Speer TBBC bullet which SOST design models
The Army wants a lead free bullet. Which is silly, but okay, would you settle for a lead free and BETTER bullet?
While this non-lead policy burnishes the army’s image and environmental cred, it also provides troops with an inferior bullet; the M855A1 copper alloy slug. But inferior to what? Well to a another new bullet. SOCOM (Special Operations Command) has developed a new 5.56mm bullet, the SOST (Special Operations Science and Technology) round.
So the Army won’t supply its troops (except for Special Forces) with a better, non-lead bullet, and get this kicker:
The army is now working on an environmentally correct 7.62mm round, and ignoring troop requests for the SOST round
Why doesn’t General Petraeus just wave his magic wand and fix this?
P.S. I wonder how many truck bombs weren’t stopped before blowing up because of the Army’s “green” bullet.
P.P.S. Hey Army… the lead you want to avoid putting in the ground, came out of the ground!
June 11th, 2010 at 10:42 am
Would you apply the same standard to depleted uranium tank penetrators? When wars end, the battlefield returns to a place of living, which would be better if not littered with any more dangerous stuff than absolutely necessary. Mines, unexploded ordnance, various lethal chemicals, agent orange, etc. Wars do end!
How much data does the Army or anyone else have on any difference in tactical effect, not the individual lethality effect, of the two types of bullets? Lots of people focus only on the technology of the bullet and assume that any gain is worth having. It’s a common attitude with technology, what’s technically better is best. Systems people think more broadly.
June 11th, 2010 at 11:16 am
I just don’t think the lead bullets make much of a difference.
As to “data”… the bullets work much better and cost about the same. This is established and not contested. So it seems pretty obvious we should give them to our troops.
June 14th, 2010 at 3:22 am
First, the SOST bullet is NOT lead free. It is a copper jacketed lead bullet. The dark gray part in the photo is lead.
“P.S. I wonder how many truck bombs weren’t stopped before blowing up because of the Army’s “green” bullet.”
Zero. The “green” bullet has not been issued yet.
“P.P.S. Hey Army… the lead you want to avoid putting in the ground, came out of the ground!”
This is true, but it didn’t all come from one spot. The lead concern isn’t about contaminating battlefields, it’s about contaminating practice ranges. Many gun ranges in the US have millions of bullets all piled up in one area. Now it’s also true that there in no real evidence that lead bullets in the ground will cause water contamination, and I rather doubt that it will ever be a problem. But the gov’t has to worry about the possibility that it could happen. If it turned out to be a problem, it could result in massive law suits and multibillion dollar cleanup requirements. They don’t want more “superfund” sites. The media could have a field day showing children with “lead poisoning” and blaming it on the gov’t.
I should also point out that the green bullet was not the Army’s idea. Congress passed legislation that required it. The Army is just following orders as they must.
I would also like to point out that the green bullet has not been demonstrated publicly, so we really don’t know if it will actually be inferior to the SOST round. The people developing it claim that it is as good or better than SOST. Of course they could be lying or just plain wrong, but maybe they’re not. We really have to wait and see how it performs before condemning it as a bad product.
Having said all that, I do think it is stupid for the Army to not field the SOST in the mean time. The M855A1 is not expected to be in the field for awhile yet. In the mean time, the Army is still using lead filled M855 bullets. If they’re going to still be using lead bullets anyway, they might as well use the better ones.
June 14th, 2010 at 8:43 am
Thanks Dwane… I really misread the sources I read on this. Guess I was in a hurry. Our current conflicts are a lot less “shooting” intensive than past wars, and lead hasn’t been a problem that I’ve heard of. This seems, to me, more of the “hey we don’t like the military, lets make their job tougher” kind of acttivity.
I’ll leave the post up and refer folks to your update.