Guns And Ammo Magazine

I hate ambiguous magazine articles. You know the ones where they talk about how much they like this new hot gun, but they give you absolutely nothing concrete, no measurements, or real data that I could not get off the box it came in myself. Like reloading data that pushes the limit, but fails to have any OAL data in the mix. For me that is the bottomline, give me information that I can use.

So when I see, not just ambiguous information, but blatantly wrong information, it just pops my cork. Still, there are people out there writing magazine articles who as soon as I see their name on the byline, I know it will of little value to me. There is one author at Guns and Ammo magazine that has stepped over even that fine line into just plain wrong information. Reading his articles is like trying to get through a CNN or MSNBC report without screaming at the television.

Well, Tom Beckstrand got me there with his article on the new plastic cased ammunition from True Velocity. Not just untrue information, but a spin on technology, that is so wrong it is funny. Now I am sure he did not come up with this spin on heat reduction in the AR, and someone at True Velocity is probably rolling on the ground laughing that no editor at Guns and Ammo was smart enough to catch this major technological misstep that they pitched to the unknowing Tom Beckstrand. I, myself, have been guilty of feeding fantastical, unbelievable information to reporters who should have known better, only to see it in print the next week. Like the squad that so wanted to get back into the fight, that when their APC threw a track, they all got out and pushed it back up on its tracks. LOL, those things weighted 28,000 pounds, empty. Yet there was the story in Stars & Stripes by a reporter wearing Infantry brass. LOL, and yes, my Battalion Commander made me write commendations for everyone of those guys because it was in print, even as he was laughing about it the entire time he was chewing me out.

To shorten up this story, the issue is the idea put forth by Mr. Beckstrand in that the plastic case of the True Velocity ammunition has an insulating affect that greatly reduces the heat in the action of an AR. Well, for those of you with little knowledge of the AR, it has an operating system that is both its best feature as well as its greatest weakness. Gas comes back from the barrel through a gas tube and operates the action. In the original M16, this gas port is most of the way down a 20" barrel, so both gas and heat are at acceptable levels so as not to overheat the action. But as barrels have gotten shorter and shorter, more heat, at greater pressures, and carrying more carbon blast back into the action overheating it to the point that continuous full auto fire will either seize up the action about the third or fourth 30 round magazine, or it will start cooking off rounds, meaning it continues to fire after you release the trigger. Heat is most definitely a huge issue in the AR, my issue is that any heat transfer through the cartridge case is less than 1% of the total.

Back when many companies were touting the virtues of replacing the Direct Impingement (DI) gas system of the AR with a piston design to reduce the heat coming back into the action, they sent out demo teams. The HK 416 was one of those ARs, for instance. What I remember were the demonstration teams these various companies sent around trying to get support within the military for a change. Invariably, they would show us the new rifle, fire off 3 or 4 magazines on full auto, then take out the BCG and hold it in their bare hand. It was impressive, in that we knew anyone doing that with a regular DI AR would be making a trip to the hospital for severe burns. So if there had been significant heat transfer through the brass case as touted by Mr. Beckstrand, those guys would have been burned, severely.

Now Mr. Beckstrand is a former SF operator, and it just goes to show that those pulling the trigger, often do not understand the technology of their tools. Much like Mr. Ayoob, a retired LEO, has little legal understanding outside of the police state he operated within. Like I said, the technology assertion is so absurd as to be funny and should have been picked up by his editors.

This is not Mr. Beckstrand's only faux pas, he continues to complain, to everyone who will listen, that the Army's new M855A1 is horrible because it is loaded past SAMMI max pressures (53,000 psi) for the .223. Well, the 5.56mm NATO round has, to my knowledge, always been loaded to NATO standards, and that includes his beloved M855 green tips, which are loaded to 63,000 psi. And contrary to Mr. Beckstrand's assertions, the M855A1 has proven itself to be exceptionally accurate and lethal, setting many new records in Afghanistan. Point of fact is that the Taliban has stopped their practice of standing up out past 400 meters and taunting our troops, the M855A1 has been dropping them with ease ever since it was introduced into that theater.

Well, let me climb back down off my soapbox now.