A slight correction here; the development of the 308/7.62x51 had nothing to do with the military wanting to reduce recoil, but case length. The original battle waged by Col. Rene Studler centered on developing a.30 cal cartridge that had (essentially) the same power as the existing .30-06 Military cartridge. In effect, that's what was acheived. The sniping versions of these two rounds used the exact same bullet for many years, the 173 grain FMJBT. In the M72 (30-06) the velocity was 2640 @ 78 ft, while the M118 (7.62x51) was only about 100 fps less, 2550 fps @ 78 ft. Performance in the field was virtually indistinguishable from one another. With the lighter 150/147 grain FMJs, perormance was almost identical. The real reason for the development of the .308 lay in its almost .5" shorter case design. For military weapons production, this has huge advantages. Weapons can be made much lighter, reliability is increased, the ammunition is lighter and the soldier can carry more, etc.. The 7.62 also uses about 5-7 grains less powder to achieve very similar performance. Not much of a concern for you or I, but it makes a tremendous difference to the military. Stop and consider that during Vietnam, Lake City Army Ammunition Plant was cranking out some 21 million rounds of ammo a day, and that was just one ammo plant in operation at that time. As you can see, that 5-7 grains suddenly becomes pretty significant.
The .308/7.62 is inherently more accurate than the .30-06, but we're talking about a pretty minor difference, and that averaged over a great many rifles. Rest assured, there's plenty of .30-06s out there that will outshoot plenty of .308s, but we're talking about individual rifles here. I wouldn't lose sleep over it, especially if I had a .30-06 that shot really well.
They're both good, and they've both done a prety good job for a lot of folks over the decades.
Good post and spot on.....
