New Cartridge Developments and Implications for Dismounted Infantry Soldiers

[BluntForceTrauma]

As always, Stan, great find. Schatz has been around ever since I joined the fray in late 2003. I seem to remember some of his early presentations were equally as enthusiastic but stumped for the 6.8 SPC and featured Roberts' gel tests. I bet you could dig up some of his earlier NDIA PowerPoints.

Good to see he's coming around to an intermediate cartridge with high BC bullets. A very simple concept to grasp, one would think, for anyone with more than a beginner's knowledge of ballistics, but the fact that some have held on so long to an intermediate cartridge with low BC bullets shows the extent emotion and ego can interfere with logic.

I agree with the need for a common, intermediate cartridge (6.5mm caliber suggests itself, but .250, .260, .270 is workable) for a family of squad weapons. Must be high BC. Must have some kind of recoil mitigation ("constant recoil" seems the simplest). In my personal opinion, the 6.5 Grendel already has the highest amount of recoil acceptable for mass recruits.

I agree with .338 for a family of support weapons (sniper and heavy-er MGs).

I disagree that polymer cases will be ready any time within the next, oh, 50 years, if ever.

I would add the need for a laser-ranged, airburst, 40mm "Carl Gustav"-type launcher whose grenades have pointy, high BC nose-cones. I boil down infantry combat to an exercise in getting at infantry ensconced behind cover. Laser-ranged air-burst, if they can make it affordable and rugged, is the real game-changer here.

Anyway, as LR hinted, that presentation is kind of an eye-roller for our particular community who seems to have "got it" for quite some time now.

Good for Schatz and I hope he keeps up the good work and influences the direction of small arms development in the direction it has long needed to go.