Escape from Tarkov ― NATO rounds pt.1

The first article of this series is available here: Escape from Tarkov ― Ammo History

What Are These NATO Ammo Names, Anyway?

When playing Escape from Tarkov, have you ever felt that being forced to memorize a string of cryptic labels like
5.56×45, M855
is just unreasonably unfair?
To jump straight to the conclusion:
US soldiers are probably suffering through the exact same nonsense.
This time, I want to sort out why that is.

The M Problem

If you take a step back and look at US military equipment as a whole, one thing quickly becomes obvious.
There are an absurd number of items that start with the letter M.
M15.
MRE.
You see this pattern everywhere.
So what does this M actually mean?
When you dig into it, the answer is almost disappointingly simple.
In the US military, M just means officially adopted equipment.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Before formal adoption, equipment is labeled XM.
That is why you see names like:

• M1 Abrams: main battle tank

• M2 Bradley: infantry fighting vehicle

• M50: gas mask

• M69: training grenade (sound only)

• M67: fragmentation grenade

• M18: smoke grenade

All of them start with M.
The important point is this:
The number itself carries almost no meaning in terms of performance.
In most cases, it is simply assigned in the order the item was adopted.
Even MRE falls into this system.
MRE stands for Meal, Ready to Eat, and it also carries the M because it is officially adopted military supply.
One can only imagine that new recruits are forced to memorize all of this at some point.
So does a higher number mean a more powerful or more advanced item?
Not at all.
It only means it was adopted later.
Nothing more.

M855 and M856

From here on, this section is not based on primary historical documents, but rather on information organized with the help of ChatGPT, so keep that in mind.
That said, the relationship between M855 and M856 makes a lot of sense once you think about it.
M855 was tested and officially adopted as a standard ball round.
It became the reference cartridge.
Only after that was the tracer round adopted to match it.
And that order matters.
Tracer rounds only make sense if they are designed to follow the ballistic path of the standard round as closely as possible.
If the trajectory is different, they fail at their core purposes:

• showing allies where the enemy is

• letting the shooter understand when their rounds are running out

For that reason, it seems reasonable to assume that M856 was adopted because M855 already existed.
If we strip the tracer round down to its essence, its purpose is not:

• raw damage

• penetration

but rather:

• making the trajectory visible

In real-world use, tracers are mainly intended for:

• correcting fire

• sharing targets within a squad

• understanding reload timing

Designed to Be Mixed

This is where things get interesting.
M855 and M856 were designed with the assumption that they would be used together.
For example:

• loading tracers only near the end of a magazine

• mixing tracers at regular intervals

These practices have been completely normal in real military units.
Seen from that perspective, Tarkov’s systems start to look different.

• magazine load presets

• the ability to manually load rounds one by one

These are not just game gimmicks.
They are reflections of real-world operational thinking.

And Then There Is A1, What the f..?

So what is M855A1?
The A stands for Alternation or Amendment, meaning a modified or improved version of M855.
At this point, a very reasonable question comes up.
Why not just give it a new number?
Apparently, the US military does not work that way.
To put it very roughly:

Because of that, when the core item remains the same but performance is improved, an A1 designation is added instead.
As a result:

• M855A1

• M856A1

are best understood as improved versions of M855 and M856 respectively.

AP (Armor Piercing)

In Escape from Tarkov, the round labeled AP refers to M995.
AP stands for Armor Piercing.
The name says exactly what it does.
Because penetration is so heavily emphasized in Tarkov, AP rounds are often treated as simply strong ammo.
But if you look at the historical context, a slightly different picture emerges.
From the 1980s onward:

• Kevlar body armor became widespread

• ceramic armor plates were introduced

• helmet performance improved

By the 1990s, even:

• regular military forces

• paramilitary organizations

were routinely equipped with armor.
As a result, cases where enemies were hit but did not go down started to increase.
And that led to a very direct complaint from the field.
The rounds are hitting, but the enemy is not stopping.
In response to this environment, ammunition that focused almost entirely on defeating armor became necessary.
That is the background behind AP rounds.
Naturally, this results in extremely high penetration values.
But there is a flip side.
If a round penetrates too well, it may pass straight through the human body, allowing the target to continue fighting after basic first aid.
When looking at real-world usage, magazines are sometimes loaded like this:

• early rounds: AP to defeat armor

• middle rounds: standard ammo to damage flesh

• final rounds: tracers for awareness and communication

From here on, this moves into speculation.
But it is possible that the same logic applies in Tarkov.
In other words:

• continuously firing AP at heavily armored targets

• may be less efficient than

• switching to rounds that deal better flesh damage once armor is defeated

Given that Tarkov includes a magazine preset system, this hypothesis does not feel completely off the mark.
And this line of thinking becomes even stronger when we look at the next type of ammunition.

The next article is available here: Escape from Tarkov ― NATO rounds pt.2

Note:

The background ideas and actual gameplay experience discussed in this series are also touched on during my weekly streams every Friday.

The format is different from writing, but it may help deepen your understanding from another angle.

If you’re interested, feel free to stop by.

▶ YouTube : B.K. Gaming Channel
▶ Twitch : kaz_the_minotaur