Tuesday - June 29, 2010

A Dye Job For The Poodle Shooter

Sorry, but this smells like BS to me.

Because protecting the environment is their #1 concern when fighting a war

Picatinny Arsenal, Rockaway NJ: The Army announced this week that it has begun shipping its new 5.56mm cartridge, the M855A1 Enhanced Performance Round.

The ammunition will replace bullets that have been used since the early 1980s and will be more dependable, have improved accuracy, reduced muzzle flash and a higher velocity, the Army said in a statement.

Those readers who have been paying attention to my ammunition posts will immediately guess that this means the Army is using a faster powder. Experienced reloaders will look at the above picture and shake their heads in wonder, because the cannelure is on the wrong end of the bullet. Look how much case volume is lost because this low density slug has to be so deeply seated in the already minuscule 5.56 NATO case (the case is smaller than your little finger)! No way a merely faster powder could do the job. Ergo, the Army is using a special long duration “magic” powder you and I don’t have access to, probably similar to that “Leverevolution” “Light Magnum” stuff Hornady is loading these days.

The projectile represents the most significant advancement in general purpose small caliber ammunition in decades, according to Lt. Col. Jeffrey K. Woods, the program’s product manager.

The Enhanced Performance Round contains an environmentally friendly projectile that eliminates up to 2,000 tons of lead from the manufacturing process each year, the Army statement said.

Woods said the effort is an example of how “greening’’ a previously hazardous material can also provide performance improvements.

Army Smart - killing our enemies while making Mother Earth happy!®
Oh, and do the math. This bullet replaces the 62 grain M855 bullet, which used perhaps 40 grains of lead. At 7000 grains to the pound, 200 million of those doesn’t come close to using 4 million pounds of lead. They have to be implying that a bullet of similar style will be put into place for the heavier 7.62 NATO cartridge which uses bullets in the 150-200 grain range.

Picatinny Arsenal’s Project Manager for Maneuver Ammunition Systems, Chris Grassano, manages the M855A1 program.

“The Army utilized advanced science, modeling and analysis to produce the best 5.56mm round possible for the warfighter,’’ Grassano said in the Army statement.

The new bullet is tailored for use in the M4 Weapon System but also vastly improves the performance of the M16 and M249 families of weapons, the Army statement said.

“tailored for the M4 weapon”. Which uses a really short 16” barrel, instead of the normal 20-24” barrel on regular M16 rifles. Short barrels result in reduced muzzle velocity and increased muzzle flash and blast, as I’ve been telling you. The fix is usually a shift to a much faster powder that burns up quicker. The downside is that such a powder almost always gives lower muzzle velocities when used in the more traditional longer barrels. Once again, unless the Army somehow has “magic” gun powder, the ONLY way they can get better results from the stubby M4 and “vastly” improve velocity on the longer M16 is to raise chamber pressures by quite a bit. And the 5.56 NATO already runs at significantly higher pressure than the otherwise identical .223 Remington cartridge, which is the civilian name for this cartridge. Military rifles generally have bigger chambers and longer throats, which alleviates some of that high pressure. But still. Use your head here.

During testing, the Army fired more than 1 million rounds to ensure the new cartridge met or exceeded expectations. It is the most thoroughly tested small caliber round ever fielded, Woods said.

The Army plans to procure more than 200 millions rounds over the next 12 to 15 months, its statement said.

The M855A1 Enhanced Performance Round is the first environmentally friendly bullet resulting from a larger “greening’’ effort across the Army’s Small Caliber Ammunition programs. Other greening efforts include 5.56mm tracer, 7.62mm ball and green primers, the statement said.

Soldiers in Afghanistan will begin using the new, improved round this summer, it said.

Hey, I’m glad the thing is so well tested. But it had to be; this ammunition was supposed to be released an entire year ago, but that had to be pushed back because of major problems when the stuff was fired at high temperatures. The kind of temperatures you’d see in hot places, like summer in Iraq or Afghanistan. Or when your gun gets hot from shooting it a lot, like when you’re in a war. D’oh!

Temperature issues arise for lead-free slug

By Matthew Cox - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Aug 10, 2009 17:40:21 EDT

The Army is scrapping the latest design for its eco-friendly 5.56mm ammo after some of the bullets began to show trajectory problems when exposed to hot temperatures.

Army ballistics officials halted production of the M855A1 Lead Free Slug ammunition in mid July, launched an investigation and decided to replace the bismuth-tin alloy slug with another material, said Lt. Col. Jeff Woods, product manager for Small Caliber Ammunition.

“We are currently evaluating alternate lead-free materials, and we will resume qualification once a selection is made,” Woods told Army Times.

In the M855A1 LFS bullet’s design, the bismuth-tin alloy sits beneath a steel penetrating tip. A copper jacket encases all but the point of the bullet. The round was designed to work specifically with the M4 carbine. Army officials have maintained that the new round will provide more “consistent performance” than the current M855 round and perform better against hard targets.

The problem surfaced when some of the bullets did not follow their trajectory or planned flight path.

“During ballistic testing of production LFS cartridges, we noticed that some projectiles occasionally varied from the intended trajectory,” Woods said.

The plan was to start issuing the first of 20 million rounds in August, replacing the standard M855 lead round.

One thing the Army is sure of is that “this will delay fielding of the new round,” Woods said.

This is not the first hiccup to occur in the quest for lead-free ammunition, a program the Army has invested tens of millions of dollars in since the mid-1990s. The first attempt featured a tungsten-nylon bullet that didn’t perform well and proved almost as harmful to the environment as lead. This new wrinkle in the program appears to be linked to “higher temperatures,” but ballistic officials would not describe the specific temperature at which the problem occurs.

I love that “some projectiles occasionally varied from the intended trajectory” line. That’s Army-speak for “accuracy totally shit the bed when things got hot”. And no kidding: these lead free bullets are much less malleable than lead cored ones, which means they do not squish up to seal the bore upon firing (under the intense pressures inside a firing gun barrel, all metals are elastic, but the stronger ones much less so). Lead by itself is highly elastic; this squishing up effect is what made the Minie Ball work in the Civil War. Lead surrounded by a copper or brass jacket is much less deformable, but still can be squished up a little. Solid copper, steel, or bismuth bullets aren’t really malleable at all at similar pressures. When guns get hot their steel barrels get hot too. And expand a little. Which means that the bore, that hole in the middle of the barrel that the bullet slides down, also gets a little bigger. And that means a looser fit for an inelastic bullet. Loose fit equals lousy accuracy. D’oh!

So I’m really hoping that the new EPR bullet uses a softer and more elastic copper alloy, or at least is made 0.001 - 0.002” larger in diameter, to mitigate this problem.


So, is it effective? The Army wants you to believe so. The previous “solution” to the 5.56’s lack of hitting power was supposed to be solved by everyone switching to the M855 bullet, the so called SS109 Penetrator with it’s much heavier 62 grain construction and a hardened steel core. That was back in the early 80s. Using that bullet required putting new barrels on every rifle in service, because the bigger bullet needed a much faster rifling pitch to stabilize it, compared to the even older Vietnam era M193 55 grain bullet. All of which goes to show that our military has long been aware that the 5.56 cartridge isn’t quite enough gun to do the job. And so this week we have yet another stop gap effort, another dye job for the old poodle. Let’s hope that this shade of Nice ‘n Easy™ can turn the poodle into a pit bull.

But guess what? The Marines aren’t buying into it. They don’t want this new gee-whiz projectile at all. Oh no. Instead, they now have their own wunder-poodle-fixer-upper bullet!

The Marine Corps, however, doesn’t share this confidence. The Corps has dropped its plans to field the Army’s M855A1 and approved the new SOST round for Marines to use in Afghanistan. SOST, short for Special Operations Science and Technology, is SOCom’s enhanced 5.56mm round . It isn’t green, but it is deadlier than the current M855 round and it’s available now, Marine officials say. The Corps’ decision to purchase about 2 million SOST rounds in September illustrates the growing frustration with the M855’s performance on the modern battlefield. The M855 was developed in the 1970s and approved as an official NATO round in 1980. In recent years, troops have widely criticized it. They complain it is ineffective against barriers such as car windshields and often travels right through unarmored insurgents, with less than lethal effects.

SOST rounds have similar ballistics to the M855 round, meaning combat troops don’t have to adjust to using the new ammo, military officials say. Using an open-tip match round design common with some sniper ammunition, SOST rounds are designed to stay on target better than existing M855 rounds after penetrating windshields, car doors and other objects.

Compared with the M855, SOST rounds also stay on target longer in open air and have increased stopping power, according to Navy Department documents obtained by Marine Corps Times.

At 62 grains, they weigh about the same as most NATO rounds, have a typical lead core with a solid copper shank and are considered a variation of Federal Cartridge Co.’s Federal Trophy Bonded Bear Claw round, which was developed for big-game hunting and is touted in a company news release for its ability to crush bone.

Despite the popularity of the SOST, the Army isn’t backing away from its goal to perfect its green M855A1 round. “SOST is a good round, but SOST is not a lead-free slug,” said Lt. Col. Tom Henthorn, chief of the Small Arms Branch at the Soldier Requirements Division at Fort Benning, Ga. The Army will continue to develop an environmentally friendly 5.56mm, as well as a lead-free 7.62mm bullet, Henthorn added, “because we care about the environment.”

[eye roll] Oh God. About the only ground where ground water runoff could be contaminated with lead put there by bullets would be the rain water that drains off the dirt berms behind the shooting ranges at military training camps. Those same berms that have been in use since about ... 1915? I looked it up - there is no lead contamination in Rock Creek, the waterway that drains the Gettysburg battlefield, where millions of pure lead bullets each the size of your thumb were fired in 1863. Probably 100 tons worth in a 1 square mile area. Spending tens of millions of dollars to develop a new “earth friendly” bullet is asinine. Spending that money to develop a more effective, more lethal bullet makes a bit more sense, though the “green sell” seems rather hypocritical.

Posted by Drew458     on 06/29/2010 at 11:59 AM   
Filed Under: • Military • War On Terror •  
• Comments (3) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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