To follow up to my other M16/AK “challenge” thread, I immediately wanted to follow up with the more appropriate comparison between small caliber
rivals, 5.56 and 5.45.
In the West to this day a myth persists that 5.45 is a weaker, slower, less accurate and generally less lethal and effective round.
Years back I took interest into the unorthodox design of the 5.45 bullet, and the traditional Soviet steel fluted sealed case.
5.56 is a straight brass case round that gives it that extra pressure threshold tolerance which gives the extra speed, but since the round was not
design for the military and derived from a hunting round, in its military application it severely suffers from fundamental flaws which have been fixed
to this day.
1. Straight brass case.
a. Brass cases are MUCH more expensive then steel/aluminum cases.
b. Straight cases are inherently harder to feed/extract and suffer from ramp stoppages.
c. Straight cases are naturally prone to rupturing if the chamber is contaminated even with the slights of debris, which was a severe problem with
early M16 which did not have full chrome lining.
d. Inability to lacquer seal neck/primer of the round which seals it from moisture and extend its shelf life. Upon firing lacquer splits from the
case and deposits in the chamber, thus contaminating it for the next round, which will split/explode or force a catastrophic failure. Other then that
the other massive problem is that the thin gas tube of the M16 simply can’t take even the slights lacquer residue, so reliable sealed rounds simply
can not be used by the entire M16 family of ARs.
The bullet.
a. Low weight, high muzzle velocity, thin walled.
b. Good ballistic trajectory, but suffers from low penetration and most importantly through out its use its stability issue has been its biggest
problem.
c. Continues changes in barrel rifling twists resulted in need to mark different 5.56 rounds because they could not be used in different
generation/barrel length/twist M16 models. Green tip 5.56 is a prime example of that.
d. High velocity fragmentation effect even in stabilized bullets is only archived from full length barrels, while bullet flight deviation upon
traveling through light brush or branches severely degrades the ability of the weapon to deliver fire areas with vegetation, which is pretty much
everywhere except the desert and cities.
e. When fired from short barrels (M4) the round has been repeatedly proven to be largely ineffective at ranges varying from 50 to 100 yards. In
direct comparisons 9mm submachine guns (MP5) repeatedly and decisively outperformed M4 in total lethality even against body armor when using 9mm AP
rounds.
For now I’ll stop here and give ATS members to throw in their two cents, but do ask to pay attention to the video, and especially how the 5.45
rounds are sealed/packaged, and the red stripe on the round which is clearly visible between the case and the round.
Here's the video;
If again it does not work, here's the raw link;
www.youtube.com...
[edit: fixed code for video]
[edit on 13-1-2008 by 12m8keall2c]
We'll use the standard USPSA targets.
