Comment by KaiserPro | Hacker News Reader

Comment by KaiserPro | Hacker News Reader

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Sorry, but what world are you living in?

Yes, now that its not fashionable to report how many of the "enemy" are killed or injured at the end of each day, it doesn't mean that they are not killed.

The sheer colossal waste of life for the last three big wars, is overwhelming. In iraq we(the west) killed the best part of at least 100,000 people. Then with the sheer ineptitude of occupation set the seeds for a bloody civil war that is still raging (ISIS et al is just a direct consequence) claiming god knows how many people through active fighting a week, and a magnitude more because of the breakdown of the fabric of society.

Yes, we have precision bombs. Yes we have drones. but that just means that we, the west don't directly get hurt. Not the "enemy", or the poor fuckers that happen to be in the way.

Do you know why the current calibre for most nato guns is 5.56mm? yes partly because its smaller, partly because there is less kick, but also because its less lethal.

An injured enemy requires more resources to rescue, causes a distraction, and mental anguish.

As described by many, more gifted people, war is hell.

And right now, futile.

"Do you know why the current calibre for most nato guns is 5.56mm? yes partly because its smaller, partly because there is less kick, but also because its less lethal."

This is actually a myth - the .223 was not selected because it's designed to injure instead of kill. The main advantage of the round is that it's light, so soldiers can carry a lot of ammunition on them, but it also has a flat trajectory and is quite lethal within typical combat ranges. You also get the advantage that it's easier to shoot a .223 quickly than a larger caliber - a soldier can put 30 rounds down range with more accuracy, in less time, than they can with a larger caliber.

> but also because its less lethal

Source? The reason I've always gotten is that it causes the bullet to "tumble"[0] once it enters the body which causes even greater damage to the body than simply passing through, which results in a greater lethality.

[0] - http://www.futurefirepower.com/myths-about-the-nato-556-cart...

All bullets will tumble when they change media like that, they do a 180 and if in the body long enough will exit rearwards.

There's enough bullshit in the link you reference that it should be entirely ignored, the twist rate pertains to getting the bullet to spin fast enough to be stabilized in the air, it's not going to significantly affect the stability once it changes media. It's been decreased, bullets are spun faster, because we've adopted a heavier and disproportionately longer round (has a soft steel penetrating capsule), and the particularly long tracer version requires a 1:7 twist rate.

Cavitation, which causes the effect called temporary stretch cavity, is if you believe Dr. Martin Fackler, not a major wounding mechanism, most tissue will snap back without major effects. Permanent crush cavity is what counts.

This is not the general understanding when the round was adopted, it's what Facker found out after a lot of surgery in Vietnam lead to a career in wound ballistics and shooting a lot of blocks of calibrated gelatin etc. to figure out what actually happens.

Source?

In particular Fackler's works that are available on the net, but I'm under the impression that's general knowledge, plus the basic physics.

Now that I think about it I'm not sure what the official story is with expanding bullets, which are not under discussion here, but I can't see how adding drag to the lighter end of the bullet will change this. And of course it'll depend on profile, I'm talking about spitzer rifle bullets, a putative fully jacketed wadcutter, a simple cylinder, wouldn't have any reason to swap ends.

And because they stop in target bodys and walls and hopefully doesn't hurt people hiding behind.

No they switched to 5.56 because 7.62 was over powered for the average range of a firefight for the citizen army's of ww2.

Interestingly professional forces are going back towards full power Battle Rifles for at least some fire team members

Yeah, I think a big part of this is that the current conflicts have been in open/desert areas where the range of engagement is simply further than the .223 was originally designed for. A .308 or similar caliber makes a lot more sense when you start looking at those kinds of distances.

If the .223 was designed to be less lethal it doesn't work very well. Over the years a hell of a lot of people have died after being shot by M-16/M-4s.

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