Big Army’s Green 5.56mm Ammo
Paul and Ex-PH2 send us link to articles about the Army’s attempt to develop “green ammo”, you know because we’re polluting the enemies’ environments. Or something. From MSN;
A special technical team is applying the same technology used to switch to the greener 5.56 mm M855A1 enhanced performance round, or EPR, in 2010, which eliminated nearly 2,000 tons of lead from being used, according to the latest numbers released by Picatinny.
[…]
The Army projects that by using the green 5.56 mm and 7.62 mm ammunition, an additional 3,683 metric tons of lead could be eliminated from ammunition production between 2013 and 2018.
The Firearms Blog reported a few years ago that Norwegians tested the lead-free ammo and discovered that the resulting gas made their soldiers sick.
The report states that the gas exhausted from the rifles contained high levels of copper and zinc which account for all the symptoms suffered by the riflemen. A few, quite comical, short term solutions have been recommended. These include only shooting outside, slower rate of fire and spacing the shooters out more when at the range!
Because those are always choices that you can get when engaged in a real fire fight. Guns and Ammo takes a critical look at the M855A1;
[T]he reason it shoots flatter is because they’ve juiced the round up so that it will fly at 3,100 fps. This would be a great achievement except for the fact that they did it by increasing the chamber pressure from 55,000 psi to 63,000 psi. That’s a number closely approaching proof-load pressures.
[…]
This means that not only are parts going to wear out at a much higher rate (which is already is an issue with the M4), but if, God forbid, there is any bullet set-back, the number of M4s reportedly going “high order” (i.e., blowing up) should increase exponentially.
[…]
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that the new round cuts barrel life by almost 50 percent…
[…]
There has never been a single scientific study that has proven that lead from expended rounds has leached into surrounding soil or found its way into the water table. Not a single study. Not one.
So like everything else Big Army has done in recent years, protecting the force and giving them the tools they need gives way to hippie, feel-good politics. By the way, the M855A1 costs more than double what any other 5.56mm round costs. You know that’s good because of the cuts to spending that the DoD is currently experiencing. This really helps out. We can just furlough a few more thousand employees and cut a couple of thousand more trigger pullers to pay for this ammo that under-performs current choices.
Category: Big Army
Hmmmm. Looks like a new Kevlar rice bowl has been created. What Flag Officer’s brother-in-law is getting rich off of the backs of the 11Bravos?
Troops are expendable. If making our fighting forces sick by poisoning them with toxic gas helps to save one tree, well, that’s a price the tree-hugging, hippie, one-world commie pukes are willing to pay. Don’t you admire their sacrifice?
The G&A reporter has what qualifications? I ask as he says the M4’s should be blowing up and aren’t. Also the M855 has a steel core penetrator surrounded by a small amount of lead under the jacket compared to M193 Ball which is all lead cored. Myself I’d like to see the specs from the Army before grabbing a pitchfork because a gun writer is mad.
As if 5.56/.223 ammo isn’t already expensive enough.
Joy of joys. Time to stock up while I still can.
I made the mistake of buying some steel shot rounds for my 12-gauge once. It SUCKED.
its been over 7 years since i got out, but i remember a common theme when i asked why we were doing something stupid was “chariot wheels”.
if ya ever wondered the reasoning behind the width of a car’s wheel base, it actually has historical reasoning. it is set the same width as rail road tracks. railroad tracks were set at their width, because all ruts in existing roads were the same width, due to the horse drawn carts. the carts wheels were intentionally made to that width because of the ruts in the roads. so ya wonder how long those ruts have been there, and ya find out that many European roads have been around since the roman’s built them and the ruts originally came from their chariots. So we find out that cars width is based off roman chariots. why? because thats the way its always been.
whats wrong with the way its always been? why do we have to go changing things now and making them stupider than they were? the old stupid was bad enough, but at least it was what everyone was used to. now we want to totally retard the military. NEVER GO FULL RETARD damn it. someone needs to tell dempsey and co
I read a while ago that the primary driver behind this change was to reduce the cost of lead remediation at rifle ranges.
Public range in PA that I used to shoot at had to do that and it was pretty expensive and time consuming.
When I had my PS90 I shot the lead free 5.7mm all the time with no problems.
I love it when the Good Idea Fairy gets up a full head of steam like this.
I acquired a box of lead-free Winchester ammo for my .308. Haven’t shot it yet, so I can’t give any critique of it’s abilities, but I can tell you this: it’s $10 more a box than my regular ammo, even my Hornady.
That’s my total experience with lead-free ammo so far.
This is in line with DoD’s decision to purchase biofuel for Navy ships at $26 a gallon compared to $3.60 a gallon for conventional fuel. Meanwhile, furloughs at DoD continue and may get more widespread. “Madness? This… is… GOVERNMENT!”
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/07/02/gop-in-congress-critical-navy-great-green-fleet/#ixzz2a9zWB7Df
So let’s see, we are going to greener fuel for ships at almost 9 times the price and greener ammo for the boot in the field at twice the price. The only place I care where the lead goes is in the enemy. All this while the DoD want’s to cut budgets, the POTUS wants to cut the budget. So I guess those lines at the VA will be getting longer. Especially with soldiers sick from green round poisoning and blown up hands from the higher pressure the weapons will have to endure. Who the F@ck is running this outfit anymore? Sounds like the Joint Chiefs have a back room of pot smoking hippie dudes giving them liberal advice on Al Gore, green planet issues. I know there is already one in the war room under the White House. That is the only explanation I can come up with for their ass hattery. I can’t believe they are going to put yet more burden on the troop in the field. Well, yes I can. Anything to make their job of killing the enemy while staying alive a little harder to do. Shit heads!
The current rounds are green ….green tip, thats all that matters.
Are we really worried about leaving lead in the sands of Iraq and Afghanistan? If so why? Is there something there that matters so much to humanity or that is so precious a little lead will ruin it?
WTF is going on here?
Sean – you asked about his qualifications – some follow:
?USMC Primary Marksmanship Instructors course
?LAPD and California POST Certified Handgun Instructor course (train the trainer
certified)
?LAPD and California POST Certified Shotgun Instructor course (train the trainer
certified)
?LAPD and California POST Certified Rifle Instructor course (train the trainer certified)
?LAPD and California POST Instructor Development course
?Department of Homeland Security Certified First Responder Instructors course
?USMC/DOD Certified Range Officer
?LAPD and California POST Certified Police Field Training Officers course
?LAPD and California POST Certified Less Lethal Instructor
?Glock Certified Instructors course
?Surefire Institute Low Light Instructors course
?Springfield Armory certified Armorer
?Smith And Wesson certified Armorer
plus over a decade UCMC Reserves and a Bronze Star with V device – says he is court certified as a firearms expert witness. What he says is that higher-pressure loads will lead to earlier failure, and that the M4 is already subject to wear. Don’t think you would find any firearms expert who would dispute those allegations. plus you have another issue – people typically interchange .223 and 5.56mm, and this load is ‘way too hot for anything chambered as a .223. They are NOT identical. I’m npot an expert but his points are all valid, and I have to agree with the bulk of the commenters above – this is an expensive unneeded boondoggle. If anything, he is understating some of the acccuracy concerns. 5.5″ is a ludicrous standard – that makes the M885 barely a 250 yard round in terms of accuracy, and that does not even take into account that firearms are notriously flaky with copper bullets – some shoot ’em well and some don’t. So if you are one of the lads with one of the ‘don’ts’ you could have a weapon that reliably groups into, oh, say 8-12″ at 100 yards.
I can’t wait until one of these geniuses realizes that spears, arrows, and rocks are the greenest of the green and the UN ‘mandates’ that future wars be fought only with them.
you know, ammunition contains bullets which have proven fatal to those that receive them when expended. The Army should just do away with bullets and give all of the soldiers stress cards for training and warning cards for when we go to war. I’m sure that when an enemy of America receives a warning card from a soldier, they’ll stop their fighting right away!
So, now, not only do we have DHS being the most well-armed force in the United States, they will also be the only force with high caliber ammunition that actually works. Well, the only way this could get any better is if there were 15,000 Russian soldiers quartered near Washington, D.C. in case of some disaster… oh, wait…
Crossbows and compound bows. No lead, 300fps on the projectiles, ammo (arrows/bolts) can be recycled.
I practice green all the time. I don’t miss, saves the environment. I wish. 🙂
On my last deployment I shots hundreds of green tip, steel tip, and LR 5.56 through my issued M4A1 in order to decide what I wanted to carry in my combat load. The steel tip was consistently the most accurate and reliable. Over the course of my deployment I fired thousands of them and never had my rifle jam once (a rarity in my experience).. I re-zeroed at least once a month and frequently did the same ammo comparison. What really amazed me was that it was more accurate than the LR. I’ll take the steel tip ammo any day. This is a case where Big Army got it right.
@15 Since we are in essence policing the world why not just do a LEOs and hand out tickets. We could do a Tucson enemy gun by back program. Now that is green and clean.
@21zulu, i tried to come up with a way to respond to your post, but the best i could do is say, you are talking out of your ass. i dont know what a 21Z is, but i would assume it was an engineer MOS when they were bouncing back and forth between 12s and 21s. in which case, first, there is no way you fired “thousands” of rounds in your deployment, nor was there any way you were going to have the ability to zero once a month. second, since when does a soldier get to decide what he wants to carry in his combat load? you carry what you are issued, shut up, and like it. third, these rounds wear out a cheap military rifle far too fast for the real infantry to be carrying. military equipment is made by the lowest bidder, and will break easy enough on its own. i buy steel rounds for my personal rifles, but my rifles are way higher quality than these cheap pieces of shit the military issues. the cheaper rounds work better for the cheaper rifles. we dont need hotter, faster rounds blowing up the barrels of the cheap rifles while our soldiers are in a fire fight.
@18 and 20- any individual weapon has its preference. A good weapon shoots one or more ammo types well, a great weapon shoots many types well – depends on the rifle. (Don’t believe me – take a scoped .22 to a range and try multiple brands of ammo – you’ll be shocked at the variation.) That said – one rifle isn’t a statistical universe. In general hotter loads WILL stress and wear out any given rifle far faster than lower-stress loads. Doesn’t mean today, or tomorrow – and normally doesn’t mean instantaneous disassembly, either – usually barrel erosion and increased tolerances kill the accuracy faster than that. But if increased stress kills that accuracy in 10,000 rounds instead of 20,000 rounds – THAT is a major issue when you multiply that by how many thousands or weapons?
@20Smitty, 21Z is a Combat Engineering Senior Sergeant. So apparently “Top” had a lot of free time to spend at the range. Didn’t know they could pick their own ammo. Rank has privliges kinda thing?
we still come down to the “fired thousands of rounds” thing. they must have all been at the range.
ive also never seen the Army issue anything other than lead rounds for 5.56, what military was this you were in Top?
OK, before y’all get bent out of shape, 21Zulu is my call sign, not my MOS. For the record I am an 18Z. I would be glad to give you my name and unit to look up on AKO in a private e-mail. My last fire base had a 25 meter range and we had a long arms “range” outside the gate. We had cases of all three types of 5.56, so yes, I could choose what I wanted. And yes, despite nearly daily patrols, I made my team re-zero at least once a month and did team training at the range almost every Friday. We are professionals and I take marksmanship very seriously. Anyone’s who’s been on a fire base knows its the best range time you’ll ever get in the Army.
my email is Smitty.GNS@gmail.com
Email sent.
@4: Sparky, I wouldn’t worry about ammo prices. Between the winding down of Afghanistan, and the way the empty-shelved panic buyers shot their wads during the post-Sandy Hook meta-shortage, I think we’re headed for a glut in the civilian ammo market. Simple supply and demand. A shortage is almost invariably followed by a surplus situation. Plan to buy it cheap and stack it deep before the next panic.
Leave it to the Obama Administration to get more Americans killed…
I’ve seen the no sh!t results of testing. On a 3/8″ steel plate, M193 and M855 mushrooms and splatters with no significant penetration. M855A1 mushrooms and the steel core penetrates all the way through.
BOHICA!