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Originally Posted by johndallman
This is fairly unlikely. The high-purity soft iron you need for such rounds is probably fairly expensive, and certainly corrodes easily. There's also no easy way* to make it match the weight of the conventional bullets that weapons are sighted for. That will make a difference at ranges that are relevant to snipers and machine gunners, and armies don't like to have weapon-specific ammunition, or different weapons for training and combat**.
If you were to use iron rounds at long ranges, you would need to re-calibrate the sights; it's only at the short ranges typical of monster-hunting combat that the difference would be insignificant.
*You could match density by using iron rounds with tungsten inserts, but pressing inserts into soft iron is much more difficult than pressing them into lead.
*If a soldier has a gun that is his, he can be persuaded to look after it. Guns that are only used for training don't get cared for so well, and training with inaccurate and unreliable weapons is bad for soldiers' confidence.
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Those are good points.
There is also the fact that the tombac-jacketed lead core GP90 round that the Swiss Army currently issues would be mass-produced Match ammo in GURPS terms and the Swiss have a long tradition of individual marksmanship. The GP90 round is actually designed to reduce lead
emissions, as the militia service for Swiss men requires massive amounts of ammo to be expended at their ranges every year, and the Swiss are fairly environmentally conscious. While a lead-free bullet might thus actually be considered there, there would, however, probably be public outcry if any proposed new round could not deliver the level of accuracy demanded in the Swiss service round.
What sounds much more likely is that organizations that do not use SAWs or machine guns in the same caliber as an infantry rifle (or at all) and have no reasonable need for long range performance might adopt iron/mild steel lead-free ammunition for environmental reasons, at least if the external and terminal ballistics are adequate at typical engagement ranges and the cost is reasonable. Such organizations could include the Pontifical Swiss Guard, police departments or security contractors.