Spears' 5.56mm Ammo Test

[SSgt Spears]

Aloha dos amigos. Today I bring you a report on some testing I did for two of the more popular rifle rounds as well as a third that surprised me. I'll be posting screenshots with my analysis.

To start I will describe the color gradient used to trace each shot fired. It's a script that you can place in a init.sqf file for a mission.

Red means the bullet is traveling with 100%-75% of the muzzle velocity.
Yellow means the bullet is traveling with 74%-50% of the muzzle velocity.

Green means the bullet is traveling with 49%-25% of the muzzle velocity.

Blue means the bullet is traveling with 24%-10% of the muzzle velocity. 

White means the bullet is traveling with less than 10% of the muzzle velocity. 

So up first is from RHS. It is the M856A1 with Tracers.

 

My first set of targets are wood walls. Here you can see the rounds pass through 4 walls but only 3 walls are doing lethal damage afterwards. The last section would only cause bruising. 

 

The next part of the testing was on metal sheet fencing. It might be thinner but it slows bullets down a little bit better. It only made it through four sections however I'd call three still lethal with 1 additional being questionable.

 

In conclusion, the M856A1 seems solid enough, but not compared to the next options.

 

Up next is the 5.56mm EPR round used in the NiArms magazines. 

 

So the EPR manages to penetrate through 6 layers but only 4 of those I would consider lethal.

 

On metal fencing it still fairs better than the M856A1 with 5 fences penetrated with still lethal velocity.

 

So with this knowledge the NiArms EPR magazines are better than the M856A1 in the RHS rounds. However! I found another magazine in the arsenal that is superior to all others.

 

I present the M995 AP rounds used by the ACE mod. Granted it means having STANAG instead of the cool looking PMAGs but just look at the work it does

 

This little fuckers penetrated 9 wood walls with 7 what I would consider lethal or nearly lethal. 

 

It penetrates 10 walls of sheet metal with 8 of them in the lethal range.

 

But that's not all. It can penetrate sandbags as well as sandbag bunkers.

 

Still not good enough? It can penetrate brick fucking walls.

 

As well as standard house walls.

 

In conclusion, I will be putting M995 AP in all my weapons from this point forward. 

 

I plan to also test 7.62x51 NATO and trajectory differences between rounds to see if a round is better suited for close or far ranges.

 

Hope some of you find this information helpful. I spent a long time getting this test to work. Probably 4+ hours. Enjoy!

[MSgt Falconer]

Do we have M995 "blacktip" in our regular arsenal? Also using it against unarmored targets would cause the bullet to zip right through the body without doing its usual tumbling and fragmenting. Thus doing less damage but I dont think ARMA simulates that.

[SSgt O'Brien]

But the real question is am I willing to give up my PMAGs for the better round.  Answer, probably not.  Pretty cool demo though. 

[SSgt Spears]

@MSgt Falconer You're correct but ArmA does not simulate that. I tested these rounds on some "volunteers" and found with no armor it only takes one shot to the chest to drop them with all three of these rounds.

[W. McMuster]

Good shit, can you do a follow up for effects on target?  namely the difference between a cool looking pmag round and the m995 AP on individuals wearing body armor.

In other words: Yes, they're better for killing walls, but how much better are they at killing armored Russians?

[SSgt Spears]

Testing shall be done tonight for armor testing along with weapon/barrel length. Way easier to test than trajectory/range efficiency.

[Capt (Ret) Koch]

just wanted to let you know those trajectories colors aren't always accurate, ymmv

[W. McMuster]

Yeah, results could just be a table for each ammo type. Range for columns(10, 20, 50, 100, 200, 300 meters) armor class for rows, shots to kill in the fields.

Can spit out graphs via google sheets for each round that way.

[J. Hague]

Very solid work, I have done some impromptu testing of the M855A1, Mk262, M995 and Mk318 with Maj Carrara. My testing was against the Russian body armour that we where all having trouble with on the last deployment. 

In my testing, I was investigating the effectiveness of the round on a target after passing through the Russian Level 4 armour that most OpFor had been using in the last deployment.  It was found that from about 30m all of my listed ammunition had similar less than an ideal effect on the target after passing through the armour, and that's only the few times they got through. Most of the rounds fired, of about 3-4 mags of each ammo, done separately on three fresh targets, escalating from 1 round each up to 3 rounds each at the same range to help determine penetration and wound chance.

All the above ammo types, only had a moderate effect on the targets.  Most 90% of the rounds not penetrating the armour at 30m. Providing mostly bruising and abrasions, often not even going down from one round.  M855A1 had statistically the best performance on the armour occasionally providing a velocity wound but, same as the others rarely if ever putting the target unconscious from one round.      As you can imagen in the three-round phase, the chance of knocking the target unconscious was increased but only by about 20% and wounds indicated that most of the times a target was going unconscious, was due to bruising and minor abrasions. 

Result concluded of my testing are as follows. 
M855A1 on top due to slightly more frequently penetrating the armour. But only as a minor improvement on effect over the other rounds, as none of them including the M855A1 really stood out as being particularly effective.    

I will note that while myself and Maj Carrara did test M995, I do not recall if it was the ace one or some other RHS one. So while long-range ballistic performance is still a consideration, and the wall penetration effects may not reflect armour penetration. Your results regarding M995 are very appealing and interesting.  

Edit, confirm that the Ace m995 is what i tested. and also duplicated my results you can dum multiple rounds into those Russian vests and they just get Avulsion Wounds, almost never getting a velocity wound.