New military round....
- Thread starter oldman1951
- Start date
...and if anybody really ever attacks us, Bernie’s peace negotiation will be to offer free college to their kids!
Seriously. The existing inventory has worked just fine. When these new “thoughts” arise, I think it’s just some new pressure from a Lobbying group pushing their agenda to sell billions in new Arms to the Guberment.
More often than not it's a push to sate the discontented new generation of soldiers who feel like the military is using antiquated equipment. It dies out once they see the testing is happening and can see that their current equipment is superior to their adversaries and equal to our allies. There were some 6.8SPC's fielded to certain units back in the day though. There was also a push to bring the 338 Lapua into service and some did make it to the field. So, though it might not become a cross service change or complete top to bottom upgrade It would not be surprising to see some new weapons platforms get developed.
6MM ARC,.. EXACTLY what, i had in mind 6MM at 2800 - 2900 FPS !
The 6XC just came to mind first,.. THIS looks like, a Winner for, Hornady and,.. OUR Troops!
Hornady's been gettin', their head out of their,.. a_ _ the last few years !
Sorry, Winchester and Remington,. YOU,.. LOSE !
The 6XC just came to mind first,.. THIS looks like, a Winner for, Hornady and,.. OUR Troops!
Hornady's been gettin', their head out of their,.. a_ _ the last few years !
Sorry, Winchester and Remington,. YOU,.. LOSE !
Yeah, 80,000 psi is gonna blow through barrels right quick. Unless there is some new development in metallurgy (Rearden Metal maybe?) of which I am unaware, this is gonna be a catastrophic failure in the field.
I honestly think they both gave up after tag teaming the 404 Jeffrey and spawning a half dozen useful offspring from it.
jelenko
Gold $$ Contributor
Along with a three part case. 80K psi, three part case. What could possibly go wrong?
I “heard” they were looking at a new 50 cal that shoots rubber bullets so they don’t actually hurt anybody. I think it’s designed for the “New Dem Army” under Bernie.
Or now Biden.. Bernie is out. The country is in great peril folks.
I wouldn't get all worked up about replacing the NATO rounds. It's hard to go against what's in service. There's been talk about a lot of different stuff. Jerry Stiller had a contract to make some actions for the .338 Lapua. With the government it really dosen't matter what's better. What matters is what palms have been greased and what politics are involved.
My thoughts too when I first read this. Chances of adoption for non-specialist use are aren't nil, they're lower than that.
Anyway, how many new 5.56mm M4s have just been procured / issued and how much money was spent there? That's a lot of disincentive for a root and branch change.
6.5mm machineguns? Whatever the practical and theoretical benefits, armies hate new cartridges in service alongside old because of the procurement costs and on-field logistics complications. Over here in the UK, the chairborne warriors put all 7.62 L7A1 MAG GPMGs into store in the 90s and decided only 5.56mm was going to be used for evermore at infantry squad level. This required reliance on the little loved squad support LMG version of the SA80, the 5.56mm L86 LSW. This edict lasted until the late 90s when the Parachute Regiment was ordered to deploy to Kosovo in the Balkans at short notice when fighting broke out there. There was a rumoured mutiny among the troops unless they were reissued with 7.62 L7s. Whatever the real story, the beancounters lost this fight and the British Army went to war with four (five?) smallarms rounds, but it's a measure of how much the planners, ordnance and logistics people hate complications from weapons systems and cartridge proliferation.
There's a lot of this ^^ at work. Some soldier's mommy writes a letter to Congress about how that antiquated M4 got her boy killed and if only we'd been using a proper HK416, all of life's troubles would have ended. And there's more than a couple lobbyist all too eager to jump at the chance to turn a grieving mother into a contract.
But I think an even bigger factor is just good old fashioned parochial careerism. LOTS of DoD uniform-wearers that are "supervising" programs mysteriously end up employed by them with very favorable salaries after they retire. It's scandalous and nobody cares. Read up sometime on the E8C JSTARS aquisition sometime. The ancient 707 airframes they selected didn't even have certificates of airworthiness when flown back to the USA to be turned in to JSTARS. My friend and fellow former cadet who piloted them relayed that "you get used to putting out cockpit fires." Literally. Never mind the high cancer rates of people riding in the back of these massive radar systems.
The last time the Army reviewed the M4 and decided to keep it, they had exactly the right approach. It wasn't that there wasn't anything better out there. It's that there wasn't anything better enough to justify the massive cost and logistical challenges of fielding it compared to what's already in place. You have to remember that we are in the habit of bullying NATO to adopt whatever nonsense we decided on (see also: 7.62x51). So that's a factor too.
So it's not just whether something better is out there.
Another factor is that doctrinally, the army is always chasing its tail. We're trying to use the same weapons in door-to-door fighting in Fallujah as we are to shoot to 800m in Helmand Province. This just in: CQB and extended range require different tools.
Ask a soldier fighting over there and he or she is as likely to tell you the 5.56 has insufficient long range lethality as they are to say the M4 is too bulky for door to door and they need something more compact.
All the SF units get to choose tools tailored to each mission. Need a 16" Recce rifle that can pull SDM duty and then mag dump in full auto as your boarding the getaway chopper? No problem. Need the extra range of a SASS? No problem. Want a nice compact MP5 for rescue missions? Got that, too.
We'd never expect a RED HORSE or seabee unit to use a backhoe where a bulldozer is needed. Yet we end up doing a variant of that thing to most of our front line soldiers.
I completely disagree that the military as a whole doesn't know what it's doing. In fact, that idea is BS. The US military for a while now has been THE most dominant fighting force the planet has ever seen. It is certainly not perfect, but it is still mostly a meritocracy that seeks to continually improve. I say that as someone who couldn't get promoted to Lt Col and was thus a Major for 12
of my 24 years. Although the system didn't work for me, it usually got it right.
While we did get a batch of senior generals, admirals, and civilian leaders we shouldn't have under Obama (also happened under Clinton), overall the quality is high. It's usually civilian politics that mess up military programs.
Of course, everyone is an expert until they actually start working in the field. Take the F-35. Based on the misunderstanding of one test report, many said it was less capable to dogfight than an F-16. Well, the general population doesn't understand about offensive, defensive, and neutral engagements or the objectives of such engagements.
So while a bunch of armchair experts were belittling the F-35, the pilots flying liked it. That was confusing until you understand how fast an F-35 can bring weapons to bear, and that is likely a big part of it's 15-1 kill ratio in exercises. No, you don't want to go toe-to-toe with a Typhoon or a Raptor in VR combat in an F-35, but it wasn't built for that role.
No doubt acquisition programs do sometimes go sideways. I remember looking at the cost of the T-6 program in the late 90s when my job was budget planning/validation for USAF pilot training. Congress delayed the program one year. That didn't change the overall cost of the program but it did mean less aircraft were built. Even so, the T-6 program was still less expensive than extending the life of the T-37 fleet.
Anyway, there is a lot that goes on that most have no clue about, but that doesn't stop us from making wild speculations. That part is kind of fun.....
of my 24 years. Although the system didn't work for me, it usually got it right.
While we did get a batch of senior generals, admirals, and civilian leaders we shouldn't have under Obama (also happened under Clinton), overall the quality is high. It's usually civilian politics that mess up military programs.
Of course, everyone is an expert until they actually start working in the field. Take the F-35. Based on the misunderstanding of one test report, many said it was less capable to dogfight than an F-16. Well, the general population doesn't understand about offensive, defensive, and neutral engagements or the objectives of such engagements.
So while a bunch of armchair experts were belittling the F-35, the pilots flying liked it. That was confusing until you understand how fast an F-35 can bring weapons to bear, and that is likely a big part of it's 15-1 kill ratio in exercises. No, you don't want to go toe-to-toe with a Typhoon or a Raptor in VR combat in an F-35, but it wasn't built for that role.
No doubt acquisition programs do sometimes go sideways. I remember looking at the cost of the T-6 program in the late 90s when my job was budget planning/validation for USAF pilot training. Congress delayed the program one year. That didn't change the overall cost of the program but it did mean less aircraft were built. Even so, the T-6 program was still less expensive than extending the life of the T-37 fleet.
Anyway, there is a lot that goes on that most have no clue about, but that doesn't stop us from making wild speculations. That part is kind of fun.....
Doesn't ring a bell, but that doesn't mean I didn't run into him.
Sig just got the contract for the Next Gen rifles and ammo.
DaveTooley
Gold $$ Contributor
Yep
FNSafari
Gold $$ Contributor
I've heard it may be dried cow flaps, that is, if there are any dairy farms left in Vermont after the last 35 years of flat landers moving in and gobbling up all the open space.I “heard” they were looking at a new 50 cal that shoots rubber bullets so they don’t actually hurt anybody. I think it’s designed for the “New Dem Army” under Bernie.
With what sleepy Joe left in Afghanistan I figured they would need an infantry weapon to have superior range
GotRDid
Gold $$ Contributor
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