Ammoland.

Through the first half of the Twentieth Century, military rifle cartridges were all between 6.5mm and 8mm (25-31 caliber), in order to achieve an acceptable rifle/ammunition compromise that balances:

• Adequate range
• Adequate penetration
• Accuracy
• Manageable recoil
• Weight
• Bulk
• Durability
• Overheating
• Barrel length
• Barrel life
• Magazine capacity, and
• Terminal effect

Those twelve issues represent competing, unavoidable trade-offs confronting weapon and ammunition designers. It is not possible to “adjust” any one of those without affecting all the rest. Go too far in any one direction, and you immediately run into deal-busting troubles!

That weapon design is a perpetual tradeoff is certainly true.  There is no debating that point.

In the first half of the Twentieth Century, horse-mounted cavalry units persisted, although mostly obsolete by the end of WWI.

However, with cavalry still a military consideration, “adequate terminal effect” implied an ability to take-down a horse with one shot!

In our modern era, with horses no longer a consideration, 5.5mm (22 caliber) bullets (5.56×45 NATO, 5.45×39 Soviet, 5.7×28 FN) have emerged and are considered (by some) appropriate chamberings for modern, military main-battle rifles, but there is far from “universal agreement” on that!

Inadequate penetration and inadequate range have been persistently (since the 1960s) cited as critical failings with this modern generation small-caliber military cartridges.

Interminable technological attempts to address these two issues have failed to silence critics, including me.

And so the point of the article was what – that Farnam is still an opponent of the 5.56mm cartridge?  We needed to be reminded of that?

So just to float the same point I’ve made before, Farnam leaves out the most important point in the discussion, and that is military doctrine.  Doctrine leads to or produces tactics, and tactics produces weapons design, not vice versa.

There is no point in rehearsing the doctrinal changes that occurred to bring about the advent of the 5.56mm cartridge.  But it is sufficient to say: that the use of fire and maneuver tactics (e.g., squad rushes), the reliance on crew served weapons for longer range combat (because more than 80% of enemy killed occurred throughout military history from crew served weapons, not rifles), and the reliance on DMs for even longer range shooting (those who have been specifically schooled in that science, and have been issued the weapons and gear for it), is legitimate military doctrine.

Farnam’s objections not withstanding.  In a perfect world in which Soldiers and Marines didn’t have to wear body armor because they were never shot at, they were in perfect shape, they didn’t have to leave the line at 100 pounds of kit, and the U.S. military had unlimited resources, time and money, everyone could carry rifles that weighed twice as much and carry ammunition that weighed twice as much.