The Army's new rifle

[727Sky]

The fella in that video sounded like a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman trying to give the Joint Chiefs the hard-sell. He'd be a good guy to have on a used car lot.

More power to 'em, if that's what they want. It should open a glut of 5.56 and 7.62 NATO on the surplus market, at least. That's good news for me, because those are what I'm sticking with. Ain't no way in hell I want a two-piece ammo case running at 80,000 PSI exploding right in front of my cheek bone, Not even a solid case - it's made of TWO pieces of two different metals, and exploding at 125% of normal high chamber pressures even at that.. How could that possibly go wrong?

In my AO, 5.56 and 7.62 will continue to do just fine. There ain't no 1000 meter shots to be had here - or at least damned few of them. Most shooting here is brush and thick woods shooting, so quick reactions are a lot more important than trying to throw a grenade out of your rifle barrel at a target a mile away. Most shots here are going to be in the 10 meter to maybe 300 meter range for a long shot, so the established calibers will do just fine.

IF that cartridge will do all the salesman there says it will do, they're going to need a new rifle to go with it. The AR platform is not a sniper rifle, despite the Marines trying to turn it into one... and a 14.5" barrel as found on the M4 is definitely not a sniper grade barrel. To take full advantage of the alleged sniper-quality shooting the salesman claims for this cartridge, they're going to need at least a 20" barrel, and preferably a 22 or 24" barrel. If you're trying to pop G's at 1000 meters, I don't give a damn how heavy your rifle is - and the one they had in mind for this round was a 9 or 10 pound beast of a rifle, but with that same stubby M4 barrel -  a 14.5 inch barrel just ain't gonna get your bullet where you want it to go 98% of the time, and the other 2% is going to just be lucky slop-shots.

So I'll just stick to what I already know will work for me, here in my AO.

With all of that said, keep in mind also that nothing, but nothing, is ever as good as it's proponents claim, nor is it ever as bad as it's detractors claim. I just know what works for me - your mileage may vary.

P.S. - plate body armor is why God gave us head shots. If you can't make a head shot on a man-sizes target, what the hell are you doing wearing a uniform anyhow?

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One of my ARs was 21 inches with good glass and no misses at 327 yards 5 inch circle; it was to heavy to lug around with glass and bi-pod.. the 16 inch barrels and one 14.5 were doable at that range but to many misses for my likes... The AKs (I had 2) were not worth shooting at that range due to 7.62x39 bullet drop IMO.  The AKs were a comfortable 100 yard pig killer (maybe a sloppy 125 yard shot) and the ARs were still deadly out to 150 usually if I did my part. I am talking hitting the kill zone not just taking them down for a follow up shot. That all seems like many life times ago...