Military round comparisons

[bwaites]

And that would have made for another exaggerated comparison. Even Bill Alexander said that 144gr is too heavy for a general purpose ball load. The only suitable lead core FMJ in the desired weight range is the 120gr Norma. Try it for a realistic comparison.

The 144 is only too heavy because no one thinks it would upset appropriately at the speeds its driven by the Grendel at close range. At distance, none of the ball rounds upset or fragment because their speeds have dropped, so the comparison at distance is reasonable. It would make a great machine gun round, too. But making a 123 grain FMJ with similar ballistics to the AMAX, 123 Sierra, and 123 Lapua would not be difficult. Lapua has actually come out with some newer designs that have even better BC's, and those could also be copied into FMJ's. The Norma is an OLD design in comparison.

That said, I'd prefer to see the 144 driven to 2600 FPS, where is would absolutely TOAST the .308 rounds. That won't happen in the Grendel yet, unfortunately. I am going to pick up a hundred and see what I get using CFE223 and Leverlution. I'm betting we can drive it over 2300 and maybe even 2400 from a 20" barrel. It would be a much improved DM round over .223 even at that velocity.

Now, having said all of THAT.....I don't think we will see a new brass cartridge rifle introduced into military use, period. We aren't going that route. The head shed wants a HUGE next step, not an incremental improvement, and that won't happen with mature technology. We will have to have a paradigm shift at least as great as the switch from M14 to M16 to make that happen.