6,8mm vs Russian and Chinese body armor
Surprisingly, according to American experts, the army universally admits that the current 5,56-millimeter bullet cannot penetrate Russian body armor, and the latest Russian small arms weapon easily surpasses it in firing range.
Here, of course, it is time to wonder where American bulletproof vests could have encountered the latest Russian small arms (it is clear that only in Ukraine), the whole question is what the US considers the latest weapons. But since no weapon brands were named in any article, we will leave it to the conscience of the Americans: the latest is the latest.
In the red-brick building of New Jersey's Picatinny Arsenal, two new weapons hang on the wall at one end of a conference room. One is the XM7, the new service rifle the U.S. Army plans to equip its soldiers with, replacing the standard M4 carbine. The other is the XM250, which we call a light machine gun.
Both of these models will fire a new type of cartridge with 6,8 mm bullets. So, in fact, we can say that the era of M4 and 5,56 mm bullets is coming to an end.
“The last time we had a service rifle was in 1967, when we went from the M14 to the M16,” said Col. Jason Bohannon, who leads the Army’s Next General Squad Weapons program, which was created in 2017 specifically to replace the M4 carbine. “I think it’s historical period for the army."
Indeed, such a thing as changing the small arms caliber is a truly epochal event for the army, and the larger the army, the cooler the event. It is one thing to rearm a misunderstanding in the form of an army like any of the Baltic countries, and another when we are talking about armies like the Russian or American. This is a truly complex process.
To understand why the U.S. Army is making this crucial change — it plans to arm some 100 soldiers with a new rifle that the 000st Airborne Division is currently testing at Fort Campbell, Ky. — it's worth starting with the ammunition the Army's current M101 weapon uses, and the M4 used before it, dating back to the 16s and the Vietnam War: the 1960-millimeter bullet.
Bohannon:
"There were some concerns about whether the round was effective enough. There were lessons learned from combat, from all the years we spent fighting the global war on terrorism. Ultimately, I think we've just hit a plateau with the effectiveness of the 5,56mm."
In recent years, part of the concern about the 5,56mm bullet has been what happens when a bullet of that caliber hits a person on the battlefield wearing body armor.
Back in 2017, Lt. Gen. Mick Bednarek, now retired due to age, testified on the issue before a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on small arms. He noted that the U.S. was facing battlefield adversaries that were “approaching levels two and three of body armor that eliminate the lethality we once dominated on the infantry battlefield, regardless of range.”
Bednarek added that because of this new level of defense, "our ability to engage these targets at medium or long ranges is almost exhausted, so we have to have small arms systems that can stop and penetrate these advanced enemy defenses."
Major General Robert Scales supported this thesis at the same hearing:
"I think everyone in the army understands that a 5,56mm bullet cannot penetrate the new Russian bulletproof vests, and in terms of firing range it is easily inferior to the latest Russian small arms. Senior leaders in the ground services are currently calling for the use of a medium-caliber bullet (something larger than 5,56mm and smaller than 12,7mm. One option is 7-62mm - ed.).
Just over a week later, at another Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in 2017, Gen. J. Mark Milley echoed Bednarek and Scales' comments.
"The 5,56mm round - we recognize that there are types of body armor that it doesn't penetrate. We have those vests, too, but ... the warring states are actually selling theirs online for about $250."
The medium-caliber bullet that Scales mentioned back in 2017 is now the 6,8mm round that the XM7 and XM250 will fire, a caliber the military hopes is a cross between the 5,56mm Goldilocks round and the larger 7,62mm NATO rounds fired from weapons like the M240 machine gun or the M14 Army rifle that preceded the M16.
But experts say body armor is only one part of the equation when it comes to figuring out which bullet size is most effective at doing its deadly job on the battlefield. When firing 5,56mm bullets from a carbine like the M4, the big issue is range. The round is lightweight and has a fairly high velocity, but it’s not as effective at longer ranges, with the sweet spot being between 300 and 400 meters.
A soldier fires an XM250 machine gun at the U.S. Army Test Center in Fort Greely, Alaska.
The XM250 will eventually replace the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon under a contract signed with firearms manufacturer Sig Sauer.
None of this means that the 5,56mm bullet isn't very effective. It's a deadly projectile, and it does quite a bit of damage to the human body when it hits it. Depending on the design of the bullet, it tends to spin around inside the soft tissue, causing significant damage to organs inside the human body.
Nicholas Drummond, a military commentator and land warfare expert, agrees with the view of the 5,56mm cartridge's problems.
“The 5,56mm round is really at the limit of what it takes to incapacitate a human target. It has always been controversial, though. It’s based on the fact that the bullet tumbles when it hits a medium denser than air. In Afghanistan, for example, one of the problems was that the 5,56mm rounds fired from the M4 didn’t always penetrate car windshields, which was a concern if a soldier thought the vehicle might be a threat and fired at it.”
It is worth noting here that the 5,45 mm bullets were not particularly penetrating either. Here are some pictures from the author's personal archive, dating back to the summer of 2014. Donetsk, DPR.
The SUV, as you can see, is from the then very famous Dnepr-1 battalion. They picked at it from different types of small arms, but the chips on the windshield are AKS-74U and just AKS-74. And the through holes are the work of SKS. That is, in principle, for 10 years now, as we can theoretically know, the 5,45x39 cartridge is no better than the 5,56x45 cartridge, and will even be weaker.
In other words, a bullet's ability to penetrate body armor—or not—is just one of the issues any military considers when moving to a new caliber and new rifles.
In general, you shouldn't focus only on body armor. There are targets on the battlefield other than people that are accessible to small arms.
Will the new weapon with more powerful bullets be able to cope with them? Of course. The cartridges in the new weapon are not only larger, but also have a higher muzzle velocity. In general, a larger caliber projectile, as a rule, works better at long distances and hits targets more effectively at long distances. And, accordingly, a larger caliber bullet will have a greater destructive power. And here it will no longer be so important whether the opponents will wear body armor or not. The bullet must be effective in all aspects.
And, of course, it must be taken into account that the greater the firing range, the more difficult it is for any projectile to penetrate serious armor. This competition has been going on for quite some time. And from time to time, either the projectile or the armor breaks ahead in this competition.
But the new rifle has a physical cost: the XM7 is heavier than the M4 it replaces. That may not sit well with some of those who have to carry it. And naturally, a larger caliber round will have more recoil. And if a carbine, or shortened, version of the rifle appears (like the M4 versus the M16), that will further increase the recoil.
It's important to remember that the debate over the best caliber bullet for the job is not new. There was a long, long debate in the military about large caliber versus small caliber, yes, that involved 7,62mm versus 5,56mm versus 7,62, and it was a very heated debate.
The 5,56mm caliber won as a lighter weapon with less recoil. Many in the US Army preferred this weapon because they found it more convenient. It was believed that the 5,56mm caliber rifle was easier to shoot and hit targets, and the ammunition load in pieces was greater than that of the 7,62mm caliber.
But then Kevlar bulletproof vests arrived and everything went out of its usual orbit.
Yes, the new 6,8mm ammo is somewhere in between those two sizes. Maybe the 6,8mm is a good compromise, but it's impossible to know even after some extensive testing.
The combat value of new types of weapons can only be proven by their use in real combat operations. Combat weapons, unlike ceremonial and parade weapons, are tested in combat. Tests, checks, improvements - all this is a preparatory period. And only combat use can show the usefulness and effectiveness of a particular type of small arms, regardless of what class of body armor the enemy is wearing.
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