In something bigger than a 7.62 it has it's uses. in combat. Otherwise, it's a novelty only.
You should have responded to someone else. I tried out for the Rifle and Pistol team at Fort Bragg. I also graduated from the two week long Machine Gunners Course for the 82nd Airborne with an Expert Badge. Oh, when I was squad driver I was also the gunner for our Primary Anti Tank weapon. A M-67 90MM Recoilless Rifle.
Not so in a recoilless rifle. And the AR series has very little kickback. I won't go into why but let's just say, it probably qualifies as a recoilless.
It really doesn’t. The AR platform in use by the army. I fired the A1 on full rock and roll. Nobody can keep it on target past fifty yards. I fired the A2 on burst. You learned to aim low left. On full auto you had three seconds of ammo on full auto with a 30 round magazine. Without a bipod or something to brace the weapon on you just were not keeping the rounds on target.
A Recoilless Rifle is actually a big tube that fires odd rounds. The rounds have a back blast panel. Newton’s Third Law is obeyed by having equal force go out the back as the front.
This is a recoilless rifle like I used. Same model.
The recoilless rifle made you feel like you had been bounced off the ground by an angry giant when you fired it. And with earplugs your hearing was down for the rest of the day.
The 11th Combat Commandment, "Thou Shalt Not Run Out Of Ammo".
It all depends on the pressure the person gives to the weapon. And in a fully auto setting, you aren't on target past the 1st shot unless you spend an extraordinary amount of time at the range. This is why the normal setting on an M-16 or M-4 is in the semi auto position.
The Nevada Shooter had 3 ARs with bumpstocks on them and he used them. He killed and wounded a lot of music lovers that day.
No he really didn’t. Pollack fired more than 1,000 rounds, and wounded just over 400, and killed 60.
And he had more than a dozen weapons with bump stocks. But he had a kill ratio of 6%. That is atrocious. He could have done better with a medium caliber like .308 in a bolt action rifle.
Especially since he was at the far range for single targets. On an M-16A2 the point, or single target range is 550M. The army generally doesn’t shoot beyond 300 Meters. The Marines still shoot at 500 Meter targets.
I’m willing to bet most of the wounded were either through and through which got two people, or ricocheting ammo off the concrete pad the concert goers were on.
He had a densely packed group of people and was firing for at least ten minutes and managed to kill sixty.
The dumbass even fired at the actuation fuel with regular ammunition like that would set the fuel on fire.
It's only accurate on the first shot. After that, it's willy nilly as the barrel walks.
When you are carrying only 4 mags of 30, you really can't use the full auto setting unless you are being overrun and the bogies are close, real close. I would say it's a kiss your ass goodbye where you take as many of the bad guys with you as possible.
It's along the same way as owning a truck. The bigger and smokier the truck is, the smaller the male parts.
Ok. You start out claiming the AR platform is basically a recoilless rifle, and end claiming the barrels of M-16’s and M-4’s walk around Willy Nilly. Make up your mind my friend.
If you are going to be a shooter you need to learn the physics that govern everything about shooting. Long range shooting is an exercise in math. Everything has an effect on the flight of the bullet. Humidity, temperature, altitude, cold barrel versus warm barrel. At really long shots you have to factor in the rotation of the earth.
This was not a trained killer. This was a moron who thought he knew as much as a soldier.
This idiot just threw a bunch of lead in the general direction of a densely packed crowd and hoped he managed to kill some of them. The proof is in the weapons he went with.
He went with the .223 or 5.56. Those rounds were chosen because they create what is called militarily significant wounds. Let me explain what that means. If you kill the enemy there is no rush to move the corpse from the field of battle. If you wound him then two others are out of battle as they carry the guy to medical treatment. If you leave the guy there screaming and slowly dying from his wounds it destroys unit morale.
The .223 or 5.56 round tends to create horrific wounds in humans. But the bullets don’t kill as easily as most people think.
There are four ways a bullet kills.
1) Virtually Instant death. This is a shot to the head or heart. Generally speaking people don’t recover from those. There are exceptions, but that is a very low percentage.
2) Exsanguination. That is where the victim bleeds out and dies from blood loss. Bigger holes and deeper wounds make this happen much faster.
3) Suffocation. A lung shot will create a situation where pressure builds up in the chest and literally suffocates the victim, also blood can fill the lungs and cause the same result. The victim literally drowns in blood.
4) Everything else. This is the stuff that is implantable. This includes Shock, bits of bone or fat or even clots that enters the blood stream and causes a heart attack. Blood poisoning, which used to be called gangrene. And a couple dozen other complications I won’t bother listing. This category has killed in the past, and will be the cause of death in the future, but you can’t plan on it.
So with this knowledge why would any army choose the Cartridge? Several reasons. The ammo is lightweight and the soldiers can carry a lot. Most rounds fired are launched at the baddies to force them to keep their heads down. In that situation more ammo is more important than effectiveness. Ease of shooting. The rifles that use that ammo are easy to shoot with minimal recoil, especially compared to the 30-06 or 7.62 rounds used before. The rifle could be lighter which increases the mobility of the soldiers.
Everything in combat is a trade off. If you up armor the soldier to be impervious to direct fire, he ain’t gonna move fast. He probably has his body weight strapped to him in armor.
In Desert Storm my unit was still using Flack Jackets which were only marginally updated from Vietnam. We had Kevlar helmets, but that was it. The body armor wouldn’t stop rifle rounds. They would barely stop pistol rounds. They were intended to stop fragments from artillery.
They were heavy, and hot, and not very useful, but we wore them because we were told to.
By the same token. The .50 BMG is far more effective. So why not put one in every soldiers hand? Issue everyone a Heckete rifle. Give everyone a big rifle that shoots that effective cartridge. It’s slow to fire, and you can’t carry much ammo if you want to carry water, food, medical, or radios.
I’ve said this before. Hitting the baddie with a less than optimal cartridge is way better than having the perfect cartridge sail right on by.