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[ARCHIVED THREAD] - M855A1 question (Page 1 of 2)
Posted: 4/20/2017 5:36:54 PM EDT
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Have any of you had the opportunity to test any of this ammo on ballistic gel or hardened steel plates?
My only experience with it is killing paper and pop ups. |
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It is an improvement over green tip...but frankly, there are better options if you are not limited by the Hague convention. It is also very hard on the feed ramps of many rifles.
The FBI duty load is vastly superior...which is pretty much just a bonded version of MK 318 if I recall correctly. |
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It is an improvement over green tip...but frankly, there are better options if you are not limited by the Hague convention. It is also very hard on the feed ramps of many rifles. The FBI duty load is vastly superior...which is pretty much just a bonded version of MK 318 if I recall correctly. |
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It is an improvement over green tip...but frankly, there are better options if you are not limited by the Hague convention. It is also very hard on the feed ramps of many rifles. The FBI duty load is vastly superior...which is pretty much just a bonded version of MK 318 if I recall correctly. |
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It is an improvement over green tip...but frankly, there are better options if you are not limited by the Hague convention. It is also very hard on the feed ramps of many rifles. The FBI duty load is vastly superior...which is pretty much just a bonded version of MK 318 if I recall correctly. M855A1 does...exceptional things...to living targets. PMAG Gen 3's mitigate feed-ramp issues to the point that you will go through many barrels first. Also, MK318 is more of an un-bonded version of the FBI load than vis-versa, considering the FBI load's projectile was developed before many of this board's members were born. |
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Terminal ballistics are better but IME accuracy is still subpar. With the right mags the there is no issue with the feed ramps. A1 can also punch through a lot of steel armor that 318 has no effect on. |
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that stuff is super-hard on feed ramps
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It is an improvement over green tip...but frankly, there are better options if you are not limited by the Hague convention. It is also very hard on the feed ramps of many rifles. The FBI duty load is vastly superior...which is pretty much just a bonded version of MK 318 if I recall correctly. |
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magazine type, style, and/or manufacture has nothing to do with it. the bullet tips still gouge and scrape feed ramps in barrel extensions
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Terminal ballistics are better but IME accuracy is still subpar. With the right mags the there is no issue with the feed ramps. A1 can also punch through a lot of steel armor that 318 has no effect on. |
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Well if you change the feed angle to where the tips don't touch the feed ramp... Quoted:
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magazine type, style, and/or manufacture has nothing to do with it. the bullet tips still gouge and scrape feed ramps in barrel extensions |
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There are a lot of variables in that problem set. Mags help....but I don't think they 100% solve it. The cam pin and slot on the receiver also receives enhanced wear from these rounds. Barrels, bolts, extractors etc wear faster but are replaceable. |
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If you can do that, you need to work at US Army PM Soldier Weapons. They'd pay you a bundle for that one Quoted:
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Well if you change the feed angle to where the tips don't touch the feed ramp... |
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Our Gen3 Pmags seem to alleviate that problem. My M4 doesn't have chewed up feed ramps and we've shot a lot of A1 lately. Quoted:
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Well if you change the feed angle to where the tips don't touch the feed ramp... 855A1 is decent ammo, improved a lot compared to green tip. It will always suffer from being a multi component non bonded projectile....tolerance stacking, breakup on barriers, accuracy variation based on components, ect |
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Our Gen3 Pmags seem to alleviate that problem. My M4 doesn't have chewed up feed ramps and we've shot a lot of A1 lately. We all have chewed ramps and a few of us are on our second or third cam pins. Most of us shoot polymer and HK mags edited to add: as it's been stated before, it's good ammunition. but like anything else, it has pros and cons to answer your original question, it's really hard on 3/8" AR500 plates, way harder than M855. It kills tempered automotive glass and ignores automotive sheet metal. But it's still not AP |
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I helped (with about another two dozen people) shoot 28,800 rounds of M855A1 the day before yesterday. We all have chewed ramps and a few of us are on our second or third cam pins. Most of us shoot polymer and HK mags edited to add: as it's been stated before, it's good ammunition. but like anything else, it has pros and cons to answer your original question, it's really hard on 3/8" AR500 plates, way harder than M855. It kills tempered automotive glass and ignores automotive sheet metal. But it's still not AP the brass-live sort before leaving class https://s20.postimg.org/alsx5hu8d/cas-qm855a1sort_-.jpg |
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This is the dumbest f_ing thing I ever heard of. The ammo is cutting up the rifle? How many millions of rounds did the Army fire? And didn't solve this? Is this real? the barrel is a "wear" item, the pros for the ammunition outweigh the cons |
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This is the dumbest f_ing thing I ever heard of. The ammo is cutting up the rifle? How many millions of rounds did the Army fire? And didn't solve this? Is this real? Steel bullet tip vs aluminum feed ramp. End result is obvious. There are great pics of it on here somewhere...wish I had saved them. It is very hard on barrels as well. |
| I'm guessing that a bunch of you haven't read the pages and pages of discussion on this and other forums about why the Marine Corps selected the M3 PMAG as its new standard magazine. In addition to overall reliability, they help address the wear caused by M855A1, especially on the M27 IAR. The other issue with M855A1 is the reduced barrel life, of course. I'm personally comfortable with shooting it at work and stocking GDSPs at home. |
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I like M855A1. https://www.AR15.Com/media/mediaFiles/57761/80-1484066871697-123059.jpg https://www.AR15.Com/media/mediaFiles/57761/93358.JPG I would only use gen3 pmags with it though. |
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When you look at 855A1, you have to keep in mind that it has been in development for what, 10 years? Requirements changed, management changed, goals changed...and the end result changed a lot over time.
Remember the early cores that were not "temp stable"? Early lots of the current version had goals to improve external ballistic performance...as in high BC, better trajectory, and less wind influence. They did that via high velocity. It worked. It also ramped up pressure to near proof load levels. So...barrels and bolts were getting trashed. The ammo guys could care less as they are charged to deliver super ammo. They did this. The rifle guys are now fucked as they are getting broken bolts and throated barrels... So, now...they have to slow it down and reduce pressure so that it doesn't break bolts. It still eats barrels as the projectile is hard. It had a serious fouling issue as well that was reportedly solved via magic gunpowder. The next issue will be addressing the steel tips damaging the aluminum feed ramp in the upper receiver as those are being trashed on some guns. 855A1 was and is a turd of a project. It met a non existing requirement (to be lead free) and morphed into a "we want the troops to have the uber killingest bullet)...while ignoring that SOF and the USMC already has that in the form of MK 318 or Brown Tip. 855A1 was a disaster that became a turd and is now a slow moving trainwreck. It still eats barrels...no longer has uber high BC...no longer has high velocity...still chews up feed ramps...and still sucks on intermediate barriers compared to the FBI load or Brown Tip. Windsheild glass tears it into 2-3 pieces...that is failure. Sadly, it is likely to be adopted by everyone. |
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When you look at 855A1, you have to keep in mind that it has been in development for what, 10 years? Requirements changed, management changed, goals changed...and the end result changed a lot over time. Remember the early cores that were not "temp stable"? Early lots of the current version had goals to improve external ballistic performance...as in high BC, better trajectory, and less wind influence. They did that via high velocity. It worked. It also ramped up pressure to near proof load levels. So...barrels and bolts were getting trashed. The ammo guys could care less as they are charged to deliver super ammo. They did this. The rifle guys are now fucked as they are getting broken bolts and throated barrels... So, now...they have to slow it down and reduce pressure so that it doesn't break bolts. It still eats barrels as the projectile is hard. It had a serious fouling issue as well that was reportedly solved via magic gunpowder. The next issue will be addressing the steel tips damaging the aluminum feed ramp in the upper receiver as those are being trashed on some guns. 855A1 was and is a turd of a project. It met a non existing requirement (to be lead free) and morphed into a "we want the troops to have the uber killingest bullet)...while ignoring that SOF and the USMC already has that in the form of MK 318 or Brown Tip. 855A1 was a disaster that became a turd and is now a slow moving trainwreck. It still eats barrels...no longer has uber high BC...no longer has high velocity...still chews up feed ramps...and still sucks on intermediate barriers compared to the FBI load or Brown Tip. Windsheild glass tears it into 2-3 pieces...that is failure. Sadly, it is likely to be adopted by everyone. |
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The velocities are a bit above M855 levels, and I don't know what the proof levels are.
But the velocity isn't how it gains added stability over M855. It gains improved stability performance from design and construction, mostly from simply being a reverse-drawn bullet I don't know about the earlier issued rounds, and that doesn't matter anyway... since we don't use them anymore. 
The best I can figure is that the slight increase in velocity is from the length increase of the bullet. I included an M193 bullet as a point of familiar comparison the average length of bullets of types M855 and M855A1 were 0.909" and 0.984" respectively (the M193 was a 0.740"). Admittedly, it was a bit difficult to get a good average of the M855 because of the inconsistent projectile bases. I don't know about any changes in propellant type 
I mean, they look the same, but my eyeball isn't a chemical spectrometer. Just for giggles I plan on using these propellants head-to-head with identical data to determine performance sometime in the near future. Anyway, after pulling twenty rounds each M855 and M855A1 I found that: M855 carried an average of 27.0 grains (on the nose) of propellant and M855A1 carried an average of 25.9 grains of propellant I'll clock some of each type and come back with an average of about 10-20 and see which is faster After that I want to throw some M855A1 through auto glass with gel behind it edit: I haven't seen any of the accelerated barrel or throat wear that people keep talking about. I have seen the broken cam pins and bolt lugs, but that also happened with M855 in high-volume weapons |
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The velocities are a bit above M855 levels, and I don't know what the proof levels are. But the velocity isn't how it gains added stability over M855. It gains improved stability performance from design and construction, mostly from simply being a reverse-drawn bullet I don't know about the earlier issued rounds, and that doesn't matter anyway... since we don't use them anymore. https://s20.postimg.org/83ysf9gst/IMG_0241.jpg The best I can figure is that the slight increase in velocity is from the length increase of the bullet. I included an M193 bullet as a point of familiar comparison the average length of bullets of types M855 and M855A1 were 0.909" and 0.984" respectively (the M193 was a 0.740"). Admittedly, it was a bit difficult to get a good average of the M855 because of the inconsistent projectile bases. I don't know about any changes in propellant type https://s20.postimg.org/6nn9x4dvx/IMG_0240.jpg I mean, they look the same, but my eyeball isn't a chemical spectrometer. Just for giggles I plan on using these propellants head-to-head with identical data to determine performance sometime in the near future. Anyway, after pulling twenty rounds each M855 and M855A1 I found that: M855 carried an average of 27.0 grains (on the nose) of propellant and M855A1 carried an average of 25.9 grains of propellant I'll clock some of each type and come back with an average of about 10-20 and see which is faster After that I want to throw some M855A1 through auto glass with gel behind it edit: I haven't seen any of the accelerated barrel or throat wear that people keep talking about. I have seen the broken cam pins and bolt lugs, but that also happened with M855 in high-volume weapons |
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M855A1 is running at lower pressures than M855.
It still fragments violently at 450+ yards. It is shooting 1.5-2MOA. Recent testing shows that it would take over 50,000 chamberings to score the chamber wall enough to impede function/be unsafe, and that feed-ramp wear is a non-issue with M3 PMAG's. M855A1 works just fine. It was developed by standing on the shoulders of others, it was stolen, it was a bad progression of mis-steps, but the current product works well. As a process, M855A1 is a great example of how not to do things efficiently. As an end-product, it's absolutely effective. MK318 and MK319 were MUCH LESS torturous a path than M855A1 and M80A1, and cost the tax-payer much less. No known ammunition is more effective than proper training. I think they could have saved some money, and lives, by spending it on training our warfighters more/better, and buying a COTS ammunition solution and pushing it into mass production with some slight tweaks. -The main functional complaint with M855A1 and M80A1 is that the copper slug does not necessarily penetrate in a straight line after hitting a barrier, like the MK318 and MK319 are more apt to do. -The main functional complaint of MK318 and MK319, is that they are nowhere near as effective on hard barriers as M855A1 and M80A1, nor do they offer as effective a terminal performance as they latter up close or at distance, on open-air shots. |
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That last point is incorrect.
855A1 is inferior in terminal performance precisely because it fragments. Fragmentation is a poor method to create tissue damage as it requires substantive penetrative resistance/depth before fragmentation occurs and individual fragments lack sufficient mass to retain energy sufficient for full penetration and exit. Exit wounds are needed to bleed out the target. Ideally, a bonded bullet (or monolithic) that expands early but penetrates in a straight line with max retained weight would be optimal terminally. As for hard target penetration...855A1 is less likely to perform well on real world targets. Windshield glass, car doors, masonry walls...Brown tip or 318 are superior. 855A1 is superior on 5mm steel plate...but what are you shooting at that is using 5mm steel for cover? Which is more likely? Also, Pmags help...but they don't solve the feed ramp issue on all guns. A program to create bonded 318 would have been cheaper and better IMO. |
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That last point is incorrect. 855A1 is inferior in terminal performance precisely because it fragments. Fragmentation is a poor method to create tissue damage as it requires substantive penetrative resistance/depth before fragmentation occurs and individual fragments lack sufficient mass to retain energy sufficient for full penetration and exit. Exit wounds are needed to bleed out the target. Ideally, a bonded bullet (or monolithic) that expands early but penetrates in a straight line with max retained weight would be optimal terminally. As for hard target penetration...855A1 is less likely to perform well on real world targets. Windshield glass, car doors, masonry walls...Brown tip or 318 are superior. 855A1 is superior on 5mm steel plate...but what are you shooting at that is using 5mm steel for cover? Which is more likely? Also, Pmags help...but they don't solve the feed ramp issue on all guns. A program to create bonded 318 would have been cheaper and better IMO. |
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That last point is incorrect. 855A1 is inferior in terminal performance precisely because it fragments. Fragmentation is a poor method to create tissue damage as it requires substantive penetrative resistance/depth before fragmentation occurs and individual fragments lack sufficient mass to retain energy sufficient for full penetration and exit. Exit wounds are needed to bleed out the target. Ideally, a bonded bullet (or monolithic) that expands early but penetrates in a straight line with max retained weight would be optimal terminally. As for hard target penetration...855A1 is less likely to perform well on real world targets. Windshield glass, car doors, masonry walls...Brown tip or 318 are superior. 855A1 is superior on 5mm steel plate...but what are you shooting at that is using 5mm steel for cover? Which is more likely? Also, Pmags help...but they don't solve the feed ramp issue on all guns. A program to create bonded 318 would have been cheaper and better IMO. MK318 and M855A1 both fragment. Brown-tip and 318 don't do so hot on cinderblocks in my experience, just not enough kinetic energy to do much. The browntip of course held together, so no weight lost, and it's hot as hell, for a 70gr round, but it still didn't do much on the other side of the cinderblock. Need more KE than the 5.56 can muster to "do well" on that sort of thing. Or a smaller surface area, which the M855A1's steel tip provides. I have not shot up cinderblocks with it yet though to know for sure how it does. |
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that's cool, I just shot up a bunch of cinder blocks for you.
a single round doesn't do much, but shot-for-shot examination of a real concrete-filled, steel-reinforced cinder block wall... M855A1 won hands-down over M318 and M855 in same-conditions testing (earlier this morning) the test was performed with M4 (by-round examination) and M249 (7-round belts) we had to link ammunition together for the M249s, as we only had commercial pack ammunition for both types the test was performed at 100m on all weapons I procured a copy of the STRATCOM communication plan for the EPR (no, not the early unlimited-release), but the distribution for that document is restricted from release. I can, however, say that a lot of the information in this thread is... spurious, speculative, and in some cases just wrong that being said: I'll continue to use M855A1 from an M4, any M16 variant, or M249, with confidence |
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early release STRATCOM overview (PDF)
Oh yeah, I'm gonna go ahead with my own informal test anyhow... mostly because I like to shoot |
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early release STRATCOM overview (PDF) Oh yeah, I'm gonna go ahead with my own informal test anyhow... mostly because I like to shoot |
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If you can get access via official channels, you might find the USMC testing on 855A1 interesting. It ended rather badly as it didn't align with the glowing test data from the Army. It is eye opening. Some of the issued have been addressed...some are inherent to the design. |
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tweeter Did you find out if you were/are using Gen 3 Pmags? |
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early release STRATCOM overview (PDF) Oh yeah, I'm gonna go ahead with my own informal test anyhow... mostly because I like to shoot 
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only for the fun stuff.
right now I'm sitting in a fucking 3-hour meeting talking about... stuff. imagine being stuck in a chair while someone uses a stick to shove pieces of dry toast down your throat while they monotonously read the inactive ingredients lists on random household cleaners Quoted:
I'm living vicariously thru you...just so you know... |
[ARCHIVED THREAD] - M855A1 question (Page 1 of 2)
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