Attribute to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

A good friend of mine* recently sent me an interesting article from the Internet about a new rifle cartridge being offered by SIG (Schweizerische Industrie Gesellschaft). I believe they want it considered as a possible new combat item, intended to replace .223 Remington (5.56×45mm, which, for many reasons, is a terrible cartridge and needs relacing) but, offly enough, its first outing is in a new old-fashioned bolt-action rifle, the kind best limited to hunting. I suspect that’s because no combat-worthy rifle can handle it.

If you’re not interested in the ramblings of an old, retired ballistician, you can stop right here and I won’t hold it against you. I have always loved wildcat cartridges (those not produced by the established ammunition factories, but by hobbyists, shooter and reloaders). I had a .38/45 (.45 Automatic Colt Pistol “necked down” to .357) barrel and reloading dies early on, which I deeply regret losing hold of. In the 1970s, Roger Owen, another friend of mine and I designed and dummied up a .277 cartridge, as a compromise between .308—the last competent battle rifle America issued was the M14—and the hated .223, which George Leonard Herter once called "the Pentagon Pansy, the enemy’s best friend" (and, as a ballistician, I tended to agree with him). In an age of stonking super-magnums, our little cartridge, Roger’s and mine, was originally based on a shortened .30 Remington case (basically a rimless .30-30) because you couldn’t get hold of 7.62x39mm cases in those days.

Along the way, cutting those cases very short, we also anticipated the development of the 10mm pistol cartridge—a very fine thing in itself and the parent of .40 S&W, now in 60% of police holsters across America—a sort of science fiction prediction rendered in brass.

Roger and I never intended for our .277 wildcat to be any kind of magnum. I don’t think people realize that what the ignorant media tell you is the “dreaded” and “massively powerful” 7.62x39mm, is almost the ballistic twin of the old, familiar .30-30 Winchester. We just wanted it to be able to injure or kill an enemy at more than 200 yards. We chose that particular caliber (7.8mm) because there is a 100-grain .270 Winchester bullet in the inventory that our calculations showed would work very well. You could have changed the caliber of an AK-47 simply by changing its barrel, and I recall that the cartridge was also M-16 friendly. Unfortunately, our project never got any further than that. So many ideas, so little money.

But look: there are excellent reasons why 7.62x39mm and the AK-47 are the most popular rifle/cartridge combination in the world. They’re both very simple, they work every single time, they’re easy for people smaller than Western European males to use, and they are not over-engineered like the usual SIG fumble-thumbed product. The new SIG cartridge is a complicated composite mess, not good solid brass, and runs at an astounding chamber pressure of 80,000 pounds per square inch (“magnum” hunting rifles only generate 62,000 psi). It reminds me of the morons who are always trying to push “caseless” ammo.

The legendary AK-47 (and the venerable lever-action .30-30 from Winchester, Marlin, and Henry) both operate at relatively low pressures—not the idiotic 80,000 or even 62,000 psi.—but generally below 50,000, so they’re fairly easy on both shooters and equipment. They are very easily reloaded. Nobody—combat veterans in Vietnam or mule deer in the Rockies—would ever say that they lack killing power. And those expensive composite cases? Give me a break.

As I told that friend who sent me the article, the KISS Principle (look it up) is being badly neglected here. In combat, everything goes wrong in the first thirty seconds. Murphy’s Law is the rule of the day. Military weapons need to be simple and rugged. The basic principles on which Mikhail Kalashnikov’s revolutionary invention (as well as Saint John Moses Browning’s fabulous 1911 pistol) are based are true and eternal. That’s why I carry a Glock, these days. Our modest little .277 cartridge, not SIG’s, would have observed all those principles.

*Hat tip to Bob Meier