Micro handguns?

BlueRaja, the M4A1 is not standard issue, it's still a specialty carbine for vehicle crew members, spec-ops and behind the front line troops, the regular troops are still being issued the M16A2 as their standard weapon and every GI will get it issued in BCT (Basic Combat Training).

Shot placement is key, not the cardridge, the AR-15 based weapon systems are accurate enough to make shots in the vital areas.

a centre-mass shot or a head shot with this rifle SHOULD do the trick any time, so it is possible that troops don't take their time to zero-in their rifles or do not take the time to actually make the shot.

The swiss-mini-gun
Deisgned as a novelty rather than a weapon.

This is the smallest working production gun in the world today. It is very expensive, propels its bullet at 400 fps. Probebly doesnt do to much damage though.

Funny quote found in the comments in the the above link:

The ammo page says that the tiny cartridges' muzzle energy is less than 1.1 joules. Given how small they are, that could well be enough to break skin, and you definitely wouldn't want to be shot in the eye with one. But if someone offered me $100 to shoot myself in the forehead with one, I'd do it with a smile.

[edit on 13-1-2007 by Tiloke]

Originally posted by fritz

Originally posted by GT100FV
Effective at 1800m against point or area targets?

I'm talking about The General - you know, the Gimpy or General Purpose Machine Gun - accurate out to 1800 metres.

Not talking about infantrymen or Marines [British] - even though they can walk on water

or paras.

Perhaps a sniper could kill out to that range with a 7.62 milly sniper rifle firing special match or sniper grade ammunition - but otherwise no.

With regards to your ballistic report, that my friend is most definately innaccurate.

Only last Wednesday morning, I was watching an ex gunnery sgt whack a current issue combat helmet with a mag of 5.56 mm and it ripped it to pieces - firing 3 round then 5 round bursts.

I then sat open mouthed and watched as he reloaded and fired single rounds in to huge slabs of beeswax - this has the same density of human flesh and tissue and obviously is representative of the human body.

I always knew the 7.62 mm rounds did damage, but by Christ, these 5.56 milly rounds ripped the beeswax apart and there were no through and throughs - even at ranges of under 100 metres.

I'll take accounts of performance in the field over ballistic gelatin/beeswax demonstrations.

As for the 1800m, that's area targets not point targets.

www.army.mil...

Max effective range: 1800 m (area target) 800 m (point target)

Originally posted by GrOuNd_ZeRo
BlueRaja, the M4A1 is not standard issue, it's still a specialty carbine for vehicle crew members, spec-ops and behind the front line troops, the regular troops are still being issued the M16A2 as their standard weapon and every GI will get it issued in BCT (Basic Combat Training).

Shot placement is key, not the cardridge, the AR-15 based weapon systems are accurate enough to make shots in the vital areas.

a centre-mass shot or a head shot with this rifle SHOULD do the trick any time, so it is possible that troops don't take their time to zero-in their rifles or do not take the time to actually make the shot.

It's replaced the M-16A2 in the 18th ABN Corps(who aren't SOF by any means), and becoming standard in other units too. Combat arms units were getting them first, before Combat Support and Combat Service Support units.

In combat, your target is generally moving, so the notion of you picking where on their body to hit is unrealistic. You aim for center mass, and 7.62 center mass is going to stop them from whatever it is they were doing. 5.56 isn't guaranteed to do that with 1 shot. That's not to say that they may not die from their wound, but you want them to die before they can do anything else, not sometime at a later date. It's just like the debate over 9mm vs. .45ACP. The .45 has a proven track record of effectiveness, whereas the 9mm has many horror stories about stopping power. You want a round where shot placement isn't as vital, in order for it to be effective. The only advantage of 5.56 is it's lighter so you can carry more of it. That's good if you need to lay down a high volume of fire, but if you're taking aimed shots, it's nice to have the extra wallup.
The 6.8mm round looks promising though. It's compatible with current magazines/lower receivers, you can carry almost as much as with 5.56, but have the stopping power of a .270 size round.

www.military.com...
www.gunsandammomag.com...
www.findarticles.com...

Up here we use the H&K G3 with 7.62x51

Only thing that works. They RULE afghanistan too. We've taken a LOT of fire there, but we always seem to end up killing everyone without getting more than injured at worst :-)

The afghans are shooting the WAY inferior 7.62x39 russian, which is a total disaster of a round. half the power and no accuracy, and no killing power beyond 300 meters. Our guys there just walk around with the G3's, not much body armour either, and when we lay down the law, everyone else gets out of the one kilometer radius, from which they can't shoot at us effectively anyway, and then just call an F-16 and WHAMMO...

They must have found out that their stone houses don't stop our bullets at all, unlike the american bullets :-)

Besides, the speed and residual power of the round increases WAY above the given sea-level numbers, when you're up around 2000 meters +/-
It's more like a bigger and more accurate round with less bullet drop.
So we end up shooting further and hitting harder. It's in several tens of percents more effective.

Originally posted by 732t497654
Up here we use the H&K G3 with 7.62x51

who exactly would " you " be ???????????

< SNIP ........... some watler mitty ranting >

Originally posted by bodrul

Originally posted by SpyderLady
Oh, how cute that is. I could carry it in my bra. And as far as accuracy, point blank in the groin.

thank god your in the US

on note to the gun
does that even have enough force to penotrate the skin?

The bullet is so light and small and the cartridge so underpowered that I have my doubts, regardless of what the literature at the time says. It has only 2 ft/lbs of muzzle energy out of a .11 caliber weapon. A typical .177 BB gun hits a LOT harder than that!

Maybe the secret for an ultra-small-caliber round would be 'active' ammunition; anything that explodes or expands after impact is of course illegal, but maybe something that burrows into the body or otherwise causes more than simple kinetic damage...

I'm sorry, are you in the US? Expanding and exploding ammo are both entirely legal to own. Just about every person who legaly carries a gun has sexpanding ammo. Exploding ammo isn't really around because its unsafe, inaccurate, expensive, and not really usable for anything(but its legal).

Originally posted by Wembley

Maybe the secret for an ultra-small-caliber round would be 'active' ammunition; anything that explodes or expands after impact is of course illegal, but maybe something that burrows into the body or otherwise causes more than simple kinetic damage...

You'd be better off at getting a small .45, .40, or .357, than trying to make do with a some micro caliber. Go with what has a proven track record.

Originally posted by Tiloke
I'm sorry, are you in the US? Expanding and exploding ammo are both entirely legal to own.

Not for armies

The Geneva Protocols outlaw any kind of expanding or dum-dum ammo, which makes increasing lethality a challenge.

You'd be better off at getting a small .45, .40, or .357, than trying to make do with a some micro caliber. Go with what has a proven track record.

Those are fairly big - and have been around a while. Can't modern technology do the job with something smaller?

Wembly, Expanding and exploding ammo is NOT forbidden by the geneva convention, this is an urban legend.

The following information was taked from TheGunZone.com.

One of the most lamentable traditions among members of the firearms community is the tendency to latch on to a piece of misinformation and endlessly circulate it as authoritative. Nowhere is this more prevalent then on the subject of "dum-dum hollow point bullets" and their being "banned by the Geneva Convention."

Sound familiar?

It's not accurate, of course, but few, if any, ever make the effort to find out the true facts for the simple reason that the foregoing has so often been casually repeated by "gun persons," that, in keeping with "Goebbels' Big Lie" theory, it has taken on the aura of a verity.

For openers, "dum-dum bullets," named for their arsenal of origin in a town near Calcutta, India, are soft-nosed projectiles, not hollow points1. And their deployment under the "Laws of War" is proscribed by a "Declaration on the Use of Bullets Which Expand or Flatten Easily in the Human Body" adopted at the First Hague Peace Conference of (29 July) 1899 which states:

The Undersigned, Plenipotentiaries of the Powers represented at the International Peace Conference at The Hague, duly authorized to that effect by their Governments,

Inspired by the sentiments which found expression in the Declaration of St. Petersburg of the 29th November (11th December), 1868,

Declare as follows:

"The Contracting Parties agree to abstain from the use of bullets which expand or flatten easily in the human body, such as bullets with a hard envelope which does not entirely cover the core, or is pierced with incisions."

The present Declaration is only binding for the Contracting Powers in the case of a war between two or more of them.

It shall cease to be binding from the time when, in a war between the Contracting Parties, one of the belligerents is joined by a non-Contracting Power.

Although not a party to this accord, as a matter of policy the United States has acknowledged and respected its applicability in conventional combat operations since its adoption more than one century ago.

Where the U.S. did sign on, however, was with the Hague Convention IV of 1907, Article 23(e) of which Annex states:

"...it is especially forbidden -

To employ arms, projectiles, or material [sic] calculated to cause unnecessary suffering;"

In observance of this, for many years U.S. Military snipers went afield with M-118 ammo, a 7.62 X 51mm 173-grain solid-tipped boat tail round manufactured to much closer tolerances than M-80 "ball."

This practice began to change subsequent to a 23 September 1985 opinion issued by the Judge Advocate General, authored by W. Hays Parks2, Chief of the JAG's International Law Branch, for the signature of Major Hugh R. Overholt, which stated:

"...expanding point ammunition is legally permissible in counterterrorist operations not involving the engagement of the armed forces of another State."

On 12 October 1990, another Memorandum of Law from Parks at the request of the Commander of the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) and coordinated with the Department of State, Army General Counsel, as well as the Offices of the Judge Advocates General of the Navy and Air Force, concluded that:

"The purpose of the 7.62mm "open-tip" MatchKing bullet is to provide maximum accuracy at very long range. ... Bullet fragmentation is not a design characteristic, however, nor a purpose for use of the MatchKing by United States Army snipers. Wounds caused by MatchKing ammunition are similar to those caused by a fully jacketed military ball bullet, which is legal under the law of war, when compared at the same ranges and under the same conditions. (The Sierra #2200 BTHP) not only meets, but exceeds, the law of war obligations of the United States for use in combat."

Whether it is the overall excellence of the Sierra MatchKing, or its virtual endorsement within the upper echelons of the military, the #2200 boat tail hollow point was the round of preference for snipers and .30 caliber High Power competitors alike. Aside from Federal, Remington and Samson (IMI) both load it in their commercially available "match" rounds, while Winchester uses it in their Ranger line of law enforcement ammunition.

In 1993, another Parks-authored opinion cleared the way for the U.S. Special Operations Command to procure a Winchester 230-grain JHP ("Black Talon," yet!) for issue with its H&K-manufactured Mk 23 Mod 0 pistol.

Now, when the fat guy with the greasy beard who always seems to be leaning on the end of the counter at the local gun store, starts blathering about the Geneva Convention banning hollow point bullets, you can educate him with the right information.

"I believe you mean the Hague Peace Conferences of 1899 and 1907...."

...you can suggest, and then nail him beneath the bill of his CAT Diesel cap with the JAG's recent opinions that 168-grain (and 175-grain) BTHPs and 230-grain SXTs are in... and the Hague accords are o-u-t!

Taken from The Gun Zone

[edit on 15-1-2007 by Tiloke]

Originally posted by Wembley

You'd be better off at getting a small .45, .40, or .357, than trying to make do with a some micro caliber. Go with what has a proven track record.

Those are fairly big - and have been around a while. Can't modern technology do the job with something smaller?

Technology hasn't replaced physics. The way bullets do their work is by
A-penetration
B-expansion
C-temporary/permanent wound channel
D-blood pressure loss
E-striking solid object(i.e. bone, dense muscle/organ).

It's true that very small bullets can be lethal. When considering a round for military or self defense, the round needs to be reliably lethal though, not just capable of being lethal. The energy a bullet transfers to the body and rapid loss of blood pressure are the determining factors at how fast one is incapacitated. In other words if the bullet doesn't strike bone/major organ/severe large blood vessels, incapacitation isn't guaranteed. The round has to have good penetration qualities, but not prone to over penetration as this usually means there wasn't much tissue damage on the way through. Good expansion of the bullet helps insure rapid loss of blood pressure(wound channels and blood vessels cut) and energy transfer. The .45, .40, and .357 all have very good track records.
A smaller round at handgun velocities isn't going to be nearly as effective, and there's nothing technology can do to change that fact. Rifle calibers can be smaller, as the round is travelling much faster, but you still have to deal with the weight/velocity/sectional density of the bullet to achieve good effect.

Yeah, thanks, I'm familiar with the legal niceties. The point is, the US military will not use this type of ammunition.

"The U.S. is not a party to this treaty, but U.S. officials over the years have taken the position that the armed forces of the U.S. will adhere to its terms to the extent that its application is consistent with the object and purpose of Art. 23e of the Annex to the Hague Convention IV, quoted above."

www.thegunzone.com...

Doing so would cause a whole heap of problems (look as the amount of trouble over DU which has not even been proven to be illegal yet).
So, assuming that the US position is not abou to change, can small-caliber rounds be made adequately lethal.

"Technology hasn't replaced physics. The way bullets do their work is by
A-penetration
B-expansion
C-temporary/permanent wound channel
D-blood pressure loss
E-striking solid object(i.e. bone, dense muscle/organ). "

Hence my suggestion of something like an active penetrator that would not rely on simple kinetic means to do damage. Though whether this would be OKayed given the legal restrictions is another matter.