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I read somewhere awhile back that the initial range of 50% of all engagements in Afghanistan is greater than 500 meters..... making the M-4 pretty much a noisemaker useful for keeping the enemy's attention while supporting fires are called in...... which apears to be what they were doing here.
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For engagements at 500+ meters, any individual weapon is just going to be a noisemaker -- going back to the acquistion/positive ID and engagement problems I talked about up thread. People who have never fired at targets at 500, or have only done it when the target was paper and not trying to avoid being hit, just don't grasp the enormity of the dilemma in making those kinds of shots on two way ranges. If you can even spot a bad guy, does he stay still long enough for you to put the sights on him and hit him? If you can line up your sights or optics, does your physiology allow you to make the shot, with your blood pressure and heart rate jacked up and the adrenalin flowing?
It's about like telling NRA Highpower shooters that their course of fire will be random exposure times on pop up targets at unknown ranges, the range will also be populated with no-shoot targets, and just for the fun of it their course of fire starts with a guy in boxing gloves beating on them for 15 seconds before they jump on their guns and start shooting their course of fire. To keep it fun, a guy with a paintball gun will occasionally put rounds in the ground near them, or just shoot them in the back.
There are a lot of guys who shoot at the highest levels in that sport who probably wouldn't manage any hits at all under those conditions . . . not unlike troops in contact in the real world, who are obviously dealing with even greater stress under even less ideal conditions.
As for the video clip itself, the only major difference in terminal ballistics for all the rounds those guys fired with their rifles and carbines is that if it was 308 they'd have been less able to return fire because they'd have exhausted their basic load quicker. Same deal (though not as badly) if they'd had 6.8 Rem SPC or 6.5 Grendel or whatever else.