Grendel mags?

[RangerRick]

On arfcom he said "the Tango Down, PMAG and TAPCO all split down the spine" but "the Lancer and MSAR suffered little or no damage."

Um, apparently not: "The CProducts Stainless steel mag also died on impact with flattened feedlips."

http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_3_17/468826...1#i4345555

I don't see much applicability to the real world in torture "tests" like these. I mean, how often are mags going to be run over by a truck, or dropped from a height of more than 8 feet? Let's see some testing based on the way mags are used in reality.

When you parachute in, you lower your ruck sack on a 20 foot line. That way it hits before you and your descent rate slows a little before you land.

Stuff in the ruck takes a pretty good shot. It would suck if your mags split.

I've had ammo, among other things, thrown out of a hovering helicopter to me. No place to land so it gets tossed out hovering over the trees.

It was all cased ammo though, and it is packed really well and survived OK.

I've also had ammo dropped to me with a poncho parachute out of a helicopter flying by. You literally tie a couple of ammo boxes to the 4 corners of a poncho with parachute cord. You stuff the poncho into a sand bag and make a static line out of 15 feet of parachute cord. You tie one end of the static line to a floor ring and the other to the closed end of the sand bag. Then throw the ammo and sand bag full of poncho out the door.

The weight of the ammo pulls the poncho out of the sand bag. It acts like a parachute, sort of. The ammo hits hard, but usually survives the drop. Here again, it was cased ammo, so it was packed very well.

I've seen guys fall over 8 feet, though, and it would suck to have the mags burst, even if it was your buddies that needed the ammo and not the guy who fell.

One of the guys in the Back Hawk Down incident fell 40 feet on the fast rope in and had to be medevac'ed, so it does happen.

Back in the days of the old C rations, our company clerk came up to me and handed me a dripping wet cardboard box and said "here's your dinner."

The chow had been dropped by parachute from a C-130 on a cargo pallet. The cans of food on the bottom of the stack burst on impact.

I had been out on a patrol and got in late, so I ate off the bottom of the stack. In my case it was a can of apricots, so they were still edible.

At least it wasn't the spaghetti! It was barely edible normally, much less oozing out of a split can.

RR