With an impending war, what kind of (standardized) ammunition will their boys in green be firing? I realize the Full Metal Jacket, but are there other common types?
That’s pretty much it for small arms. There are of course tracers in 5.56mm, 7.62mm and .50 cal as well as armor piercing rounds in the two larger calibers. Current 5.56mm is sorta armor piercing with a small steel penetrator tip in front of the lead core.
Only exception I can think of is sniper ammo which IIRC is Federal Gold Metal match ammo with FMJ hollow point bullets. The hollow point is not used because it will expand but because the most accurate rifle bullets are manufactured that way. The copper jacket covers the entire base of the bullet and has a small opening at the tip. This way the base has no external flaws to affect accuracy. Normal FMJ bullets have exposed lead at the base and it often has irregularities.,
Are you sure about that, Padeye? I was under the impression that hollow points were both ineffective against armored personnel and banned by the Hague convention for use in conventional warfare…
I won’t argue about it being ineffective about armor but it’s for specialized sniper use anyway. Also the Hague accord is a bit fuzzy in that it only bans ammunitoin specially designed to cause injury. Have fun defining that so it doesn’t include FMJ bullets as well. It’s generally accepted as no soft point bullets but I don’t know how much weight it carries or if it’s ever been enforced.
Still a hollowpoint rifle match bullet is nothing like a hollowpoint handgun bullet that is specifically made to expand. The hollow point is more a technicality anyway as it’s very tiny, barely a pinhole opening. You really need to see an end view to get the idea. I’ll see if I have any Sierra match king bullets in my stuff and take a macro shot of one.
Although I cannot access any firearms related sites from my work computer, I would think that www.sierrabullets.com has detailed information that would help answer your questions.
To expand on (no pun intended) on what Padeye said, the hollow point ammo that is sometimes used by snipers is not what you think. In normal/hunting terms, hollow point means SJHP (Semi-jacketed hollow point) where the forward part is exposed lead and hollow for the purpose of expansion. Target hollow point ammo is fully jacketed. It is more accurate than a FMJ “solid” point. It is also more expensive to make and is generally only used in “match” ammunition where anything over 1/4 MOA is not acceptable. Terminal ballistics between hollow point “match/sniper” ammo and standard FMJ are pretty much identical.
Are there still differences in the type of powder used for certain cartridges? I think that the 5.56 changed from ball to stick at one point. You’ve also left out the 9mm pistol ammunition and the plethora of murderous gadgets the special forces ninjas get to use.
On the Hague convention, I think it’s meant to eliminate weapons that are not really intended to kill, but to burden the enemy with horribly maimed wounded (think mustard gas). That sort of thing is unsportsmanlike conduct, and has no place in civilized warfare, except against the Ottoman Mussulmen and other persistent foreigners. Ripping a soldier’s head off with a .50 FMJ ball round is still cricket, however.
AFAIk the switch from the original IMR stick powder to ball powder is what caused a lot of the problems with early M-16s. Nothing wrong with ball powder but what they used had an extremely high percentage of calcium carbonate in the deterrent coating. This kept the powder from acidifying and breaking down under hot storage conditions. Unfortunately it was too much and it literally formed lime deposits in the gas systems. Even more unfortunate there is no way to properly clean the gas system in the field on an M-16. The powder formulation was corrected and this problem is no more.
For those of us who know (almost) nothing about ammo, here are a couple pictures of full metal jacket ammo:
http://www.pmcammo.com/rifle/fmj.html
http://www.pmcammo.com/handgun/fmj.html
And here is a brief article from Wikipedia that gives some detail about full metal jacket ammo.