The Tactical Loads Test:

Since the 1970s, in the wake of the Viet-Nam War, the US military has been evaluating a variety of loads and some alternative cartridges, in response to criticism of the 5.56 x 45 mm NATO (aka .223 Remington) cartridge. This reaction has been episodic, with a brief period of keen interest that has usually attenuated rapidly. As far back as 1993 (now 30 years ago), the infamous "Blackhawk Down" incident in Mogadishu, Somalia affected the military in much the same way that the Miami Shootout affected the FBI and police; though without any resolve to make the necessary changes.

The standard issue 62 grain FMJ-BT M855 ball ammunition continued to be poorly regarded in terms of its ability to stop aggressors in the post-9/11 era. It was originally developed by Fabrique Nationale (FN) in Belgium as a general purpose machinegun load called the SS109 with improved armor and barrier defeat capability for the FN Minimi, which ultimately became the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW) for the US Marine Corps and US Army. The bullet has a steel cored ogive with a lead core in the base and only fragments at relatively high velocity. The earlier M193 Ball load with its 55 grain FMJ-BT lead-cored bullet also only fragments at relatively high velocity, and if no fragmentation occurs it is a poor performer, like the M855. Either of these loads in an M4 carbine, with a 14.5 inch barrel, loses so much velocity that its maximum effective range is 100 to 150 m.

Soldiers want something more potent. Unfortunately for them, the US DOD abides by the Hague Convention of 1899, which prohibits any form of small arms ammunition designed to cause "superfluous" wounding by expansion or fragmentation (though we never signed it, nor did our enemies, and it is non-binding even for signatories when fighting parties who did not sign). Instead, what our soldiers use is ammunition that "inadvertantly" fragments (some of the time). In other words, it is deliberately designed not to perform its intended function, its a scalpel designed to have no sharp edge.

Most of the following loads are non-compliant with the Hague Convention, so these won't solve the problem until the White House or Congress decides to quit abiding by antiquated, hypocritical and morally repugnant 19th century European rules of war and gives our troops the tools they need and deserve. However, police units may find something here of interest, as may the individual citizen looking for a good tactical load for his carbine and the hunter who uses the .223 Remington cartridge (although I am not advocating its use for big game and you'll shortly see why).

I will return the question of military ammunition developments at the conclusion.

This comparison of twelve loads pretty well covers the waterfront. The velocities shown below for the loads tested were chronographed using a Shooting Chrony Beta in both a 11.25 inch Shorty barrel and a 16 inch CAR-15 barrel. The wetpack tests were conducted at the 11.25 inch barrel velocities, which corresponds closely to the 200 m impact velocities from a standard 20 inch M16A2 rifle barrel or the 100 m impact velocities from a 16 inch CAR-15 or 14.5 inch M4 carbine barrel. It is at this range that most of the cause for complaint is encountered, although some criticism has been offered for the lack of effectiveness at close quarter battle ranges. Expanded diameter is the mean of the widest and narrowest dimensions. Retained weight is the mass of the fragment that was recovered from the terminus of the primary wound path.

Notes:

1. Measured mean of length and width of recovered ogive in full yaw
2. Cohesive mass of fragments; largest fragment was 29.9 gr
3. Cohesive mass of fragments; largest fragment was 30.2 gr

The Lightweights (40 - 55 grains)

Loads tested with lightweight bullets: South African Ball 55 gr FMJ, Federal Premium Vital Shok
55 gr Trophy-Bonded Bear Claw, Winchester Supreme 55 gr Nosler Ballistic Silvertip

Comparative Illustrations of the Wetpack Wound Tracks

RBCD / LeMas, Ltd 38 gr Urban Warfare (40 gr Hornady V-Max)

RBCD and its military marketing subsidiary, LeMas Ltd, created quite a stir in the early-to-mid 2000s with some fairly outrageous claims concerning the performance and construction of their bullets, including the assertion that their bullets only perform as advertised in warm living tissue (i.e., not under test conditions), which is a violation of all the principles of penetration mechanics and quite simply impossible. I was contacted around 2005 by a representative of LeMas Ltd, who sent me a wealth of their test data and strove to convince me of the superiority of the RBCD ammunition. It's worth noting that, although they sought military contracts, the aforementioned Hague Convention and the US Law of War forbid the use of such ammunition by our troops. My understanding is that the only persons who ever used any of this stuff were mercenaries and contract security, of which there were many in the aftermath of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Another dubious claim was that their bullets are made of "blended metal," a mysterious concoction, rather than lead alloy. Underneath the moly coat of this load is what gives every appearance of being an ordinary red poly-tipped Hornady 40 grain V-Max bullet. I didn't think to make photos of my sample cartridges until years down the road and only had a few of these, so I have no photo. Scientific analysis of LeMas loadings supports this surmise (I'm not sure if this link is still good because it is behind a firewall now). Nosler poly tips in .224 caliber are bright orange, so I am convinced that my example is a Hornady bullet. Its a hot load. It was clocking over 3600 fps from a 20 inch barrel (factory spec is 3650 fps). I didn't have enough of these to chronograph in my shorter test barrels, so the impact velocity is a guess, but its probably in the neighborhood. This behaves pretty much as you would expect a high performance varmint bullet to behave - it blows up like a bomb. The cavity is huge but very shallow and attenuates just as quickly as it forms. Penetration was only 75 mm; that's just 3 inches, only about two-thirds as deep as the next worst performer, the 55 grain Ballistic Silvertip. The only thing recovered at the bottom of the hole was the circular base of the jacket with a smear of lead on top. These behaviors are tailored for maximum lethality on prairie dogs and rockchucks. It would be disastrous to use such a load on big game. It would be more likely to wound superficially rather than to kill. I regard this as inadequate penetration for a tactical load as well.

Winchester Supreme 55 gr Ballistic Silvertip

This is the Winchester-Nosler Combined Technologies version of the Nosler Ballistic Tip bullet. Apart from the black moly coat and gray plastic tip, it is identical to a stock Nosler .224 caliber 55 grain Ballistic Tip. Designed as a varmint bullet, it is highly frangible. Only the jacket was recovered from the bottom of the hole. The boat-tail was plugged with mascerated, compressed paper. It penetrated a bit farther than the 40 grain Hornady V-Max, which was expected owing to its greater bullet weight, but still on the shallow side.

South African Surplus Military Ball 55 gr FMJ-BT

Since (at the time I performed this test) there were more 55 grain loads on the market than anything else, especially as inexpensive bulk ammunition, I decided to test some foreign surplus. This is not Lake City M193 ball. It is 1982-83 production South African military ball. The bullet is slightly longer and seemingly more robust than US produced M193 ball, but it is intended to be equivalent. Surprisingly, it produced the greatest penetration. In fact, this shot was only the second time I have ever had a bullet exit the back of my wetpack and not be recovered. Look at the illustration and you'll see why. It did not yaw or expand for the first 120 mm of penetration. Then it seemingly began to expand in a controlled fashion, apparently without yawing. The holes were quite circular. I am at a loss to explain this behavior. Maybe it bulged at the cannelure and failed. I could repeat this shot to capture the whole event, but why bother? It illustrates the point: this load cavitates at far too great a depth. The green lines in the figure indicate the predicted cavity in a semi-infinite wetpack. The large diameter at the exit is almost certainly due to the explosive failure of the rear surface.

Federal Premium Vital-Shok 55 gr Trophy Bonded Bear Claw

This bullet was developed expresslly for deer hunters who used the .224 caliber. It performed very much like a larger caliber Trophy Bonded Bear Claw, expanding perfectly and retaining almost 96% of its weight. For all that it did not perform quite as well as I expected that it would. Its modest penetration and the brevity of its maximum cavity I attribute to its 55 grain weight. If it had been 64 grains or 75, it would have been better. Its not bad by any means, but I think this load has been discontinued, so its a moot point.

The Mediumweights (60 - 64 grains)

Loads tested with mediumweight bullets: M855 (SS109) Ball 62 gr FMJ-BT, Federal Power-Shok 64 gr SP,
Winchester-Western Super-X Power Point 64 gr SP (Apologies, no photo of the Ultramax 60 gr Nosler Partition)

Comparative Illustrations of the Wetpack Wound Tracks

Ultramax 60 gr Nosler Partition

Nosler thickened the jacket on the ogive of this bullet to help support the front core and it works. This is good performance for a Partition in a small caliber. Usually the front jacket would fully flatten against the bullet shank and the front core would be lost. In this case, the mushroom remains broad and retained weight is crowding 90%. Its a pity that they didn't make this a 64, 69 or 75 grain bullet, but I am sure that the opportunity to put a heavily constructed bullet into rifles with 1-in-12 twists (overwhelmingly the rate found on the sort of rifles used by .22 centerfire hunters) was the deciding factor.

M855 (SS109) Military Ball 62 gr FMJ-BT

The M855 Ball (NATO SS109) was the standard load for the US military in all of its 5.56 x 45 mm weapons for three decades, from 1980 until 2010. The Belgian SS109 bullet was designed to provide light machinegunners enhanced performance against body armor (specifically, Soviet helmets) at extended range, and includes a small steel insert in the tip of the ogive. Not a true armor-piercing round, the SS109/M855 is merely a better ball round in terms of penetration than the M193, while generally producing a similar wound. In the early 2000s, it was recognized that the M855 ball projectile behaved differently on impact depending on the yaw angle, which was in turn a function of the impact velocity (or, more properly, the distance from the muzzle), the twist rate and unpredictable vagaries of individual barrels (or shot-to-shot variations in ammunition).

The lesion created in the wetpack was oblong from the point where it began to grow in size and is almost entirely the result of bullet yaw. The bullet broke into two pieces at the cannelure, a characteristic behavior, which also contributed to the oblong lesion and eventually to two separated paths. The smaller piece weighed only 4.3 grains and terminated at 164 mm depth very quickly after separating from the primary wound path; the ogive continued to penetrate to a depth of 253 mm. That would be consistent with behavior that has been observed in living tissue and ballistic gelatin tests. The illustrated wound track is the average of the maximum and minimum cross-sectional dimensions. Although the M855 delays its cavitation until a much greater depth than typical expanding bullets, it makes a better wound than I expected at this velocity. The problem is that its maximum cavity occurs at around 150 mm of depth. Since wetpack depth is only 50% to 75% of that observed in thoracic shots through ribs, this means that it would occur at a depth of 200 to 300 mm of depth in a frontal shot on the human torso, thus in all likelihood the bullet will have exited or be at the point of exit. On quartering shots or side shots, it will be fine. For the first 80 to 120 mm (3 to 5 inches), there is a bullet caliber hole, so shots that hit limbs will probably just zip through causing relatively little injury unless they strike bone.

Federal Power-Shok 64 gr SP

This is my choice of the best medium weight bullet. There is a niche for this weight class for those rifles that cannot shoot a 75 or 77 grain bullet because of a rifling twist rate that is too slow. This Power-Shok design produces a very long, nearly straight cavity of significant diameter. It is a more frangible design than its peers, but still holds on to more than 50% of its weight.

Winchester-Western Super-X 64 gr Power Point

This load was also developed specifically for the .22 centerfire deer hunting crowd. The load was recommended years ago by the now defunct Firearms Tactical Institute on the basis of analyses and positive feedback from police units that had experience with it. It is a superior performer, especially considering its conventional design. This bullet expanded well and retained almost 90% of its weight. That is amazing to me after examining the wreckage of so many .224 caliber bullets. I had begun to doubt that such a thing was possible in this small caliber unless the bullet were bonded. It's in good company with the 55 grain Trophy Bonded Bear Claw and 64 grain Federal Power Shok.

The Heavyweights (75 - 77 grains)

Loads tested with heavyweight bullets: Black Hills 75 gr Match HP, Hornady TAP FPD 75 gr HP,
Buffalo Bore Sniper 77 gr Sierra Match King, Precision Crafted Ammunition 75 gr Swift Scirocco

Comparative Illustrations of the Wetpack Wound Tracks

Black Hills and Hornady TAP FPD 75 gr Hornady Match HP

I have been told that the 75 gr match hollowpoint in the Black Hills and Hornady TAP FPD (i.e., For Personal Defense) loads are the same bullet. This test substantiates that assertion. The first 60 mm or so of their penetrations were practically identical. The recovered "bullets" were actually a cohesive, tangled mass of fragments and had very similar remaining weights and largest fragment sizes and masses. At about 65 mm, the Black Hills bullet separated into two pieces and began to create a wider lesion in the wetpack. As long as two pieces remain relatively close they create a synergistic cavitating effect. Material between them is macerated as if a single projectile of a diameter equal to the width of the bullets (including the space between them) were penetrating. At some point, however, they diverge to the point that two much smaller holes are created. This became apparent at about 146 mm. The larger mass went 196 mm, the lesser bit only 157 mm. The reason that the Black Hills bullet broke up in this fashion could be due to the fact that this shot got too close to the side of the wetpack and almost exited. So, there was a lack of support from one direction that may have allowed the bullet to yaw. That happens in the real world too, so it was an interesting thing to observe. The behavior of the Hornady TAP bullet in this test may be taken as the more typical behavior.

Precision Crafted Ammunition 75 gr Swift Scirocco

This is not a factory load. It was custom ammunition produced by Precision Crafted Ammunition (now defunct). I was very excited to discover that this long bullet could indeed be loaded to feed properly from an AR-15 magazine. The soft copper jacket of the Swift Scirocco may not be ideal for combat (due to fouling issues with high rate fire), but for law enforcement or hunting it is the best in my judgment. The recovered bullet is a gorgeous perfect mushroom and retained 98% of its weight.

Buffalo Bore Sniper 77 gr Sierra Match King

This load by Buffalo Bore for its Sniper series of ammunition is slightly hotter than the Hornady TAP and Black Hills loads of the 75 grain Hornady match HP. There is a commercially available Black Hills load of the Sierra bullet, but I was not able to obtain this, so I don't know how its velocity compares (published information indicates that the Black Hills load is also a relatively high velocity). I doubted that the extra 100 fps of velocity accounts for the performance difference observed, but I have been told by a very well informed source that the 75 grain Hornady and 77 grain Nosler bullets seem to yaw and fragment more readily and consistently than does the Sierra Match King in both gel testing and actual use, so maybe 100 fps is significant after all. It would add (all else being equal) another 50 meters of effective range in any event. This is the winner in my testing for a tactical load, which is an interesting conclusion since this is essentially the Mk 262 Mod 1 load adopted by USSOCOM for its designated marksmen. In this test the Sierra Match King retained less weight than the 75 grain Hornady match bullets, yet what remained was slightly more substantial - a mass of naked lead amounting to about 44% of the original. The flattened ogive separated and pursued a diverging path about midway. Since it is a long bullet, it may also perform reasonably well by yawing at impact velocities past the point at which it deforms.

At the end of the day, what can we say about the 5.56 x 45 mm NATO cartridge? Is it adequate for combat? Arguably, yes. Are there better cartridges for this purpose? Undeniably. Equally undeniable is that the military ball loads are non-ideal. The best tactical load overall is a heavy match bullet loaded as fast as is prudent for the weapon in question: 75 grain Hornady match hollowpoint, 77 grain Nosler match hollowpoint (not tested) or 77 grain Sierra Match King in Black Hills, Buffalo Bore, Hornady TAP or similar loadings. These performed well, far better than I expected. The heavy bullets were superior to the light and medium weight bullets, despite the lower velocities - a somewhat surprising observation. I questioned prior to the test whether the heavy loads would perform well at these low velocities. Another observation worth noting is that a long bullet need not fragment to be effective - provided that it yaws and tumbles end over end at a relatively shallow depth. Making that happen is the trick.

The 55 grain Trophy Bonded Bear Claw, 60 grain Nosler Partition, 64 grain Winchester-Western Power Point and 75 grain Swift Scirocco all expanded into classic mushrooms. These four are big game bullets in miniature. You expect great things from Trophy Bonded, Nosler and Swift, but I was amazed at the performance of the Winchester 64 grain Power Point. It did not penetrate as deeply as the Nosler Partition, nor make as large a cavity as the Bear Claw, but it made a significantly larger cavity at much greater depth than either of these. The absolute best performer was the heavy 75 grain Swift Scirocco. Among the hunting softpoints, it won on both penetration depth and largest wound cavity. Although none of these loads is really an ideal deer load, the 75 grain Swift Scirocco is what I would use if I had to shoot a deer with a .223 Remington.

Here is what I wrote in 2006:

Much has happened since 2006.

It has been about twenty years now as I write this update, so I will elaborate a few things that I did not feel at liberty to discuss at the time. In 2003, owing to my background in penetration mechanics, I was approached by the lead of the Joint Service Wound Ballistics Integrated Product Team (JSWB IPT) with regard to the possible use of hydrocode modeling as a tool for performing analyses of wound ballistics. As a result of that inquiry, I became a shell member of the JSWB IPT for a period of time. It was chartered under the auspices of the US Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC) and Project Manager Maneuver Ammunition Systems (PM-MAS) at Picatinny Arsenal, NJ. For those unfamiliar with DOD materiel development, those two entities represented the laboratory and acquisition communities, respectively.

Its thirty-odd core membership consisted, in addition to those representing the various official armed service interests, including the US Marine Corps and Special Operations Command (SOCOM), many of the foremost experts in small arms and ballistics from various backgrounds: medical pathology, aerodynamics and ballistics, lethality assessment, ammunition engineering and manufacturing. Most of the names would be unfamiliar to the shooting public, but one name that I have already mentioned was Dr. Martin Fackler (COL USA Ret.), still actively working as a consultant in retirement. Another recognizable name was (then) MAJ Glenn Dean, who was the Chief of Small Arms for the US Army Infantry Center, Directorate of Combat Developments (DCD) at Fort Benning. A further core member who has acknowledged his participation was J. Buford Boone III, Supervisory Special Agent and head of the FBI Ballistic Research Facility (BRF) at Quantico, VA.

Attached to this core group was a much larger shell membership, which included still more representatives from military organizations such as the Army 5th Special Forces Group, the Air Force 720th Special Tactics Group and the Army 75th Ranger Battalion, other representatives from the FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS), plus many more ballisticians and lethality assessment experts from Army Research Laboratory (ARL), as well as industry representatives and experts in various fields. I fell into this latter group. Another such member, who has publicly acknowledged his role, was LCDR Gary K. Roberts (USNR), who had worked with Dr. Fackler at the US Army Wound Ballistics Laboratory at Letterman Army Medical Center and whose postings in various forums as DOCGKR make him a recognizable figure to this day.

At that time, there was a strong push from the user community because of experiences in Afghanistan for some sort of improved performance in small arms ammunition, specifically the 5.56 mm M855 Ball. This coincided with the development, quite independently, of some potential solutions in the form of the 6.8 x 43 mm Special Purpose Cartridge (SPC), a creation of the US Army Marksmanship Unit (AMU) at the behest of the 5th Special Forces Group, and the 6.5 x 39 mm Grendel, designed by Bill Alexander, Arne Brennan and Janne Pohjoispää.

The immediate difficulty, as previously alluded, was that deliberately designing small arms ammunition for enhanced lethality was in itself deemed to be a contravention of US adherence to the Hague Convention. The guiding light of the JSWB IPT in this matter was none other than W. Hays Parks, also a shell member and a titan within the military legal community who was then Senior Associate Deputy General Counsel with the DOD Office of General Counsel. Hays Parks defended the US at the international level and his chief concern was eliminating any possibility that the US would land someday in front of a panel of inquiry at the UN or the World Court for violation of the Law of War.

However, the first order of business was simply arriving at an agreed standard of evaluation and then assessing the performance of the M855 Ball round. My role in all this was very minor, as it turned out. I only directly met with the JSWB IPT lead and an ARDEC physicist on the team once at Picatinny in June of 2004. Otherwise, my interactions were via email or phone. Owing to the effects of yaw on the performance of the M855, hydrocode modeling did not lend itself to assessing the behavior; it did not easily capture the effects of flight in air immediately prior to impact - which was critical to the performance of the M855. Nor was it already recognized by the larger community as rendering a faithful simulation of wound ballistic behaviors. A separate calibration study and model validation effort would have been required. Consequently, testing in ballistic gelatin became the preferred method, using Dr. Fackler's established protocol. Actual lethality performance would be assessed by ARL using a statistical shot-line approach and the Operational Requirement-based Casualty Assessment (ORCA) model in a Static/Dynamic Framework (SDF) that married static terminal ballistics testing with dynamic flight characterization testing with modeling and Monte Carlo analysis.

By the time that was settled and the draft report on the performance of the M855 round, plus a host of alternative ammunitions in various calibers for comparison purposes, was nearing completion in 2005, there was a growing perception by some in the IPT that the high-level interest in an ammunition change had once again waned and that the powers that be were in favor of retaining the M855, regardless of how the assessment turned out. There was a green ammunition mandate that had existed unfulfilled since the late 1990s, but interest in a better replacement for the M855, much less a change of caliber, seemed to be waning. Yet another episode of small arms ammunition fever, or so it seemed.

The release of the (heavily redacted) final report of the JSWB IPT in 2006 coincided with the end of my involvement, which had been in an unofficial, private consulting capacity anyway (I was never able to persuade my program leadership to take an interest in matters pertaining to small arms and ammunition), and I had transitioned to a new project that required my professional attention. As such, I lost track of what transpired next.

Inspired by my recent experiences and desiring to publish some tests and remarks on the general subject of 5.56 x 45 mm defensive rifle ammunition, but in no way to cause any political awkwardness for the JSWB IPT, I posted this page in 2006 targeted towards civilian and law enforcement shooters, with only a few very oblique remarks with reference to the military in my conclusions. I never mentioned my participation with the JSWB IPT.

LCDR Gary Roberts made a much more forceful and overt plea in 2008 for a military ammunition caliber change to 6.8 mm (Time for a Change: U.S. Military Small Arms Ammunition Failures and Solutions, International Infantry & Joint Services Small Arms Systems Symposium, Dallas, TX, 21 May 2008), based in part on the unpublished findings of the JSWB IPT, highlighting the conclusion of the test results that the 6.8 mm gave the best terminal performance of all tested loads.

Others, doubtless, communicated their viewpoints in other contexts not generally visible to the public. However, it seemed as if no change was impending.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, things were moving forward quietly in the background. They had, in fact, advanced very far while I was still a member of the JSWB IPT.

What those developments were emerged in 2010 in the form of the M855A1 Enhanced Performance Round (EPR). The M855A1 featured a hard steel penetrator forward core with an exposed tip protruding from the jacket. The military described the jacket as "reverse drawn", but it was only reversed from their perspective (based on traditional full metal jackets); it was simply a normal drawn cup jacket. Interestingly, the base core was made of soft copper. The M855A1 was touted as having a lead-free "green" bullet and promised improvements in accuracy, hard target penetration and manufacturing. It drew my interest at once, as I read about it in a gun magazine, because I instantly recognized the design and the description of its performance enhancements.

Comparison of the M855 Ball (left) with the M855A1 Enhanced Performance Round (EPR)

5.56 x 45 mm M855A1 Enhanced Performance Round (EPR)

Some drama attended the arrival of the M855A1, unsurprisingly. Many firearms and military pundits immediately hated it, because it was environmentally-friendly or because it wasn't the 6.8 x 43 mm SPC or some other preferred cartridge solution. What most of the naysayers failed to grasp is that there was never any acquisition appropriation for a wholesale caliber change at that time. The R&D side of the military spends millions every year on some good ideas, but good ideas don't progress and become weapons programs without acquisition funding, and that funding isn't a grab bag, it is specifically earmarked for programs of record. In terms of acquisition, there was a congressional mandate for lead-free ammunition. That's all.

More problematic for a time was the lawsuit brought by Liberty Ammunition in 2011, claiming patent infringement. Now I knew, when I eventually heard of this, that it was a baseless claim because I knew precisely when and in what context the M855A1 was conceived. I knew because I was a participant in some of those early discussions.

Beginning in late 2003 or very early 2004, the lead of the JSWB IPT and I were in discussions of a bullet design concept dubbed Armor Piercing Match, or AP Match, an in-house ARDEC design which was intended to improve one of the perceived shortcomings of the M855, namely its accuracy (as an aside, the original M855 Lead Free Slug green ammunition effort had been a failure partly because the powdered tungsten core bullets exhibited even more erratic accuracy than the lead core M855). It doesn't take an advanced degree in ballistics to appreciate that more accuracy translates into improved lethality, statistically speaking, if in no other sense. The basic idea was simple: design a .224 caliber, 62 grain bullet with good armor and hard barrier penetration that approached the accuracy of the approved open tip match bullets already in use by elements of SOCOM, the scout snipers and designated marksmen.

Around Christmas of 2003, I had a very long conversation by phone with Hays Parks. He made it abundantly clear that no design feature intended to enhance lethality, or suggestive of a resemblance to design features known to enhance lethality, would pass his legal review for authorization. I took that message to heart, as anyone who ever had the pleasure - and I mean that, sincerely - of interacting with Hays Parks will readily understand. As a direct consequence of that conversation, I provided some insights to the JSWB IPT lead regarding design attributes for armor penetration and the precision manufacturing of match ammunition.

I am no apologist for the Hague Convention of 1899, but even if the US did not abide by that antiquated and nonsensical convention, even if it never existed, the ideal, general-purpose bullet for the military would still look a lot like the M855A1. Hard target defeat is a need for the soldier, whether it be body armor, a masonry wall or other barricade, or perhaps a vehicle engine. A bullet designed purely for maximum soft tissue damage would not suit, even were it permitted.

The JSWB IPT lead and I continued those discussions into mid-2004. In contrast with standard military ball FMJ bullets like the M855, AP Match was conceived to mimic the manufacturing methods of a match bullet, with the aim of improving the accuracy, by using a precision drawn jacket (open forwards) enclosing a lead core and with a steel penetrator in the midbody and ogive that was gripped by the jacket, but which left a large portion of the steel ogive and tip exposed. This permitted greater concentricity in the bullet jacket and in the centering of the penetrator. Exposing the penetrator aided in penetration and the hard steel insert was much larger than in the M855. There was a variation of this with no lead core, just a solid copper base, intended to be a green bullet. The hoped for expectation was that, at worst, the jacket would behave like a sabot when the bullet hit thick armor or deep, hard targets (e.g., masonry), releasing the steel core or pushing it forward.

Approximately a year after the AP Match design concept was developed by ARDEC, in February of 2005, a former musician and guitar pickup designer turned ammunition manufacturer named PJ Marx met with MAJ Dean to promote and provide samples of what he termed the Enhanced Performance Incapacitative Composite (EPIC) design (also known as T3), which was a 5.56 x 45 mm cartridge loaded with a 100 grain multi-piece bullet, with a fore-body and aft-body connected by a collar similar to a driving band. Note the 100 grain bullet weight. Marx also provided samples for evaluation to USSOCOM. Later that year, on 21 October 2005, Marx filed U.S. Patent No. 7,748,325 for this design.

Nevertheless, by this point in time (February 2005), Alliant Techsystems (ATK), the operator of the government Lake City Army Ammunition Plant and principal industry developer of small arms ammunition for the military, had already developed several prototype engineering designs for the Green Ammunition Program, which they presented to the government at a program Preliminary Design Review (PDR), including Concept L, which ultimately became the M855A1. The engineering design of the M855A1, while the concept originated at ARDEC, belongs to the good people at ATK, naturally.

These are facts, attested in sworn depositions, and were documented in the original court proceedings, which are available online. The M855A1 design had already moved from ARDEC concept to ATK industry engineering prototype preliminary design by February 2005, before Marx ever met with Army officials. This is the salient point that somehow got lost in the noise of the legal distractions regarding non-disclosure agreements and proprietary information at trial. PM-MAS and ARDEC maintained throughout that the M855A1 concept originated at ARDEC as an in-house design that had absolutely nothing to do with the EPIC design at any stage of development, and I can corroborate that. The official account of the history of the M855A1 makes much of a meeting that took place in the summer of 2005 that refocused the Green Ammunition program, but that also occurred months after the design that became M855A1 was created by ATK.

Let me be clear: I am not impugning the veracity or motives of PJ Marx or Liberty Ammunition. For all I know, they genuinely believed what they claimed as plaintiffs, that their proprietary information had been appropriated. I do not judge that, and it really is irrelevant.

By the way, why green ammunition? Despite the reactionary right-wing theories, it makes sense. The military expends a lot of ammunition in training and those bullets end up in the soil on federal land. That translates into a significant cleanup cost annually. No lead, much reduced cost. Simple. Same as for a thousand other uses of toxic substances by the military, including why there is a drip pan under every military vehicle and generator on the range where I do testing. More pointedly, to paraphrase a former government customer of mine, "What is the performance advantage of green ammunition? It gets funded."

Astoundingly, the federal court awarded damages to Liberty Ammunition and royalties on all production by ATK at the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant in late 2014, which by this point had been mass producing the M855A1 for about four years. Fortunately, the federal appeals court overturned that lower court ruling in August 2016, and rightly so. A great deal more could be said of this, but I will let it go at that.

Not anticipating a timely solution from the Army, the US Marine Corps adopted a design developed in a collaboration between the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) Crane and Federal Cartridge (now Alliant Techsystems (ATK)) called the Special Operations Science and Technology (SOST) because it was originally developed for special ops in 2005. Fielded in 2007 as the Mk 318 Mod 0 in 5.56 x 45 mm and Mk 319 Mod 0 in 7.62 x 51 mm respectively, and adopted for Marine Corps-wide use in 2010, these cartridges used bullets made from machined solid copper billets with thick ogive walls, small lead cores and an open tip. The solid copper base provided excellent performance against intermediate barriers such as masonry and vehicle windshields. While the SOST (aka tactical open tip match, or TOTM) rounds are not true armor piercing projectiles, the Marines found them to be a meaningful improvement over the M855 Ball round and they passed legal review, despite a superficial resemblance to soft-point ammunition, by virtue of their design similarity to already approved open tip match ammunition. A later Mk 318 Mod 1 eliminated the lead core, replacing it with a copper slug just as had happened with the M855A1 design.

However, a 2017 DOD common ammunition mandate required that the Army and Marines choose between the M855A1 and the Mk 318. In the end, the M855A1 prevailed, primarily on the strength of its armor penetration capability. This also was controversial. Opinions vary and not having been privy to the data I cannot comment.

Not everyone from the JSWB IPT will agree with me on this, but my judgment is that the M855A1 has proven a success. It is indeed much more accurate than the M855 and it delivers hard target penetration far in excess of that round. Soft target performance is very agreeable, all things considered, as good as or better than the M855. The military is so pleased with the design that a growing family of new ammunitions is being fielded, all based on the M855A1, which already includes the M80A1 replacement for the old 7.62 x 51 mm M80 Ball and may soon include the new tungsten-core M1158 Advanced Armor-Piercing (ADVAP) round, also in 7.62 x 51 mm and intended to replace the M993 AP. There is even a 9 x 19 mm Enhanced Ball Round (EBR) intended for handguns. There have been obstacles to overcome, like feedramp wear, but these are engineering problems and they are outweighed by the benefits.

7.62 x 51 mm M1158 Advanced Armor Piercing (ADVAP) Round

In retrospect, would the 6.8 x 43 mm SPC or something similar have been a better solution than the 5.56 x 45 mm M855A1? Undeniably. However, such was not the path forward that was presented twenty years ago.

In any event, the announcement in 2022 that the Army's Next Generation Squad Weapon (NGSW) program intends to replace the M4 carbine and M249 squad automatic weapon (SAW) (and M240 medium machinegun by some accounts) with a new M7 Carbine and M250 Automatic Rifle (light machinegun) built by SIG-Sauer and chambered in a novel 6.8 x 51 mm Common Cartridge (aka .277 SIG Fury) may well render the decades long debate about the shortcomings of the 5.56 x 45 mm NATO entirely moot. The M7 and M250 will also boast Vortex optics, maybe the best part of the story, as adding optics instantly doubles the effective lethality of the weapon.

The .277 SIG Fury (6.8 x 51 mm) is a hybrid steel-based cartridge that operates at up to 80,000 psi to enable it to deliver a 130 to 140 grain bullet at 3000+ fps (.270 Winchester ballistics) from a 16 inch barrel. This new cartridge is nearly twice as powerful as the most potent 5.56 x 45 mm load and slightly more powerful than even the 7.62 x 51 mm NATO M80 ball load, so it will be interesting to see how that works out. I'm sure that SOCOM, the machinegunners, the scout snipers and designated marksmen are thrilled.

The caliber and ballistics were evidently devised by ARDEC based on a classified requirement, presumably armor defeat at extreme range, with both the weapon and cartridge design left to the imagination of the NGSW bidders. SIG's design approach maintains the form factor of the 7.62 x 51 mm cartridge, relying on stronger materials to handle the increased maximum average pressure (MAP) specification of 80,000 psi. SAAMI has guardedly accepted the cartridge design for commercial applications, but it remains to be seen what existing rifle actions could safely handle it.

Now the pundits will have a new debate for the next three or four decades: was it prudent for the military to replace the 5.56 x 45 mm with a full power "battle cartridge" instead of an "intermediate cartridge"?

For more than fifty years, the US military used the .30 caliber Model 1906, aka .30-06, as its standard cartridge in both bolt action and automatic arms, although the .30-06 should have been replaced in 1932 by the intermediate powered .276 Pedersen. At worst, in a few years the Army can reduce the chamber pressure (and the recoil) to a level more compatible with both gun steel and humans. It wouldn't be the first time in military history that there was a lighter recoiling carbine load and a more potent load for longer rifles. At 55,000 to 60,000 psi, the muzzle velocity would probably be around 2500 to 2600 fps, which would be close to an ideal intermediate level of performance.

Still, if the history of military firearms is any predictor, the future looks bright for .277 caliber.

6.8 x 51 mm Common Cartridge (.277 SIG Fury)

M7 NGSW Carbine (SIG-Sauer MCX-Spear)

M250 NGSW Automatic Rifle (6.8 x 51 mm)

Meanwhile, just to keep things interesting, USSOCOM has had its own next generation small arms program in the works since 2019 and recently down-selected to LMT for evaluation prototypes of the Mid-Range Gas Gun - Sniper (MRGG-S). The MRGG - Assault (MRGG-A) is a variant of this platform, intended for most operators.

LMT Mid-Range Gas Gun - Sniper in 6.5 mm Creedmoor

FN America (FNA) unveiled at the 2023 SHOT show its platforms for the Lightweight Intermediate Caliber Cartridge (LICC) Individual Weapon System (IWS), a program that has been under development for the Irregular Warfare Technology Support Directorate (IWTSD), which has SOCOM as its primary end user. The 6.5 x 43 mm LICC looks an awful lot like the 6.5 mm Creedmoor cartridge, but isn't. The case is slightly shorter and there is confusion online as to whether this cartridge uses the same .441 inch case head as the 7.62 x 39 mm and 6.5 mm Grendel or the .470 inch case head of the 7.62 x 51 mm. Ballistics have not been published, but would be similar to the 6.5 mm Creedmoor probably. There was at one time a 6.5 x 43 mm variant of the FN EVOLYS machinegun, but some reports assert that this cartridge and the LICC program are already dead.

FN 6.5 x 43 mm LICC IWS Kit

In conclusion, while each of these would represent a significant step up in ballistic performance over the 5.56 x 45 mm NATO, it remains to be seen whether any of these developments ever becomes the new primary small arm of the US military. Regardless, there is more concerted interest now in a change than has happened in fifty years, so I expect that something will emerge.