Requirements for Replacement of Currently Issued 5.56 M-855 and 7.62 M-80.

[stanc]

What you guys need to do is to define the barriers that you require penetration. One of them will be some level of body armor as that stuff is appearing more regularly.

Where? I haven't heard of any of our current enemies making significant use of body armor. AFAIK, the only people who use hard body armor are our allies and others whom we are very unlikely to fight. I see no good reason to be concerned about defeating Interceptor-type armor, and soft armor can be penetrated by ordinary ball ammo.

Another will be sheet metal and automotive glass separated by some specific amount of space such as found for car and truck doors. A third may be some type of construction material if any is common throughout the world. Not sure of any others but they must be common throughout the world.

So, you have to decide what is more important -- penetration of hard things or terminal effects on humans.

Both are important. At least the military tests for both. Here's some of the barrier testing: http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2008Intl/Lucid.pdf