Originally Posted by bushpig1998

Ok, just the upper, magazines and optics.
Then we have to retool the factories producing the weapons' uppers and cartridges. The 6.8SPC is a great cartridge, but it is not really all that great at range. I'm not saying the 6x45 is better at all! I'm merely saying that if you are going to switch to an entirely new cartridge, don't muck around about it. Go to something that is truely an all rounder, like the 6.5 Grendel.
Personally, the 6x45 makes sense, since it is the minimum financial investment for a vastly superior round.
The difference in sectional density (and ballistic coeficient) between the 5.56 and 6mm rounds are really crazy.

No the 6.8mm roud is made by Remington, its already on the civilian market and is made as a knock down round not for range.

Whoa dude, the only variations of the M1 (either garand or carbine) that the Cong used were the ones they stole of dead Americans. I don't think they ever made any variations of the M1 themselves.

Rich.

AK with good old 7.62x39 is the best. That thing will go through anything. I remmember when my cousin served army in Army of Republic of Srpska and they did some target practicing when English soldiers came for the inspection. My cousin's officer offered them to try to knock down target and they couldn't do it. That only proves that AK is more deadly, and we all know that it is more reliable. M-16 is more accurate though but still i don't wanna think about my weapon when I'm in the middle of fight. I want something that will workanywhere and always.

My personal opinion is that I think the proliferation of body armor will make the 5.56 round obsolete, it just doesn't have the knockdown power that is going to be needed on future battlefields.

One of the many reasons I love the XM-8 is the ability to actually change the type of bullet it shoots by just replacing a few parts. This will allow the weapon to adapt with the changing battlefield.

Originally Posted by ozmilman

Whoa dude, the only variations of the M1 (either garand or carbine) that the Cong used were the ones they stole of dead Americans. I don't think they ever made any variations of the M1 themselves.

Rich.

The ARVN was armed with many older U.S. guns. M1 Garand, M1 Carbine, M1A1 Thompson, M1919A4/A6 and tanks M24 Chaffee, M47 Patton, M41 Bulldog, M4 Sherman, and M26 Pershing. All of these weapons where also used by the NVA and VC. They NVA and VC also had an extensive arsenal of French weapons, such as the SKS. They also where armed with many Russian, Romania, and Chinese weapons.

The NVA and VC has no set standard or certain types of weapons issued, what you got is what you used.

There is also a story of the VC having four perfectly good M48A4's and where planning to use them to infiltrate an American firebase, but due to a raid of the VC facility ,the tanks where found and destroyed.

There is only one variation of the M1, the M1D. This is not counting the M14 or M1A.

Whoa dude, the only variations of the M1 (either garand or carbine) that the Cong used were the ones they stole of dead Americans.

What you forget here my friend is that the VC and NVA had been fighting the French since 1954, to 1964 when we entered the war and made it into an American conflict.

Some good books for you to read would be Marine Sniper By Charles Henderson and Dear Mom: A Sniper Vietnam By J.T. Ward. Not only do they give an excellent view of a snipers Vietnam but also a superb insight into the Vietnam War itself.

The Ak-47 being made in 1947 is older than the M16/AR-15.

Originally Posted by Child of War

AK with good old 7.62x39 is the best. That thing will go through anything. I remmember when my cousin served army in Army of Republic of Srpska and they did some target practicing when English soldiers came for the inspection. My cousin's officer offered them to try to knock down target and they couldn't do it. That only proves that AK is more deadly, and we all know that it is more reliable. M-16 is more accurate though but still i don't wanna think about my weapon when I'm in the middle of fight. I want something that will workanywhere and always.

The AK-47 being made in 1947 is older than the M16/AR-15. The AK-47 may have a larger round but that in no way defeats body armor. The AK-47 a questionable weapon, especially after the first shot. When the AK does jam it’s a lot of trouble to unjam, unlike the M16 with its Forward Assist, the M16 used NATO 5.56mm (,233 Remington). I have fired the M16 and M14 in simulated combat environments, I worried more about the M14, because it jammed six times in the four hours, unlike the M16 which never jammed on me.

Originally Posted by Whispering Death

My personal opinion is that I think the proliferation of body armor will make the 5.56 round obsolete, it just doesn't have the knockdown power that is going to be needed on future battlefields.

5.56mm defeats almost any body armor you'd care to mention with the possible exception of Level VI entry armor.

yeah, the 5.56 is actually a very good penetrator. Tahts why police here dont like it and rather use the old 7.62

Well, color me owned.

I thought that the smaller 5.56 round, even at the high velocities, was unable to effectively penetrate good body armor at the ranges at which modern rifelmen normally engage eachother.

Now correct me where I'm wrong in this logic. Now I know that in the Korean conflict with the M1 rifel, American servicemen where baffled as the Chinese soldiers they'd shoot at range would shake off the shot and keep charging at them. The reason for this was because their tough winter clothing would catch/slow the bullet and they would be okay. Now with the M1 Garand's .30 round at a muzzle velocity of 2800fps I would think that the stopping power would actually be greater than the 5.56 round with a smaller caliber at the same muzzle velocity, and obviously body armor is better at stopping bullets than chinese winter clothing. Therefore the 5.56 would make a poor penetrator.

Now I know the 5.56 round is better at causing damadge to human tissue than the 7.62 because the higher muzzle velocity causes huge trauma to the human body as it enters and exits the body at almost the same time, creating shockwaves that prove very deadly for the poor person who just got shot. However, I thought that the same factors that made it so good against bare human flesh worked against it when body armor was added into the mix.

Now I guess I'm wrong since I'm just a maggot civilian and ya'll are roughneck dirt eaters who live and die by the 5.56 so please take this time to educate my stupid ass :P

I think that you are a little confused about the effects of a round. "Stopping power" refers to the actual physical ability of a round to stop forward movement quick fast and in a hurry, the round does so by the transfer of energy to the target, larger rounds contact the target with a greater surface area and therefore can transfer more energy more quickly to that target than a smaller round. Where body armor is concerned, say you shoot a target wearing armor with a .45 or other large pistol round, even if it doesn't enter the target's body it will most likely still knock him down, that's basically what stopping power is.

Penetration refers to the round's ability to actually pierce the target, which is actually a reverse of what you would see with a round that had good stopping power. A good penetrator is designed to NOT initially transfer most of its energy to the target, but rather to maintain that energy and carry it THROUGH the target.