This Is Why the U.S. Military Uses 5.56mm Ammo Instead of 7.62mm

[Big Frank]

Like the title says in the title, This Is Why the U.S. Military Uses 5.56mm Ammo Instead of 7.62mm.

A few thoughts. 1. It was interesting at 5:52 to see how they switch gunners as fast as they can, with the least amount of exposure possible, and the next guy walks in, standing up making nearly as large a target as he can of himself. 2. When I was in the army, the M240 was only a co-ax machine gun in tanks and the M60 was still the medium machine gun in use. And when the infantry fired a lot of short bursts at close range for target practice or qualification, like in this video, the gas cylinders and pistons carboned up. BAD. The guns never ran hot enough to burn off the the carbon, but a long string of fire at the end of the day would have cleared it right up. Too bad I didn't make policy for the division. 3. The gas cylinder extension on the front of the M60 gas cylinder, gas cylinder plug on the bottom, and gas cylinder nut on the back are all secured with one continuous piece of safety wire. The M60 gas system may be fool-proof, but it's for darned sure not grunt-proof. One time the solution to the problem, "It doesn't work." was to reinstall the gas piston facing the right direction and wire things back up. The person who took it apart had a 50:50 chance of putting the piston in the right way, but must not have paid any attention when they took it out. That's why it's "tamper-proofed" with everything wired in place. The gas piston is hollow and instead of gas filling the inside, then the head of the piston pushing the operating rod back, the hole which is nearly twice the size of the end of the op rod was facing it. Some people could break a sledgehammer with a marshmallow. In the army they're called 11B, and sometimes 11C.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zm8AQBibvZM