I deliberately used the phrase "pinned down", which does not require as tight a beaten zone. I have not been keeping track of what weapons and ammo are carried by US soldiers on foot patrols. I know that range was an issue when foot patrols carried M249's. Are they mostly carrying full length M240s now? I keep seeing references to the shorter M240L. What ammo are they using? You mention 173gr. I had been under the impression that they had been using M80, although what has happened after the the development of M80A1, I have no idea.
Most of my impressions of relative range came from Jim Schatz's 2016 NDIA Armament Systems Forum presentation entitled "A Path To Overmatch, Next Generation Individual Weapon System. In his graphs, the Russian 7.62R PKP's (25.9"barrel) and SVDS (23.6" barrel) outrange the US 5.56 and 7.62 weapons. In doing some research today, I see that a TFB article that uses calculations to show that there is little difference between the Russian and US cartridges with the same barrel lengths. I don't know if the numbers for BC, MV, etc are correct, though.
https://ndiastorage.blob.core.usgovcloud...Schatz.pdf
https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2016...r-russian/
Most of my impressions of relative range came from Jim Schatz's 2016 NDIA Armament Systems Forum presentation entitled "A Path To Overmatch, Next Generation Individual Weapon System. In his graphs, the Russian 7.62R PKP's (25.9"barrel) and SVDS (23.6" barrel) outrange the US 5.56 and 7.62 weapons. In doing some research today, I see that a TFB article that uses calculations to show that there is little difference between the Russian and US cartridges with the same barrel lengths. I don't know if the numbers for BC, MV, etc are correct, though.
https://ndiastorage.blob.core.usgovcloud...Schatz.pdf
https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2016...r-russian/