#L86

It’s not just the Yanks that are getting improved ammunition: Our friends across the pond have developed their own firepower upgrade for 5.56mm and 7.62mm weapons alike. Jane’s has a modest article on the subject, while The Register provides a quite good overview of exactly what the new rounds are and what they mean for today’s Tommy:

On Saturday we looked at one British  “contender” which could have in some alternate reality become the NATO standard round, and today we’re going to look at another: The 4.85x49mm. After the United States adopted the .223 Remington round as the 5.56x45mm in the mid-1960s, a race began among NATO member nations to create and adopt something similar. Lest the Organization lose the benefits of standardization if a member nation pre-emptively adopted a new SCHV round, these efforts force NATO to begin a competition for a second NATO-standard infantry round. Entrants from the USA, France, Belgium, Germany, and the UK competed head-to-head, and while it was the Belgian 5.56mm SS109 that emerged victorious, the 4.85x49mm round submitted by the UK was ballistically impressive enough to warrant a second look.