5.56 NATO and the Hague Convention

The Hague convention prohibits the use of weapons calculated to cause excessive structuring. This moratorium is construed to prohibit the use of hollowpoint rounds in warfare (unless the hollowpoint is for aerodynamic reasons). This makes about as much sense, in today's asymmetric warfare, as hand grenades made of cream cheese. Let's work our way down the reasons that the U.S. should adopt the hollowpoint 5.56 round and, ah, adjust its interpretation of the Hague convention.

1) Stopping Power

Currently, the standard round for U.S. forces is the 5.56 mm NATO round in either jacket (steel coated) or ball (solid, pointed lead) form. Fired from an M-16 or comparable rifle, this round develops a muzzles velocity of about 1100 m/sec and a kinetic energy of 7774 joules. This is the equivalent energy of baseball thrown at 706 miles per hour. More meaningfully, a 5.56 has the same momentum as a 210 mile per hour fastball. This is a fearsome amount of energy. Most of it is wasted. This bullet has a tendency to go straight through the target and continues downrange at a considerable speed. Now let's get something straight. When an insurgent charges a soldier with an AKS and who knows what else, what matters is stopping him as quickly as possible. This means imparting maximum momentum change into the target to create shock. A 210 mile per hour fastball will do this quite admirably. One that transfers only half of its momentum to the target will not. A hollowpoint round, on the other hand, expands on impact and thus becomes less aerodynamic upon entering the target and usually stops in it. Complete momentum (but incomplete energy) transfer occurs. This is why most people who carry handguns for self-defense use hollowpoint or softpoint ammunition.

2) Collateral Damage

This is a more serious issue. The 5.56 inflicts a lot of damage and, even in ball form, has formidable stopping power, but on passing through a target it keeps going. This is wasteful and extremely dangerous to anyone downrange. This bullet can go straight through someone, a few panels of drywall, and halfway into an innocent standing next door. A round that stops in the target is unable to do damage beyond the person hit.

3) Lethality

The irony of this is that, at least generally, ball ammunition is more likely to eventually kill the target than hollowpoint. Why? Think about it. How many holes does a person receive when shot by a round that stops in the target? One. When the rounds goes clean through? Two. And exit wounds are a lot nastier than entry ones. A person who is hit by a hollowpoint may be stopped cold, but provided a major organ has not been destroyed stands a decent chance of surviving. A person hit by ball ammunition is likely to bleed to death in the absence of professional medical help. This is even more ironic considering that the 5.56 was not originally developed to be consistently lethal. The reasoning was that in a war of attrition (say, with the U.S.S.R.) the enemy would have to spend more money and time treating wounded soldiers than burying dead ones. This logic is sound, but depends upon the enemy being able and willing to spend the time. Al Qaeda seems a bit reticent in this particular area, so we either end up treating terrorists ourselves or letting them die. I am a proponent of the least force necessary approach, and if we can instantly incapacitate an insurgent without necessitating either death or more expensive medical treatment, this sounds like a sound course of action to me.

My mother has a saying: "Use the proper tool for the proper job." Although she'd be aghast to find she'd been quoted in a post about the 5.56 NATO round, she raises an excellent point. We need to adapt to fight the war we are actually in, not the ones of thirty years ago. This means using the correct tools, and maybe a bit of common sense.