China's 5.8mm bullets

China's bullet-making technology has caught up with the advanced level in foreign countries, boasting absolute advantages in many performance indicators but they still need to improve, according to an analysis report posted on China Military online.

The report, written by Yao Ziqian and Li Wei from the PLA National Defense University , says the 5.8mm standard bullet that was successfully developed in 1987, is only used by China as the main bullet type. It is divided into two categories: light bullet (generic bullet) and heavy bullet (machine gun bullet). The former is only suitable for individual weapons and squad light machine guns, while the latter can be used for the QBB-95 squad machine gun, QBU-88 sniper rifle and other firearms with the effective firing range of over 1,000 meters.

With the same shape, shell and primer, light bullets and heavy bullets can be exchanged so that light weapons of various types can use common bullets, which is of great significance for simplifying logistics support and providing mutual bullet support in the battlefield.

Compared with the NATO's 5.56mm bullet (SS109) and Russia's 5.45mm bullet (7N6), China's 5.8mm bullet (DBP-87) features high initial velocity, long direct range and strong penetration, which ensures its high resistance to external impact, high firing rate and hitting precision.

However, they pointed out that the Chinese bullet is inferior to foreign bullets in four aspects: the bullet type isn't complete, performance isn't good enough, material of gun propellant is of poor performance and finally R&D capability of new-type bullets is insufficient.

Yao and Li noted that especially in recent years, to save expenses and costs, bullet manufacturers are small scale and have no drive for technological upgrading because bullet orders in peace are very small, whereas developed countries like the U.S. are actively exploring and developing new-type bullets.