Mouse Gun; Afghanistan Edition

There is another round of the "the .223 sucks" argument going on.

I wasn't in the Army, so I have no expertise to draw on. I do know that there were studies done after WW2 which showed that the vast majority of casualties from rifle fire were shot within 200 yards or less. The Soviets and the Germans adopted lower-powered small arms cartridges decades before the US Army did.

A wise adversary, though, will exploit any shortfalls in its opponent's weaponry. So it should be no surprise that those forces with longer-ranged weapons are going to use them at longer ranges.

But the thing is that longer-ranged weapons require longer barrels. There ain't no free lunch in this; you need barrel length in order to get that bullet moving at a high enough velocity to be useful out at longer ranges.[1] One of the reasons that the Army went from the M16A2 to the M4 was to shave several inches from the length of the rifle, which makes getting into and out of Humvees and IFVs a lot easier.

Maybe the solution is to make sure that there are enough 7.62mm rifles to have a shooter or two in each squad. That brings in issues of battlefield logistics; armies hate having to worry about supplying different types of ammunition. As noted in some of the writings on this, the current idea is that targets over 200m away are supposed to be engaged with mortars, artillery or aircraft. But that isn't always possible and, given the issue in Afghanistan with civilian casualties, those ordinance delivery systems may not be available every time they are required.

[1]Yes, I know, the 19th Century shooters at Creedmore were hitting targets at 1,000 yards. But that was known distance shooting and the deep secret there is that if you stood maybe 15 yards on either side of the target, those slugs would have missed you.

(H/T)