Quote Originally Posted by William F. Owen View Post
JonathanF

I am not sure I would advocate the issuing of small calibre PDWs until I had done all the testing I feel necessary to provide the data. UK Infantry Thinking is incredibly conservative and equipment focussed, so I merely advocate it, to create discussion.
Understood, thanks.

Be very careful of using the word "incapacitate." It's meaningless unless applied to a specific time frame and capability which you seek to defeat.
Incapacitate in my mind means that the enemy is unable to return aimed fire. Timeframe = the sooner the better, surely? From what I'm seeing, even 9mm is sooner and better than 5.7mm, by virtue of a larger permanent wound channel. Plus it's supposedly better at defeating cover without deflection. Bearing this in mind, for your purposes, I would argue that you'd be better off proposing a different weapon. I also note the post above about the comparative weight of the 10" barrelled Colt carbine.

A .22 long rifle round can incapacitate just as well as a .50 if it hits in the right place. I know I use it as wildly as a lot of folks, but that's the frame of the argument right now.
Yes, of course -shot placement, whether by luck, judgement, or a mixture of both, is key. That's a given - why further reduce the effectiveness of your fire by choosing rounds that are shown relatively to be less damaging to the human body and less able to deal with interfering barriers.

I see now that you were poking the hornet's nest, and agree that it's one that needed poking. But needless to say you still have to be able to back up what you say. You don't need to prove anything to me, but if you can show me the evidence that counters what I've pointed to myself, I'd love to see it. I have no horse in any race here, I've ended up studying this area as an offshoot of an offshoot of my real job (historical stuff). And as a paid-up member of the sceptic's club, I try to assess everything from that perspective. The weight of evidence seems to me to be against PDWs, which were designed for a specific role, being capable of serving effectively as a main IW.

Playing devil's advocate to myself for a moment, and being optimistic about the tumbling claimed for the 5.7mm round + the capabilities of the P90 itself, you could see it as a fairly close parallel to the 7.62x39 and the AK family. With the advantages of being lighter, higher capacity, more accurate and better able to defeat soft armour. Viewed in those terms (and in the context of your other proposed changes), it's an option. But in terms of wound ballistics, I still think you'd be sacrificing quite a lot even compared to the "clean wounding" 7.62x39 round. A case would need to be made that the pros outweigh the apparent con of the lacking wound ballistics, and I don't think, on balance, that it has been (if it has, great! I hope to read about it one day.).

Anyway, a bit of a distraction from the real point of the article - my apologies for this. I did find it interesting and thought provoking.