop difference from a 20" to a 16" bbl is aprox 6" at 500m (most troops cant shoot that well so the it is moot)

No past that the bullet will not fragment when it yaws and in fact at lower velocities it wont yaw and will just put a .22 cal hole (with a limited amount of permanent wound cavity and some larger temporary cavity)

The key is seeing the shorties as specialty items - not for everyday usage - but for a VCP and hosue clearing or driving duties  - at up close and personal ranges it won;t matter - and the troops will have th estandard 16" upper on hand as well (an unfortunate gold bag approach - but nec for troop effectiveness to be increased.

The 7.62mm AR10T with 168gr (but preferable 175gr) Sierra Matchking ammo will increase the range of precision fire at the section and give it a limited peneteration advantage as well.



Too many people are believing that short is useless without tryign it out themselves and educating themselves on the advantage and limitations.


-Kevin

 

[pappy]

lol guess that woke everyone up.  I don't agree with every post, but most make some good points. So I'll take my licks... and admit the errors of my ways.

I can see the points about mounted infanty, shorter barrels are a little handier I'll agree.  But I just think maybe people are trying to get the M16 family to do-all, be-all.

Seems there is a need for a submachine gun again....  Even with a telescoptic stock the 14.5" and 11.5" M16 family weapons are still long for inside small houses arent't they?

Why not just issue everyone MP5's? (or bring back the S&W M76) for urban / house entry weapons?  or bump up to the .40S&W if more power.  ahhh if the would was perfect we'd have it all. And I'd think a 9mm subgun rated round or .40S&W would do just fine at the close ranges inside the small houses.  But I think it would be wise to keep the options of the M16 available for outside use.  Not all combat is indoors, although it does seem to be going that way at times.

Yes, seems the M4 with the 14.5" or 16" does seem to be the upper desireable limit for lenght.  But I wonder if all the compaints about the hitting power of the 5.56mm round has gotten at the "longer" combat ranges 150m-300m is due to the loss of velocity.

I guess in todays military we're forced to have one weapon do it all, but can it do all roles equally well?
I think sometimes we spend too much time trying to reinvent the wheel.  If a Subgun is needed then use MP5's along side the M4's

Guess I'm an old Marine at heart, I hate to see us give up too much range.  Are combat ranges getting closer cause we can't hit and knock down targets at longer ranges because we're bulding shorter and shorter ranger weapons and failing to teach people how to shoot well ?
Being a Marine I also feel the best CQB weapon is Arty. yeah before I get flamed that was a little sracstic, but only a little.  I think at times we put our troops at too much risk to satisfiy politically correctness. If wars where more dangerous to our enenies maybe they'd think more about starting them next time.

Didn't they do a little house to house fighting in WW2 with M1's, Enfields, BARs, Brens.... guess wars change....

 

[KevinB]

Pappy good points

I think a lot of this is interelated (prepare for KEvins Cosmic mumbo jumbo)

1 Source of Wounding: Firing Rates have gone up in all the recent wars, our soliders do not hold back like they previously did (95% firing rates for combat arm troops since Vietnam, whereas 50% for Korea and 10-15% in previous Wars - yup right back to the US Civil War and Napoleonic times) .  Prior to that the majority of direct fire small arms fire was from machine gun teams - and until we got into these more precision operations

2 More Pop Culture:  Soldiers have been treated a a lot of on screen mayhem and seen what bullets are "supposed" to do - so when the Enemy gets hit and does not fly across the room, they are disappointed.

3 Decrease In Marksmanship: Troops juts dont shoot as well as they used to and get much less I quote RickBoucher a former SF MSgt and now a civilian instructor at Ft Bragg

Actually we have two types of combat failures. One is th eround not downing a bad guy. The other is the shooter not hitting what he is shooting at. While the first is actaully a relatively rare event, the second occurs all too often.

and from a paper (about the 6.8SPC round) I got from then CWO3 Mike Haugen the then S7 (Force Mod) for 1SFG (ABN)

A. Lethality. By far the largest battle cry for this caliber is that it is X amount more lethal than 5.56mm in general, but several times more effective than the current issued M855 (AKA green tip) specifically.

1) Cause of issue: The overall problem of lethality seemingly stems from various conflicts of the past 20 years, more specifically it has been reported and passed around that troops deployed to Somalia and for Operation Anaconda repeatedly complained about lethality of M855 specifically and 5.56 mm in general. The most common compliant seems to be that the round merely passes through the enemy without significant damage.

2) Reality: Like statistics, tests can be configured to produce the desired outcome especially when the subject focus is narrowed to one item and the proposed solution can be configured in any way.

and more from Mike

Interviews with veterans of Grenada, Haiti, Panama, Desert Storm, Somalia, and Enduring Freedom whose marksmanship skills are known have unanimously agreed that neither 5.56 or M855 pose any lethality problems, the issue is shot placement

and some more

B. Accuracy. It is generally believed throughout the SOF community that the M4 and 5.56 are not overly accurate at ranges past 300 meters. This belief has been supported by routine training at ranges below 300 meters, more commonly less than 50 meters. Over 80% of SF marksmanship training is conducted at ranges less than 50 meters. On some teams this may not be the norm, however on most due to range availability and an increased emphasis on close quarters / urban combat training, long-range marksmanship training is not a priority.Human sized targets out to and including 600 meters can be easily engaged with M855 if the soldier is trained.

And forth

4 Tgt Detection: While this does tie into the issue of marksmanship the advances in optical sight on weapons and available to commanders make it possible to id tgt's and engage them at distance that were unlikely in previous conflicts (despite popular myth).  So you have a worse shooter taken a longer shot which leds us into the "of course you caught a fish that big..." scenario.

 

[pappy]

Kevin, first off ranting is allowed, lol  So everyone feel free. 

But is all the expending of ammo becuase we have full-auto capabilities in almost all weapons? (or at least 3-rd burst, which still emptys mags quick)  While up-close and personal full auto fire does a nasty job of making hamburger, I think anyone that's emptied off a few mags on full auto has said something releated to these 3 comments below:

1, "F$%#ing-A that was cool"

2, "did I hit anything?"

3, "damn, hand me another mag."

Granted full auto 5.56mm ain't as uncontrollable as 7.62 doing the rock and roll thing. Anyone thats spent a little time behind a rifle will know a little movement behind the muzzle makes for some rather disapointing hits at 100m-200m down range. 

A sign I saw a few times in the Marine Corps:  "in combat only hits count"
Some know others don't but during the war in Veitnam, Rebublic of, that the US Marine corps REMOVED the full auto sears from 2 of three M14's.
semi-auto fire only makes one tend to take more time to aim and be sure of a hit. I'm not saying full-auto doesn't have it's place.

Most riflemen where armed with bolt actions when the allies won WW1, most bolt actions and semi-autos in WW2 when the allies won.  More semi-autos during Korea, that was a tie, but a close one.  Full-auto for almost everyone in Vietnam.... we know what happened there.

During Beruit our Marines where armed with M16A1's and knew how to shoot them, a few snipers with 7.62 Rem700s and not many hezbolla got close enough to do anthing more then harrasing fire.  They lost quite a few to well aimed fire, when the politicians let us shoot.  Before they got close enough to make thier hits count, our hits did. Sadily too many Marines still died, and most of thier blood can be blamed on our own politicians.  Once wars start, politicians should stay out of it, thier diplomacy failed, once the militarys called out, let us do our job.  And that job is killing the enemy.  I'm sure you Canadians have your own experiences with politicans wanting you to be "preacekeepers" in some far off land where peace is nowhere to be seen.  Marines and Soliders are warfighters, not peacekeepers. But I digress.

But times change, wars change with them, things are different now.  But the worse thing we're doing to our military is not treaching them to shoot and shoot well.

All the gadgets attached to a rifle don't mean squat if you still don't hit anyone.  Granted I must admit the current soldiers in  Iraq and Afgainestain are doing a fantastic job, it's amazing what they have accomplished.  But all that technology can and will fail, and then where do our Marines and soldier fall back on but training? if that training relies too much on hi-tech thier screwed when it fails, what happens when that fancy laser sighting system fails, runs out of batteries, gets smashed.  Tecnology is great, but not so fail proof to risk lifes on.  First train ALL Marines and soliders to shoot WELL with a simple iron sighted rifle, and then spend more time and money getting them better, then maybe add the cool toys later.  I think we forget optics on rifles where rare as hens teeth before ww2, hell in combat except snipers, the first gulf war was probably the first that common grunts had optics on thier rifles,  opps well the Brits in Northern Ireland did, sorry guys.

I think we've gotten lazy depending on full-auto rather then good honest shooting skills.  And Officers and SNCO have gotten lazy not doing thier job of maintaining slow accurate AIMED fire on traget.  Allowing everyone to fire away on full auto is more then just a waste of ammo, its dangerous.  Please don't get me wrong I'm not saying all officers and SNCO are to blame, most are highly trained imdividuals, but I do think we relie on full-auto way too much.

If we need more rounds down range, then lets get more trained men.  The western nations are spoiled rotten with the majority of our citizens not doing thier duty by serving in the military.  They enjoy freedom without every learning it's cost.

And as far as ammo goes.... lets not kid ourselve, bullets kill people, if the ones we've got aren't killing the ememy we HAVE to change them, screw the Geneva Convention.
No sportsman wouldn't think it humaine to shoot FMJ at a elk or deer, and they ain't shooting back.  A swift sure kill on our enenmy is what we need.  Killing the enemy and bringing our own men home alive is more important then political correct laws.  Yes we are a society of laws, but war only happens when laws and political diplomancy fails.  Once they call the military, let us finish the job.  We shouldn't be designing weapons to be kind to our enemy, they are designed to kill the enemy.  Leave the kindness to the Peace Corps.

I don't think the firing rates are that high, 95%, I'd like to see the data to back this up, I'd like to believe that.  I find it hard to believe ANYONE that has someone shooting at them WOULD NOT fire back and want to kill them,  I sort of took it personal.

But lets not forget the real king of Battle is Arty.  Arty has killed more soilders then all the rifle fire.  As I said before if you need full-auto, call in arty.  Maybe one day I tell ya all about what 16" Naval guns can do to an anrgy crowd of Hezbolla armed with AK47s who are hanging out at a distance they thought was "safe".  Not quite as impressive as one friend of mine experience calling in an Arc-light strikes outside the perimeter of Ka Shan, but nothing says "payback" like three little words..... "fire for effect".

 

[Spr.Earl]

Also all the studies that have been done since WWI,Infantry contact is still under 200 m.'s
Case in point,the Cemetery in Fallujawere the U.S. Marines were fighting with in 10 m.'s in some case's.
I still like 7.62 thank very much.

 

[KevinB]

Most of the firing rate studies are in LtCol Grossmans Book "On Killing"

The new USMC AAR's are actually promoting using burst now to drop opponents...

I am not suggesting that full auto is the problem just lack of basic marksmanship - troops firing on semi that suck - still suck just less fast.

People have to STOP thinking FMJ's lack of wounding is why we dont hunt with it - it is DUE to fragmentation - it ruins meat - hunting bullets 'mushroom' and cause clean wounds that bleed the animal out yet leave the meat intact

Fragmentation causes significantly larger wound profiles with M193 and M855 (as well as lighter rounds like 50gr and 55gr JSP or JHP) than controlled expansion rounds do.  The size of these wounds make torso hits devastating and in non-torso hits can cause enough vascular damage to increase the rate of "bleed out."  The penetration of M193 and M855 in tissue is not compromised by the fragmentation either, as large portions of the round, particularly the nose, retain enough mass to penetrate out to 14.5" after fragmentation.  Because effective rounds need to do the most tissue damage possible, fragmentation is an ideal wounding mechanism and gives the small 5.56mm round more "bang for the buck" than even 7.62mm rounds that don't fragment

 

[pappy]

Good info Kevin, I'll have to take a look at the book. 

I think we both agree marksmanship is the key.  And that is the key.

Yeah burst mode is handy, with a well trained good shooter it can be done quite well.... I'd post a viedo clip, but I'm sure it would get "bleeped"

Viedo I sure is floating around the net.  I was at a old Marine friend of mine the other week doing some work on his computer... oh and doing a little drinking too  ;D

He pops up a .MOV file taken by some TV reporters following the folks around that where on the recieving end of some 3-rd bursts....  some good shooting, two in the chest, one in the head.  The bad guy poped around the brick wall with an RPG, got dropped in his tracks before he could fire.

I've always like the 5.56mm I've seen it work.  I think its the same augement we heard since the cavemen used clubs, each improvement and it the same old story "I like ??? better then ???"  ;D  But in the end, thier tools, we all have our favorites, but we should all learn to use them all well.

I've seen a few hunters do some bad work on elk and deer around here, saw one guy hit a deer with 5 shots from a .300 win mag... tough deer, but not much meat left on him that wasn't shot up.

I own 7.62mm's as well, glad I have a chioce between them, I'd hate to have to make a choice of one other the other, it would be tough.  But The military doesn't always get that choice.

Wish the military had the choices too,  different tools for different tasks.

 

[KevinB]

Pappy - I've seen it - the SAW engagment.
  Notice the RPG gunner has one leg?  They pay cripples to do that sort of thing...  A one legged man in Afghan or IRAQ can;t make money for his family - so they get paid to be some terrorist "laundry boy" - or - perhaps a better description a new USMC reactive tgt  ;D...

 

[KevinB]

and back to other dicussion

Pic of the C9A2 (and custom LBV  ) and his personally bought sling...

 

[Dissident]

I'm bumping this up. This is over 10 years old and, at the time this was posted, really started me down the path of professional development regarding ballistics and the effectiveness of the M16FOW. To this day I still introduce many to some of the info that is shared here. Will we ever learn?

 

[Colin Parkinson]

By the way the Houthi Rebels have found to be using Timberwolfs captured from Saudi Forces. Our guns are getting around!

 

[KevinB]

I'm bumping this up. This is over 10 years old and, at the time this was posted, really started me down the path of professional development regarding ballistics and the effectiveness of the M16FOW. To this day I still introduce many to some of the info that is shared here. Will we ever learn?

A lot of new ammo has arrived that a lot of my stuff from back then is no longer relevant.