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    Store Hours Mon-Fri: 10am-8pm *First hour of weekend range time (9am-10am) is reserved for members only. Retail store is open to everyone during these hours. |
The .223 Remington (also 5.56x45mm NATO)Currently the .223 Remington, or .223 for short, is the official cartridge of the United States Armed Forces and also used as the standard NATO rifle caliber where it is called the 5.56x45mm NATO round. The two calibers are interchangeable in all but a very few speciality precision rifles. The .223 came to be developed when during the latter part of the 1950's a search was started to choose a successor to the 7.62mm NATO or .308 Winchester and a number of calibers were in the running. Among these were the .222 Winchester, .224 Springfield and .222 Special (developed by Eugene Stoner of Armalite). All of the new cartridges were stretched versions of the .222 Remington cartridge. The .222 Special eventually won the competition and quickly became known as the .223. This caliber was adopted by the U.S. Army in 1964 and is specified as M193 ball which has since been superseded by the M855 ball. The Armalite AR-15 assault rifle was developed with the .223 in mind and came out around the same time. The .223 Remington caliber has proven to be an effective military cartridge for fighting in the jungle or forested areas and for close-in fire support. It has been improved lately by NATO with heavier (SS109 designed by FN Herstal of Belgium) bullets fired through a fast twist (1 in 7 inch) barrels. As a civilian sporting round, it is just as accurate as any other long range, center fire, 22's. Since military brass cases are usually heavier than commercial cases the maximum loads should be reduced by at least 10% when reloading and approached cautiously. The .223 is a very fast round with muzzle velocities (depending on the rifle design) ranging from a little under 3000 fps up to 3500 fps with the bullet weighing from 40 grains up to 63 grains. The projectile is designed to "tumble" and also break apart into smaller pieces upon hitting objects and is therefore not prone to over penetration (see Bob Tuley Ballistics for additional information on terminal ballistics). |
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