Bit the bullet and bought the best deal on decent ammo I could find at a local gun show. Got Federal XM193C for $395 per 1000rds.
not too bad I thought. I sacrificed my Commander funds and got 2000 rounds while I was still fuzzy from the big price PUNCH:D:p
OUCH, but I do feel better with a hefty amount in the house now…i’ll snagg more as I can I suppose.
I’d take the ammo over a commander any day!
Good score, but can someone shed light on the prefix and suffix codes on M193 and M855 again?
X designates it as non military ammo.
C is in the black 20 round cardboard box.
A is on the stripper clips, 3 clips per box.
X is the designator for rejected Military Ammo
But don’t worry, it’s still the best out there. The Military commonly rejects lots that fail one of their many stringent guidelines.
I’ve read that “X” is often used for special contract runs. (which might include rejected ammo components) I don’t know if it’s true, but people claiming to have mil procurement knowledge have written that it’s used for non-ammo mil items too.
There seems to be a lot of folklore on the “X” ammo out there. I don’t know what’s true and what’s fiction, but I do know that they wouldn’t let it out the door if it were dangerous or so defective that they didn’t think it would work properly.
I’ve never had any ammo related problems and I’ve used 3 or 4 different lots now. It’s not going to win any beauty contests or any 600 yard stages at a match, but its great full-power ammo for other uses.
Yes. As I have posted before…
The components (my theory is something in the primed brass) didn’t meet a specification for military acceptance. Issues with primer sealing or primer crimping are my personal guesses.
The reason I lean towards the primed brass as the “rejected” component is that the military doesn’t (to my knowledge) accept M193 with a NATO headstamp. Thus the ammo was never even assembled for military use.
In any case, the reasons for not accepting the components obviously don’t affect normal function of the ammo. As we’ve seen over the years, millions of trouble free rounds of this stuff have been fired by people here and at ARFCOM without any legitimate reports of defects.
I have a friend who is one of the ammo engineers for ATK, the maker of Federal, Speer, & CCI. When he gives me that info., I tend to believe it.
I remember reading about what these designators really mean a while back. But It remember where. But this is what I have been informed by a couple of individuals who were directly involved with the procurement process from either side of the contract.
While the “X” may designate ammunition that was “rejected”; the reality is that they were never really rejected in the first place. The way it works is manufacturer “A” is contracted to supply a government agency or organization for let’s say, 1 million rounds of 62-grain FMJ for July 2008. But because of strict QC requirements, manufacturer “A” must produce more than the contractual quota of 1 million rounds. They usually produce a certain amount based on their projected “QC failure rate”. So for example, if their expected failure rate is 5%, they might produce 10% over the 1 million rounds (or 100,000 extra rounds).
After the first 1 million rounds are accepted by the buyer, the remaining rounds that are not rejected due to any type of dangerous condition are sold to the rest of the world. The better the manufacturer’s QC, the more “rejected rounds” they will sell to us. If the actual failure rate is let’s say 5,000 rounds, then that means that 95,000 of the rounds they designate as “X” were actually “overruns”.
Of course, the guys who told me this could be full of it and I could just be passing on bogus information to take it FWIW!! 
It makes sense. Because look at how many millions of rounds of X ammo have been retailed out. No one’s production failures are that high… I hope.
I bet there’s no one single magic answer for every single X round that comes out of ATK. Some of it was kicked for this and that, some of it is overrun brass, etc.
Here’s the response I got from my friend at ATK;
It how we designate Lake City product for distribution to the LE market.
It is ammo that does not completely meet their specifications. But keep in mind those specs are so fine that all it takes is the brass to be a little shiny to be rejected. It is not rejected based on the quality standards we use for LE. We make sure each lot exceeds our standards for the domestic LE and Govt business.
Steve