TimC said:That is appalling, I think the SLR was 20 rounds in 4 groups of five to produce an overall group not exceeding 100mm. That was the minimum or you went back to training on the marksmanship principles.
You then fired a check group of 5 rounds to score and the group size gave you 15% or similar of your overall APWT score. its changed now as the tupperware devil is capable of much tighter groups much further out and details are fired at 400m, where 300m was the maximum with the SLR!
The SLR was:
"At 100 yards - five test rounds shall be within a rectangle with sides not exceeding three inches horizontal by three inches vertical."
The barrel test was to be done supported with sandbags, bench rest, or fixed mount.
The max test range for the FNC1 was three hundred metres- MILSPEC 7.62 was really a 300 M max round just look at the wind drift and drop tables.
Keep in mind that these are all MAXIMUM values for testing barrels. I know for a fact the vast majority of current CF weapons arrive performing much better than the max - 2-3 MOA, with sub MOA not unheard of.
During the SARP testing PETE tested three C-7s, each with 6000 rounds through the barrel 50% auto fire, at 100m with 30 rd groups and found the average extreme spread to be 8.6 cm.
Blanks use pistol powder which is hotter - and the BFA channels hot gas at the muzzle thorugh the grooves - causing gas erosion at the crown.
Both of these rifles, when in spec, were capable of better groups than the average soldier was capable of producing.
Pure accuracy aside, the C7 has a much higher hit probability than the C1, and more ammo can be carried. I'll dig out the test relults next week if I can. The thinking was something like this:
A 1953 US Army report noted:
"a four round salvo with a predictable 20" spread might provide double the hit probability at 300 yards over a single shot fired from a M1 rifle. A lighter, smaller caliber cartridge would have the side benefit of allowing enough ammunition to be carried for an equivalent number of fired salvos to the individual cartridge capacity of the current rifle"