http://www.m-16.us/AK-47vsM-16.htm
and i found this on the web too
To give you a little background:
During the Korean war, as study on the effectiveness of body armor was
commissioned and was later known as ALCLAD (sorry, I don't know what that
stands for). On of the factors that became apparent during ALCLAD was that
there had never been a detailed analysis of how hits are incurred in combat.
Careful analysis was made of all casualty reports from WWII and Korea (data
from Vietnam and the Arab-Israeli conflicts was later added and proved the
validity of the model.
Hitchman and the ORO made use of this data for their report . Many of their conclusions were controversial, but to date no one has been able to dispute them scientifically. Most advocates of the full power rifle seem to pretend it [Hitchman's Report] just doesn't exist.
Here are some of the relevant quotes. As the 'Fireside Theater' said,
everything you know is wrong.
Quoting Hitchman (and with my own comments):
"Rifle fire and its effects were deficient in some important military
respects...in combat, hits from bullets are incurred by the body at
random:..the same as for fragment missiles..which are not 'aimed'...Exposure
was the chief factor...aimed or directed fire does not influence the manner
in which hits are sustained...[Despite] evidence of prodigious rifle
ammunition expenditure per hit,..the comparison of hits from bullets with
those of fragments shows that the rifle bullet is not actually better
directed towards vulnerable parts of the body"
If time and degree of exposure was the chief factor in whether a hit was
obtained, what was the point of long range shooting? Further, analysis of actual combat in showed that 90% of all rifle fire occured at 300 yards or less and that 70% occurs at 100 yards or less. Interveneing terrain, camouflage and an inability to adequately identify targets were cited. Indeed, the effectiveness of rifle fire drops rapidly to zero at ranges greater than 300 yards.
The 7.62x51mm seems therefore unnecessarily powerful.
It is certainly worth noting that the Israeli army has selected the 5.56x45mm as their cartridge of choice. This is after they has previously adopted the FAL and the 7.62x51mm. Presumably, the Israeli's know somerthing about desert warfare and yet haven't felt hampered by the choice of the 'inferior' 5.56 round.
Hitchman continues:
"It is interesting..that at all common ranges weapons errors are without
significance in the man-weapon system...the dispersion of the weapon could
be more than double without materially affecting the probability of hitting
the target...weapons-design standards which seek perfection by making the
rifle more accurate (approach zero dispersion)..are not supported by this
analysis as genuine military requirements. Errors in aiming have been found
to be the greatest single factor contributing to the lack of effectiveness
of the man-rifle system...[in combat] men who are graded..as expert riflemen
do not perform satisfactorily at common battle ranges."
"Either a simultaneous [salvo], or a high cyclic rate burst, with the number
of rounds per burst automatically set rather than be dependant on the
trigger release. In the (single barrel burst) design, controlled nutation
[nutate: to nod or droop] of the rifle muzzle would provide the desired shot
dispersion or pattern; in the..(salvo), the scatter would be obtained and
controlled by multiple barrels, a mother-daughter type of projectile, or
projection of missiles in the manner of a shotgun."
Clearly, a high cyclic rate automatic weaopon is to be preferred to maximizing hit probability in real combat. The 7.62x51mm is clearly not a platform the lends itself to controllable, or even useful full automatic fire. Testing of the T47 and T44 rifles (precursors to the M-14) under full automatic fire using 5 round bursts at 6 x 6 foot screens led ORO to report:
"[N]ever did more than one round hit or screen [at 100 yards] from any of the bursts..to obtain more than one strike on the..screen, the range had to be close to 50 yards." Even at this range it was noted that the "..target in front of the screen was not hit more than once from any burst"
As to the effectiveness of the 5.56x45mm, after action studies of casualties in Vietnam showed the 5.56 to be "11% more likely to produce a casualty" than the 7.62x51mm. This is probably due to the nature of the behavior of the projectile. Fackler has covered this in detail:
http://www.fen-net.de/norbert.arnoldi/army/wound.html
The biggest problem with the advocates of long range combat
marksmanship, is that most of them base their theories on their own
experience on the rifle range. There are a few of problems with this.
1) Assuming that ione believes accurate rifles fire is valid (see above) most rifles aren't precise enough to hit anything at that range. If your rifle shoots 1 MOA, your group is 10 inches at 100 yards. The acceptance standard for the M1 Garand and Later M-14 was approximately 5.6 MOA. I don't care how good a marksmen you are, if your rifle shoots 5 MOA, that's a 50 inch spread at 1000 yards. Assuming you've done everything right, you are still probably going to miss. And most people can't see that well at 1000 yard.
2) Most people can't shoot that well. Sadly, nowadays, most soldiers first
experience with a rifle is in basic training. There is no way that a couple
of weeks of training can replace the lifetime of shooting experience we used
to be able to draw upon when much of the US was rural and hunting was
common. Every time I go to the gun club and see people on the 100 yard
range bragging about their 3 or 4 inch group, I just shake my head. Mind
you, that's actually pretty good for the typical rifle. I am so sick of
reading the gun magazines about how every rifle the writer has shoots
sub-MOA groups. That's just pure BS.
3) No one is shooting back at you on the range. The target never moves, Dosn't take cover, isn't camouflaged. Yes, there are people who can shoot out to 1000 yards and hit a man sized target. As long as you give them time and let them concentrate. Try hitting anything when the rounds start coming back your way.
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