Wednesday, June 16, 2010

.223 and 5.56

Much has been made of the difference between .223 ammo and 5.56 NATO ammo. While they look alike, perform alike, they're not alike. Knowledgeable gunnies know the difference. Go to The Gun Zone for a complete discussion, but generally, 5.56mm NATO ammo is loaded to a higher pressure level than .223 Remington, and the military chambering normally has a longer leade than sporting rifles. It's generally considered unsafe to use 5.56 mm ammo in sporting rifles chambered for .223 Remington.

However, my Bushmaster is specifically marked for both ammo types, which indicates to me that it has the longer leade and was proofed for the military ammo. It's perfectly safe to fire the .223 Remington in that rifle.

However, today when we were at the range, I noticed something that I had never noticed before. The boxes of ammo we were issued were marked as 5.56. While I'm sure that Winchester makes a lot of ammo for our military, I had never seen it sold in a commercial box. All military ammo I ever used was packaged in a plain brown cardboard box. Yet, plain as day, I had a box of Winchester ammo marked 5.56 mm.



I thought that was odd enough that it merited its own blog post.

7 comments:

J said...

Bet it was a just a mite hot out there today, huh?

Old NFO said...

Heh- that IS interesting...

Anonymous said...

I think that is the packaging we see on this side of the big pond, where the metric designations are more common. Perhaps it's some of the ammunition that is made for Winchester by the FN.

Denis

Anonymous said...

It is readily available. Cabelas has it.

http://www.cabelas.com/p-0058391216836a.shtml

Anonymous said...

It is readily available. Cabelas has it.

http://www.cabelas.com/p-0058391216836a.shtml

JimB said...

PawPaw... I've got 2 cases of Winchester White Box marked 7.62NATO

WV=mibill... Yes mybill was high

Geodkyt said...

Winchester Q3131 is US M193 contract overruns, made in the US.

Winchester Q3131A is the same, but made in Israel by IMI to US milspec (originally for pruchase and issue to US troops in the Middle East region who still use it and for US military aid recipients around there, to save shipping costs. Israel may use some of the production capacity for their people who still have Galils and M16A1s kicking around -- mostly cops and some reservists, I believe.)

While I believe almost everyone in US service has been transitioned to rifles barreled for the heavier M855 (M4 and M16A2 and later), there may still be some kicking around (especially in the Reserves, and especially for USAF and USN). I'm pretty sure that the M193 production lines are still running full bore, however, both for equipping foreign allies who have the older rifles, and for profitable sale of the "overruns" to civilians.

It's all M193, in the end. They just can't call it M193 when making it for sale to civilians. (Q3131 "officialy" becomes "M193" when it passes it's final acceptance inspections by DoD. At which point, it's not WInchester's ammo anymore, it's Uncle Sam's.)