The move has been towards smaller, lighter 5.56mm ammo (so more can be carried by a soldier) and away from heavier 7.62mm slugs.

But this article highlights the down side of the smaller 5..56mm bullet. It does not pack much of a punch and you need to shoot the adversary many times before he's finally dead. Its certainly not easy to shoot a guy even once at 300m.

5.56mm bullets also do not have must penetration power. If a guy dives behind an obstical, he's safe.

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http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/worl ... 182212.cms

British bullets too small to fell 'high' Taliban
ANI 31 October 2009, 01:36am IST

LONDON: The bullets used by British forces to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan has been dubbed too small, because soldiers claim that it requires at least five direct hits to bring down the militants who are high on opium.

According to a report, British soldiers in Afghanistan use small 5.56mm calibre rounds also tail off after 300 metres and can easily be blown off the target. Half of all fire fights in Helmand are fought between 300 and 900 metres.

Meanwhile, Taliban marksmen use powerful 7.62mm ammunition for their AK47 machine guns, the Sun reports.The report calls for guns that take larger ammunition to replace all standard-issue SA80 rifles — which many believe were exposed as inadequate in Iraq in 2003.

Report co-author Nicholas Drummond, a strategy consultant and ex-Welsh Guards officer, secretly questioned more than 50 soldiers who have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“A British soldier’s rifle is not much more useful than a peashooter. He can’t attack with any certainty that if he hits the enemy he will kill or incapacitate him,” he said.

One soldier in 2nd Battalion, the Rifles in Helmand, shot a Taliban fighter five times and he still got up to dive for cover, researchers were told.

The study claims car doors easily stop the ammunition. It added that Javelin anti-tank missiles — at £100,000 apiece are often fired at lone gunmen. Just one in four British, US and German troops has been issued with guns using 7.62mm ammo.

Easier said than done. Let me explain the issues involved here (apologies in advance for any boring stuff you may find).

First, we study the equation for kinetic energy from middle school physics:
Kinetic energy = 1/2 * m * v * v
where m = mass of object and v = velocity of object.

Clearly, to increase the kinetic energy, we must increase mass, increase velocity or increase both. Let us study the issues of each of these:

1. Increasing Mass of bullet
==================
Modern bullets are made of a lead core with a thin jacket of steel, cupronickel or copper alloy. The mass is mostly due to the lead content. Lead is used because it is a dense material that is easily shaped. To increase the mass, you could either:
a. Use a denser material than lead, or
b. Increase the size of the bullet (length and shape), or
c. Do both

Now if you look at a periodic table, it is pretty hard to find another element that is available in large enough quantities to be cheap, but still have high density. Most of the elements that are located above lead in the periodic table are either rare, volatile, gaseous, radioactive, expensive to refine, or a combination of all these properties. You may be able to replace lead with depleted uranium or thorium, but these are much more expensive to produce. That's why people use depleted uranium for anti-tank rounds only, because the cost involved is prohibitive for mass produced ammunition.

If the designers choose to increase the size of the bullet instead, they have to redesign the chamber and firing mechanism so that the cartridge fits tightly in it. They will also need to change the magazine to accommodate the bigger cartridge. Lastly, if they choose to increase the size by increasing the diameter of the bullet, they'll need to change the barrel as well. This means that they will need to change quite a few significant parts of the rifle system, or introduce a new rifle model to use the bigger cartridge. Another alternative would be to use a thinner outer jacket of the bullet and add more lead in the core, which will increase the weight without increasing the size, but you can only make the outer jacket so thin without compromising the bullet's shape when fired. This is why the difference between different variants of NATO 5.56 bullets is only about 0.1 gm or so. They can't make it much heavier than that, without altering the size past the point that existing rifles won't be able to fire it. Changing the size of the bullet also affects its ballistics, so the barrel may need more rifling twist to ensure that the bullet stays stable in the air during flight. Thus we see that increasing the size of the bullet significantly will necessitate introducing a new rifle as well.

Note that if they increase the bullet mass alone, the kinetic energy won't change because the thrust acting on the bullet is caused by the burning propellant (usually some form of cordite) in the cartridge. If you use the same amount of propellant and a heavier bullet, the heavier bullet will simply travel slower, because of law of conservation of energy. Therefore when you increase the mass of the bullet, you must also fiddle with the propellant to propel it to greater speeds, which brings me to my second point of discussion

2. Increasing the velocity of the bullet
=========================
Increasing the velocity of the bullet can be done by:
a. Using more propellant (cordite) in the cartridge
b. Change the chemical composition of the propellant to a more effective one that produces more energy.

If the designer adds more propellant to the cartridge, this will change the size of the cartridge, which will require them to alter the size of the chamber, magazine, extractor etc. which means that they will need to manufacture a new rifle, as existing rifles won't be able to use the cartridge.

If they change the chemical composition of the propellant, this may not change the size of the cartridge, but it may have a more corrosive effect on the barrel (this actually happened to M16s early on in their history -- one bullet manufacturer used a different type of propellant and caused corrosion in their barrels that couldn't be cleared because no cleaning kits were issued. The lower powered propellant that the rifle manufacturer tested with didn't react with the barrel.)

Also, the problem with both these approaches is that the extra energy delivered to the bullet means that the barrel and chamber will experience higher pressures than what they've been designed for. This means that there is a risk of the barrel or chamber exploding due to the increased pressures. For example, nitroglycerine or C4 have more explosive power than cordite, but no one uses them in cartridges because they will cause the barrel and firing mechanism to fly apart and send shrapnel everywhere. To handle increased pressures, the designer will need to make a thicker barrel and stronger firing mechanism, which means a new rifle and also a heavier one.

Also note that the barrel length will need to be changed, because if the barrel length is not long enough, some of the powder will burn outside the barrel and cause tremendous vibration and flash, making the rifle hard to control. This was the problem faced by the INSAS carbine -- it couldn't use the same cartridge as the INSAS rifle because of this issue and the designers solved it by making it use a smaller cartridge that uses less powder.

So you can see that to increase the kinetic energy of the bullet significantly, the designers will likely have to go with a new rifle as well. There are quite a few people who think that NATO 5.56 doesn't wound enough to incapacitate and suggest a bigger rifle using a 6mm or 6.8mm cartridge for this reason.

^^^^
Very informative.. thanks.

Thanks for the info.
Is there any kind of research going on anywhere to overcome the above problems?

the 5.56mm's problems are not new. that's possibly why you still see a lot of vehicle mounted 7.62mm's MMG's and 0.5" browning HMG's. the latter is said to be particularly devastating. although the ak47 will give the talibs greater stand-off capability - how accurate are the Ak's at high ranges? i had read that they were essentially a closer-in weapon?

The rational behind the design of AK is that.................most of the battles happen within the ranges of 500 m.................thats what i read.

The problem with rifle 'bores' and bullet size is not only limited to physics infact imho the problem is the NATO 5.56 and Ru 7.62 AK round and rifles capable of firing above are commonly available and proliferated to an extent that any investment into a new round and a rifle capable of firing the said round will need a huge political backing else it will get relegated to limited use .The talk about 6/6.8 ,, has been there for quite some time now and there are reports of PLA adopting this new round in active service , however unless more countries commit themselves to this new round we will continue to see both NATO and RU rounds in service for quite some time in future.

Case in point the ".408 Cheyenne Tactical" round .Very good spec wise but yet to be produced and accepted by the US military in significant numbers. (Mark Wahlberg uses M200 rifle in Shooter ,capable of firing the .408 Chey Tac round).And yes I guess this round was even covered in one of the episodes of "Future Weapons" .

Negi-> if people belive what is shown on future weapons, the US and British should have won all thier wars within 1 hou

My reference to 'Future Weapons' was to highlight the 'Chey Tac' round for I guess that series is watched by a pretty decent sized audience (at least in US and India) and usually uploaded on Youtube as well . As for its accuracy/credibility well it is needless to say that for an informed and knowledgeable person it should not be difficult to separate the wheat from chaff . The hyperbole and and occasional exaggeration is something which is understandable for the producers of any TV series have to cater to the audience and commercial compulsions.

Btw there is a lot of technical material available on the round which enthusiasts can search on the web.The round's specs and performance is there for everyone to see .

AK-47s are not exactly known for accuracy compared to other assault rifles. All assault rifles are a compromise of accuracy vs. reliability. AKs are well known for reliability under harsh conditions precisely because it has huge clearances between moving parts that make dust and dirt not affect it as much as other rifles. However this comes at the price of accuracy. M16s have better accuracy at the expense of needing more cleaning in dusty conditions. The reason IA prefers AK for counter-insurgency is because it has a full-auto mode which is not available on INSAS.


Actually it wasn't the AK that influenced this decision, it was the original assault rifle concept developed by the Germans before WW-II. Basically the Germans reasoned that most people couldn't shoot beyond 300-350 meters, so why give them a powerful rifle with a lot of range. Instead they could make a lighter rifle with lighter ammunition, so that a soldier could carry a lot more ammunition instead. This concept was first proven in combat with the German MP43 and MP44 assault rifles in WW-II. In fact, the term "Assault Rifle" is a literal translation of the German word Sturmgewehr which was the term personally coined by Adolf Hitler to name the project. Mikhail Kalashnikov took the concept that the Germans had pioneered and designed his own weapon. His AK borrowed some aspects of the layout of the MP44, but with a very different internal mechanism.

In Mikhail Kalashnikov's case, the main requirement was that the rifle should function in wet, icy and muddy conditions that exist in Russia, so he designed it with bigger clearances. Another key requirement was that the rifle should be designed to be manufactured in open-air factories with simple tools. This was due to the fact that when the Germans invaded USSR, a lot of their factories were destroyed, but since the T-34 tank was designed with the concepts of simplicity and reliability, they could keep manufacturing them in some remote corner of the USSR. Similarly, the AK-47 is designed so that a soldier wearing thick winter gloves can still take it apart and geared to be manufactured using simpler tools.

Terrorists are fleeting targets and so accuracy is essential and AK 47 is as good as any other.

IA is mentally tuned to remember that ammunition is not an unlimited commodity and if ammunition is finished, then its curtains! There is no labour force to lug replenishment ammunition for you either! The IA is not the auto mode type.

Why is preference for AKs is because they are hardy and very little maintenance is required. This is important since the time and space for calls to combat terrorists can be very quick with little time to do the routine maintenance required.

Has DRDO embarked on any new designs keeping in mind IA's requirements for counter insurgency or are we going to continue importing AKs?

Acoustic Gunshot Detection Technology Traces Improves Security

http://www.good.is/post/targeting-gunsh ... c-sensors/

Evidently, the INSAS is reliable and well regarded in single shot mode. Auto mode needs more work.

Also some issue about positioning of scope and jam clearing which is a hassle which I have not yet fully understood. Watch this space.

It would appear you can chuck an AK47 into the river come back 10 days later and depend on it. No so the INSAS. Ruggedisation?

INSAS doesn't have an auto mode, only 3 burst semi-auto according to IA's own specifications.

I believe what you are referring to is that the 'zeroing' is not preserved when the gun is dismantled and cleaned and has to be redone.

Right, i meant the 3 shot mode and right about the zeroing too, the word was used.

Every Saturday is an Adm day and weapon cleaning is done and each part of the weapon is cleaned.

It does not do much to the zeroing unless dropped!

Maybe 'zeroing' might be an issue with high precision long range rifles viz. snipers or marksman's rifles.

Zeroing is important for all Small Arms.

But once it is zeroed for the individual, unless roughly handled, it functions for a while.

Before Annual Range Classification or in war at the Concentration Area, weapons are once again zeroed for failsafe accuracy.

The AK47 uses wider clearances for its moving parts, which gives it more tolerance against jamming but costs it a little bit less accuracy.

The people I have interacted with use "auto" to refer to 3 shot mode.

Just curious, would not any small arms be roughly handled during war in trenches, while crawling and during all other "normal" war practices?

Visited the NDA again today. The existing Commandant must be efficient. The place is shiny and spotless. Roads are well done with median strips and clearly marked edges. I have seen poor conditions in the past.

There is also the passing out parade in a few weeks.

don't think any modern gun can handle rough use as well as the AK can. that probably includes all the current versions of the AK-10* series.

Who is the Comdt NDA these days?

from http://nda.nic.in/that would be Vice Admiral RK Dhowan, AVSM, YSM

INSAS as such is a good rifle design wise. What is lacking is quality control from the OFB both for the rifles and the bullets. As the production has ramped up, the quality seemingly has dropped and thus the frequent complaints about the rifle and that too not only from IA, there were even reports of Jamming etc. from Nepal Army.

Do try and see if you can visit the BRD in pune which overhauls T-55's and BMP. It would be a good experience also.

hey, please don't dig up graves !

that was a long time back, IA itself tested and found the nepali claims baseless. if you look you will find that report in the past pages of this thread.
the jamming story was actually a bad excuse for poor performance (read cowardice) of RNA units against .303 toting maoists.

Well my intention was not to dig up anything, probably the jamming story was baseless. But that doesn't change the fact that quite a few service personnel I have interacted with question the quality control of the rifle, thus their preference for AK.

[Post Edited]

I wonder if the troops are chary about carrying the INSAS.

I have just returned from my unit and they are quite satisfied with the INSAS. I have heard no complaints.

Ray Sir, I would believe there are varying opinions regarding a weapon system throught the Army. I believe it was wrong of me to use 'most' in my earlier post as not all the feedbacks regarding the rifle have been bad. As per the conversations, seemingly some rifles are fine and have no issues and some jam quite frequently, thus pointing towards quality control.

abhisam, if you don't mind, when was this ? AFAIK, the QC issues happened 4-5 years back and has stabilised since.

The real reason why the AK is preferred in CI is that it is not a service weapon and so if some damage does come to it, there is no hue and cry and Courts of Inquiry as would be there if a service equipment is damaged. INSAS is a standard service equipment.

There is also no dearth of AKs since through the long years of CI, a huge number has been captured from the terrorists. Thus, even if damaged, it will not cost the Exchequer.

Jamming happens due to poor maintenance also.

AK requires very little maintenance and hence is favoured by most around the world.

Well I was under the same impression when the problems regarding magazine breakages and barrel bursting surfaced and it were were subsequently resolved. I was in India quite recently, a month or so back when I interacted with quite a few service folks and general comment on the INSAS was its light and accuracte, but is unreliable as it suffers from quality issues (Frequent Jamming etc.).

Ishapore rifle facory is developing a new rifle called Jakov rifle meant for special forces, Does anybody has any further information on this ?

Very unfortunate name. Sounds like Jack-off Whats happening tp MSMC and kalantak?

This article.
Indian Army finds INSAS rifles reliable
http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story ... t_id=77704

NEW DELHI, SEPTEMBER 6: Intensive tests on INSAS rifle, the Indian Army's mainstay, have confirmed its "robustness and reliability" even in "intense operational scenarios."

The result of the tests, conducted at Mhow between August 18 and 20, would be communicated to Kathmandu, which had complained about the rifle's "unreliability" and blamed it for the reverses it suffered against the Maoists.

The Army's Infantry School in Mhow tested 44 INSAS rifles of the Platoon Weapons Division, simulating an "intense operational scenario". The rifles were put through alternative tests of short-burst firing and single-shot firing.

The report of the tests says the rate of fire and performance during high cyclic load was "acceptable".

A total of 12,237 rounds were fired. The total number of "stoppages" where rounds get jammed during continuous use was under one per cent, a vindication of the Army's stand, since the international norm for small arms is two per cent.

The report says out of 44 rifles, only 15 faced stoppages, and only three more than eight stoppages. Barring the three, the average stoppage was only 0.66 per cent, the report adds.

Apart from stoppages, the test team in Mhow, which included one JCO and four Havildar-rank instructors, encountered "no breakages or defects with the INSAS rifle", as claimed by the Royal Nepalese Army (RNA).

The RNA had complained that the INSAS it used broke down during fighting, which resulted in some of its men falling to the Maoist's bullets. The rifles were operated for 30 minutes at a stretch, simulating the scenario in which the RNA operates.

Army Chief Gen J J Singh had last month backed the rifle at the Infantry Commander's Conference in Mhow.

AFAIK, the jamming problem has been solved a long time ago (and it was never too serious to begin with). Being made of relatively lesser metal parts, IA is happy with its ease of maintainability and reliability.

However, breakage of magazines is still somewhat a problem. As it has already been pointed out, this problem is due to quality control. Though this problem has been solved but there is still some room for improvement.
RayC sir, correct me if I am wrong, but AFAIK earlier there used to be a court of inquiry if the magazine was damaged. However, this norm has been relaxed due to this problem with insas magazine.

This particular officer minimised the accuracy issue in auto (3-round burst) mode by prohibiting the use of rifle slings for his paltan.

Apparently, this practice produced stronger wrists and fingers resulting in better control and thus accuracy in burst mode.