Thoughts on IMI 556 ammo?

IMI makes good stuff, I use to run a lot of their 9mm machine gun ammo and I can't remember a failure. I am talking tens of thousands of rounds, not just a few hundred.

I got 1200 rounds of the 62g for $948 about 3 months ago. I've only gone thru about 60 rounds, though, and didn't think that was enough of a sample size to go off of or mention.

friend of mine told me the Jews make good ammo.

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IMI is just rebranded Israeli military rounds. It's solid stuff. I'd trust Israeli- and Czech-made ammo over any other import stuff in the world.

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I'd add Prvi Partizan, which is Serbian, but I don't know about other Serb companies. Geco is also good stuff, it's Swiss.

Worst crap I've ever tried was from Turkey, imported by American Tactical. Dirty as hell, inaccurate and probably averaged a failure to fire every couple of boxes.

I'm interested to see if it's a close enough clone to the Black Hills 77gr. Right now Black Hills 77gr is going for $2.50 a round. That's insane. Before the ammo shortage I was getting it for about $1.15 a round.

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In 556? Do you remember the headstamp?


I still have a couple of boxes so I checked. Headstamp just says ATI and 09, sealed primers, annealed case. I don't reload so I don't know if the failures are hard primers or primers that are set too far in. I just bought it for cheap range ammo, maybe from SG?

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My uneducated guess is probably hard primers.

My experience with Turkish ammo, as I said, was Yavex (Yavascalar was the parent company at the time, they had a big Turkish website and were apparently the military supplier for ammo). Brass cased 9mm 124gr fmj with green lacquer sealant on the primer. I picked up a couple cases, which was 1450 rds a case, when Bud's put it on clearance a couple years back. Seems people weren't buying an obscure brand.

I wish I had a chronograph, it's consistent and HOT. Got to be pushing +P, although it was listed as NATO spec. Muzzle flash and recoil reminds me more of 40 cal, instead of 9mm. It broke the recoil guiderod assembly on one of my Star BM's, so I only shoot it through a couple heavy-duty pistols with new springs (CZ 75, Sig P226, S&W 5906).
I've seen videos of people shooting it through 4.5" barrels and chrono'ing it, getting a bit over 1200 fps (usually around 1240). In a Scorpion, they were hitting 1340 average. That was the 115 gr (which I also have). They didn't do the 124gr, but that feels hotter.

I figured that the Turks were making ammo "for real", with all the crap going on in their corner of the world, and would have assumed the 5.56 would have been similarly good.

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I shoot both but mostly shoot otm. The price has skyrocketed since the 77gr has become so scarce. BH's are so impressive with the consistency. I don't mind going from .6 or .7 groups to 1 or 1.5 groups for practice if it saves me 50%

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If you're shooting for accuracy and don't care about terminal ballistics check out Geco 55 gr. I don't know if you've ever seen an ammo review by a guy called Molon but he's very thorough and does his tests with a match Krieger barrel. He got MOA or very close to it with their plain 55gr FMJ in .223. The 5.56 was a little faster and less accurate.

I've got a case of the .223 based on his review but haven't shot it with my good barrel yet. Cheap ammo that would approach MOA would be a nice find.

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I doubt it's as consistent as the BH accuracy-wise

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It's not far off. It's very good stuff for the price.

Some Baws I know claim Prvi brass is top notch for reloading. I buy it every chance I get and swap my brass to those guys. Works out good for all involved.