Man-stopping sounds good, especially when you add enough qualifiers, but I reject it because there is no uniformly quantifiable "man" to be stopped. What stops one guy won't slow down another. So man-stopper is meaningless.
Pistol rounds are second best. Probably, all things being equal, a pistol round that is 1 whopping mm. bigger and somewhat faster than another pistol round will be do more damage. Physics is physics, it has more energy to impart. But whether that marginal advantage is worth the trouble of complicating your logistics is another matter. I figure it ain't worth it. You figure it is. One of the reasons is I don't figure it is worth it is because I don't think we actually have so many ammo types floating around that it is funny, if you disregard the spec ops types. In my limited view I see the lousy M-9, 9mm bullet, NATO standard (I think). It may be a minor advantage, but an advantage nevertheless that when working next to a NATO ally and he runs out of pistol ammo you can give him some and it will fit his pistols, and vice versa.
If a pilot is down, he is running or hiding for his life. I suppose it is conceivable that a 10mm pistol rather than a 9mm pistol will make the critical difference but I don't think it is worth the trouble for that 1 in a (pick any big big number) occasion. Same with the officers, missile gunners (if Patriot crews have to depend on 1mm of pistol bore, things are worse than they think) and the others mentioned. These are just pistols. If some guy is set on 10mm, he can buy it and carry it. I don't see retooling the factories for a pistol round.
You were kidding when you said this about pistol rounds right?
"True -- that's why they need one that will work regardless of shot placement."
P.S. If we were really serious about increasing the effectiveness of a pistol round, we would be talking about expanding rounds. But those aren't going to be fielded.
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