11-13-2011, 05:09 AM
Our military rightly should express a significant amount of protest when anyone proposes that individual riflemen lose ammunition capacity in their magazines, and increases weight on the load. Any high-power rifle cartridge of .22-.30 Cal is adequate if we look at each shot as an isolated event. When you look at training, logistics, recoil, barrel life, magazine capacity, and things along those lines, a balance has to be found. Right now, there isn't any cartridge I'm aware of that matches what 5.56 can do across the board.
Duties and responsibilities of a riflemen rarely involve engaging auto glass, although it has come up more frequently in an urban environment, but VCP's rarely involve just rifles or carbines-there is usually a SAW or M240 as well. It would be a huge mistake to judge the application of an assault rifle cartridge by an auto glass defeat requirement, although a lot of effort is being put into multi-purpose projectiles that are intended to do well against armor, glass, and tissue. The caliber won't matter in that case anyway, since the solution lies in bullet construction.
Duties and responsibilities of a riflemen rarely involve engaging auto glass, although it has come up more frequently in an urban environment, but VCP's rarely involve just rifles or carbines-there is usually a SAW or M240 as well. It would be a huge mistake to judge the application of an assault rifle cartridge by an auto glass defeat requirement, although a lot of effort is being put into multi-purpose projectiles that are intended to do well against armor, glass, and tissue. The caliber won't matter in that case anyway, since the solution lies in bullet construction.