Our military adopting the Grendel?

[LRRPF52]

LRRPF52,

Is it not possible that the reason Stoner went on to design other 5.56 weapons was simply because he knew in advance who his customer would be ( the US military ), and he wanted to give them something that would work with the same round they were already using? In other words, could the commercial considerations not have outweighed the "ballistic" ones in his thinking at the time?

just a thought...

5.56 immediately received high-demand from Special Operations units: Specifically SF, SEALs, SAS, SBS, as well as Airborne and Airmobile units. From reading the 5.56 Timeline, by D. Waters, Stoner was in the middle of the whole development of 5.56 to meet the Army's concept for a Small Caliber High Velocity rifle that could penetrate a steel helmet at 500yds. The .222 Remington couldn't meet the pressure requirements to push 55gr projectiles fast enough to penetrate, so they blew the shoulder forward for more case capacity, and the .222 Special..AKA .223 Remington was born.

Stoner's involvement with the cartridge pre-dates military adoption, as he was meeting a military concept request in the late 1950's. Units with direct influence on what weapons they wanted drove demand for the 5.56 from the beginning.