Infantry Discussion Thread part 11: Gallas Razor edition.

[Purpelia]

What's everyone opinion on the MG-47? Do you think it'd make a good MMG if chambered in something like GP11?

[Champagne Socialist Sharifistan]

Do women* inherently make bad infantry soldiers?
*in the biological sense

Britain allows them to and I think the US does but I remember a British General saying it would never work.

[Ormata]

Do women* inherently make bad infantry soldiers?
*in the biological sense

Britain allows them to and I think the US does but I remember a British General saying it would never work.

Here.

To be put shortly, "bad" would be no, "worse" would be yes, due to the factors of hip sizing, lesser upper body mass. I know other factors are at play but off the top of my head I can't think of em.

[Dayganistan]

Do women* inherently make bad infantry soldiers?
*in the biological sense

Britain allows them to and I think the US does but I remember a British General saying it would never work.

For roles in the infantry that require brute strength, the average woman won't perform as well as the average man. However, I imagine women who do join infantry tend to be on the stronger and more athletic side so they can handle it better.

[Grand Indochina]

Do women* inherently make bad infantry soldiers?
*in the biological sense

Britain allows them to and I think the US does but I remember a British General saying it would never work.

Well... what can I say ? Battlefield isn’t a good place for women, the female body wasn’t born for such task.

[Gallia-]

Do women* inherently make bad infantry soldiers?
*in the biological sense

Yes.

[Purpelia]

I am not sure men are particularly more suited to being shot at, blown up, slashed, stabbed, cut, decapitated, mutilated, murdered, violated and generally mistreated with a deadly weapon. And whilst there is something to be said about the fact the average man is biologically better built for hard labor and endurance well... the average man of today is not exactly what he used to be.

[Gallia-]

It has nothing to do with combat. Although once you factor in natural aggression it's obvious that males are better infantrymen: females are less aggressive on the count of "killing people" too. The biggest weak points in females that make them poor soldiers are the greater relative upper body mass consumed by fat rather than muscle (aka "breasts"), probably some substantial differences in ACL (both knee and clavicle) that causes them to be torn more easily (this means a lot of wrecked knees and shoulders), and hip/tibia injuries in the bones.

All of this is biological and can't really be overcome. In the end, the strongest females are only going to be about as strong as the weakest males in terms of most military tasks, so they will be disdained and frowned upon because they can barely keep up with men, if they can keep up at all.

Best to keep them shuffling papers or something if you must have females in the military.

[Purpelia]

I was taking a jab at modern "men" when compared to their historical counterparts.

[Gallia-]

Six months of physical training can turn anyone into a fairly fit male.

Yelling remains a sufficient motivator and only grows more powerful as time goes on.

[Cisairse]

Six months of physical training can turn anyone into a fairly fit male.

…Anyone?
Even women?
What kind of training is your military doing??

[Champagne Socialist Sharifistan]

Are people who grew up herding, hunting and climbing mountains likely to make better infantrymen?

[Cisairse]

Are people hatched from eggs likely to make better infantrymen?

[Gallia-]

Six months of physical training can turn anyone into a fairly fit male.

…Anyone?

Yes, even Astolfo, not that he needs it.

Even women?

Hahaha.

What kind of training is your military doing??

Squats, weighted dips, shuttle runs (with loaded ammo cans), push-ups, pull-ups, and overhead presses. Mostly.

Are people hatched from eggs likely to make better infantrymen?

Dumblans are the superior human since they evolved from bumblebee rather than lemur, so yes.

[Puzikas]

I want to be the egg man army

All Egg All The Time
Thank you Walking Bird of Gains, Progenitor of The Armed Forces.

[Purpelia]

Six months of physical training can turn anyone into a fairly fit male.

Yelling remains a sufficient motivator and only grows more powerful as time goes on.

Physically fit maybe. But not mentally. They'll still be spoiled brats who will consider a slice of bread and cheese not to be a sufficient daily mean, will complain about marching many hours in the rain with minimum rest and will demand air conditioned quarters with game consoles as opposed to a mud and feces filled slit trench with only the corpses of rats as company.

[Ormata]

Anyone have good recommendations for writings on US Civil War era infantry tactics?

[Triplebaconation]

https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a227467.pdf

[Eukaryotic Cells]

What do you guys think of constant recoil systems in light machine guns (as in the Ultimax or the Knight's LAMG)?

I'm not an engineer or firearms designer, but it seems to me that a firearm of this type would have a relatively narrow energy envelope that it can reliably operate within. That is to say, with too much velocity on the bolt, you're going to have the bolt carrier hitting the receiver, but with too little velocity, you're going to have short strokes/failures to cycle.

This seemingly limits the amount of margin you can build into the system. If the firearm becomes heavily fouled or dirty, I would think that the added friction is likely to induce reliability problems.

Is this is a significant issue in the real world? Are there other notable disadvantages to such a design? The light felt recoil and controllability in automatic fire provided by constant recoil is very enticing.

[Austrasien]

What do you guys think of constant recoil systems in light machine guns (as in the Ultimax or the Knight's LAMG)?

I'm not an engineer or firearms designer, but it seems to me that a firearm of this type would have a relatively narrow energy envelope that it can reliably operate within. That is to say, with too much velocity on the bolt, you're going to have the bolt carrier hitting the receiver, but with too little velocity, you're going to have short strokes/failures to cycle.

This seemingly limits the amount of margin you can build into the system. If the firearm becomes heavily fouled or dirty, I would think that the added friction is likely to induce reliability problems.

Is this is a significant issue in the real world? Are there other notable disadvantages to such a design? The light felt recoil and controllability in automatic fire provided by constant recoil is very enticing.

In a gas-operated weapon an adjustable gas system will deal with more or less all these problems. The main downside would seem to be more care is needed in keeping the gas port properly adjusted. In particular opening it too much routinely will probably shorten the life of the return spring. This is speculation on my part though.

[Doppio Giudici]

I don't know if I should ask this here or the realism thread.

So there has been a lot of arguments about if hydrostatic shock is a thing or not, but from what I understand, according to ammunition companies and people who study ballistics for the FBI, etc etc... If the round is going over 2200 fps or has a certain amount of energy, it crosses this threshold and something like hydrostatic shock can take place.

So I want to know is, if there was a 5.56/5.7 caliber bullet that was 55 grains and going about 2200+ for three hundred yards or something, would that be going fast enough to have good effect on target, compared to like 9x19mm or 5.7x28mm?

[Spirit of Hope]

If your 55 grain projectile has a velocity of 2,200 feet per second at 300 yards it is perfectly adequate, and is on par with certain 5.56/.223 loadings.

[Doppio Giudici]

If your 55 grain projectile has a velocity of 2,200 feet per second at 300 yards it is perfectly adequate, and is on par with certain 5.56/.223 loadings.

Would a bullet shaped more like 5.45 help any during travel or on target?

Do you think necking down to .300 Blackout (Using that kind of powder) would get good speeds out of a 10.5ish inch barrel?

[Austrasien]

I don't know if I should ask this here or the realism thread.

So there has been a lot of arguments about if hydrostatic shock is a thing or not, but from what I understand, according to ammunition companies and people who study ballistics for the FBI, etc etc... If the round is going over 2200 fps or has a certain amount of energy, it crosses this threshold and something like hydrostatic shock can take place.

So I want to know is, if there was a 5.56/5.7 caliber bullet that was 55 grains and going about 2200+ for three hundred yards or something, would that be going fast enough to have good effect on target, compared to like 9x19mm or 5.7x28mm?

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA526059.pdf

1. Pressure waves are created in the body by gunshots and probably do damage tissue not struck by the bullet
2. Velocity is not a major factor in this, evidence of a significant pressure wave reaching and effecting the brain is already evident in pigs shot with a handgun in the thigh.
3. For expanding handgun ammunition at least peak pressure is approximated by energy over depth of penetration. In the more popular gun community terminology, this means energy dump = hydrostatic shock.

So the answer is no because "hydrostatic shock" is probably a feature of gunshot wounds in general not something peculiar to high-velocity rounds and especially not a deep penetrating round like the 5.45mm bullet which would probably produce shockwaves less efficiently joule-for-joule than say 9x19mm. Though the much larger amount of energy behind such a round impacting at such high speed probably more than outweighs this.

Though it does shed some light on possible reasons why expanding bullets work in general.

[Doppio Giudici]

I don't know if I should ask this here or the realism thread.

So there has been a lot of arguments about if hydrostatic shock is a thing or not, but from what I understand, according to ammunition companies and people who study ballistics for the FBI, etc etc... If the round is going over 2200 fps or has a certain amount of energy, it crosses this threshold and something like hydrostatic shock can take place.

So I want to know is, if there was a 5.56/5.7 caliber bullet that was 55 grains and going about 2200+ for three hundred yards or something, would that be going fast enough to have good effect on target, compared to like 9x19mm or 5.7x28mm?

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA526059.pdf

1. Pressure waves are created in the body by gunshots and probably do damage tissue not struck by the bullet
2. Velocity is not a major factor in this, evidence of a significant pressure wave reaching and effecting the brain is already evident in pigs shot with a handgun in the thigh.
3. For expanding handgun ammunition at least peak pressure is approximated by energy over depth of penetration. In the more popular gun community terminology, this means energy dump = hydrostatic shock.

So the answer is no because "hydrostatic shock" is probably a feature of gunshot wounds in general not something peculiar to high-velocity rounds and especially not a deep penetrating round like the 5.45mm bullet which would probably produce shockwaves less efficiently joule-for-joule than say 9x19mm. Though the much larger amount of energy behind such a round impacting at such high speed probably more than outweighs this.

Though it does shed some light on possible reasons why expanding bullets work in general.

You do understand you're arguing with the findings of the FBI, Hornady, and Federal, specially the people that study ballistics for them, right?

The whole point of studying it, is that if it doesn't exist, it means that 9mm and .357 magnum have almost the exact same effect on target. It's just a .357/.38 caliber hole in a person, that penetrates too little, just right, or too much.

But something like it has to exist, because 7.62x39mm has way more effect on target then 9x19mm, despite being about the same weight and being wider. According to statistics, from .380 ACP to .45 ACP, lots of handgun around appear to have almost the same effects on deciding a gunfight. Police report this, gel tests show this, large pools of gunfight statistics show this. .357 Magnum appears to have an improvement, but it's not clear enough due to small sample size for that cartridge.

There has been a lot of study as to where exactly a cartridge crosses the line between just putting holes in people and when it creates larger permanent wound cavities in FBI standard ballistics gel, because the temporary cavity shockwave is intense enough to rip the gel open. How many foot pounds are required before something goes from being like a handgun cartridge to being like a rifle cartridge, how fast does it have to be going? When people talk about hydrostatic shock these days, they aren't talking about pressure waves reaching the brain, they are talking about energy transfer.

It is pretty widely agreed that the speed line is around 2200 feet per second, and there is still work to be done to figure out the amount of energy required.

You can argue where exactly this "threshold" is, but if you argue that something like "hydrostatic shock" doesn't exist, you're arguing that more speed or energy transfer doesn't do anything. At which point, we might as all run around with .380 or .50 GI cartridges designed to tumble on impact.

EDIT: Do you think we should just call this threshold "Elasticity threshold" because that's what Federal sometimes calls it.