New Army "Caliber Configuration Study"

[BluntForceTrauma]

To be technical, 5.45 DOES have a small amount of lead.

The reasons for steel-core at the end of WWII are inconclusive. I would tend to think it was due to a shortage of raw material, rather than rigorously examined technical improvements.

It could well have "reduced the effectiveness" of small arms. Could be at that point the powers that be realized small arms were a relatively small factor in the overall killing and wounding equation, and that as long as it goes bang it's good enough when resources are scarce.

Again, the Russian use of steel core is to gain a certain amount of penetration, all while maximizing their use of raw materials. As such, they, again, exhibit cooly rational thinking to gain a military, albeit strategic advantage, and it has nothing to do with environmentalism.

If you want to compare apples to apples, and put up a steel-core 6.5 Grendel round against their steel-core 7.62x54R, that's a more fair comparison than hobbling the 65G to a lead-free bullet vs. Russian lead-cored, as we were discussing above.

John