Iron Content of Rifle Ammo (SS109/M855, M59, M61, M80, M855A1, etc.)

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Rupert

Well, they could just buy in (or make without licence) 7.62x39mm. The ball round has a soft steel core

So does the M855 round. In fact, it's pretty common to have some steel, whether cores or jackets, in the different ammo types.

(I found some specs and cutaway diagrams of the bullets last night. Unfortunately, no percentage or metal composition numbers to directly answer Icelander's question, though the diagrams were to scale, so I suppose if you did enough math on the ogive curves you could figure out how much volume that steel core took up. The grain weights might do for an approximation, if we can assume all the bullets are the same size, and there's only two metals involved.)