Why don't we see nato spec ammo in shops

cosieman

German and uk shooters have the option to buy surplus 5.56 ammo and 7.62.51 ammo why do we never see 7.62.51 or 5.56 ammo in Ireland in gernal when most 223 and 308 rifles can fire both safely.

tonysopprano

223 (55000 PSI)CANNOT fire 556(62000 PSI in 556 chamber, but 70000 PSI+ in 223 chamber) safely, unless it has a WYLDE chambering and headspace, to alleviate the extra pressure.

You can buy the military surplus but do you want to take the risk.

https://www.fieldandstream.com/guns/223-vs-556/

https://www.outdoorlife.com/guns/556-vs-223/

Mellor

why do we never see 7.62.51 or 5.56 ammo in Ireland in gernal when most 223 and 308 rifles can fire both safely.

The part in bold is not true, but people often mistakenly believe it to be the case. 223/308 and 5.56/7.62 are not loaded to the same pressure, and (more importantly imo) are not the same chambers.

.308 is hotter than its nato twin. It's fine to fire 7.62 in a 308. But not the other way around.

The problematic one for civilians is the 5mm pair. Nato 5.56 is higher pressure than .223, and also a longer chamber (this which affect the pressure measurement). A rifle stamped 5.56 will fire both, as will a .223 Wlyde (which is a chamber not a cartridge). And to muddy things further some .223s state that that can fire 5.56 safely. In that case, they have confirm their specific chamber will handle nato spec 5.56.

But if the manufacture does say its ok, I wouldn't risk it. I'm there's many that get away with it. But its's not work the risk. Safety aside, it would also void a warranty.

otmmyboy2

Getting away from the 223 vs 5.56 and 308 vs 7.62 which has been covered above, and elsewhere on this forum several times.

I would hazard it's the same reason as there not being, uniquely within the whole of Europe I should note, cheap surplus 7.62x54 and 7.62x39 ammo here.

The former is an excellent deer cartridge, the latter a more than adequate fox round(and suppresses better than 223 too).

Not as much margin for retailers, so why bring in X thousands of surplus rounds which they make a few cents per round on vs new factory ammo which they can make a much bigger margin on.

Considering no retailers that I know of(open to correction there for any who might bring in quantities themselves? There are certainly some oddball calibers I would get if I could feed them) that buy direct from Europe, it is instead through distributors, who are not going to spend X on hazmat transport for ammo which they can get less of a margin on.

Instead they are going to go with the best bang for their buck, pun intended, and buy newly manufactured ammo, which then gets resold to dealers and then individuals.

Grizzly 45

Plus it is usually a feast or famine situation with military ammo hitting the civilian market. It's a feast when someone's army is cleaning out the stores of "use by" out-of-date ammo to make way for fresh supplies and someone was lucky enough to have insider info that X tons will be disposed of and can shift it to the civvie market.

IOW it's an unreliable way of supplying your customers if you are relying on army surplus for "cheap ammo" which,as already mentioned by the time you have paid transport costs and all the rest to land it in Ireland it isn't much cheaper than normal civvie ammo when you go to buy it.

MickS12

I'd imagine that most surplus ammo in Europe will have gone to Ukraine by now anyways.

otmmyboy2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121711393#Comment_121711393

You'd be surprised, a lot of nations completely prohibit non state run or affiliated ammo dealers from shipping "war material" to Ukraine, and more require a very intensive and expensive series of permits to allow the same.

I have a few friends who are firearms dealers in mianland Europe and around the time of Ukraine kicking off they were all for helping out and enquired to their respective government's depts about shipping rifles and accessories abroad and were flat out told no, don't even bother applying for the permit because it will be denied.

Which was quite interesting 😂

MickS12

Interesting certainly, so whatever surplus ammo that was in civilian hands is likely to have stayed there, but id imagine that anything that was still in government stock that was due to be surplus'd would have went. Some very interesting stuff has turned in Ukraine like unused FAls still in their original packaging, old swedish Ks etc.

Grizzly 45

Not necessarily true either.As Ukraine was Warsaw Pact/Soviet equipped and still had stocks aplenty of Russian AKs and ammo, remember them handing crates of AKs in Feb 22 on the streets of Kyiv?

Adding Western arms and ammo into the mix is only going to make a bigger logistics headache,esp as the West has been drip-feeding Ukraine equipment the ammo supply could be haphazard. So those Western guns most in use are M4 types,used by Ukranian SF units and the other stuff will be probably used by rear echelon or paramilitary police units. The biggest killer in this conflict has been artillery,and Russia is still digging out museum pieces from storage with its ammo supplied by N Korean makers.That works...most of the time,more or less. So Ukraine needs more artillery shells than small arms ammo.

It certainly has an eclectic collection of arms on both sides.140-year-old Mosin Nagant still used as sniper rifles alongside Maxim machine guns and MG42 Hitler mowers.Beside Western M4s Barret 50 cal sniper rifles and AK12s.The adage "Use what you have a lot of!" applies