SOCOM Looking at .260 Rem and 6.5 Creedmoor Sniper Systems

[LRRPF52]

In the 50's and 60's and 70's and 80's and 90's, the various branches of the service were perfectly happy with the 30 caliber bullet. M-118 SB and LR could easily outshoot the capabilities of most school trained snipers. M-80 could outshoot the capabilities of the average trained rifleman. Sure, some of the problems with were due to all the bad things about a high recoiling cartridge and service grade rifles. Most was because in most parts of the world, a guy can't see much past 300 yards and if they did see a enemy, the enemy was probably moving and or partially hidden. A 6.5 mm cartridge wouldn't have been decisive. Money needed to be spent on things that were decisive given the Soviet threat. WWIII wouldn't have been decided because NATO could have been using a 6.5 / 08 instead of 7.62 NATO.

As for it being a fantasy about getting those velocities out of a 16 inch barreled carbine, why can't it happen? Why can't someone devise a system that can take the pressures and produce the velocities? Why can't someone develop a powder that produces the velocities without the pressures? Just because a .270 of today can't doesn't mean someone with a purpose can't develop something that is leap ahead and will make everything else obsolete overnight.

LR55

British Sniper Platoons in Basra could only engage reliably out to about 800m with their AI rifles in 7.62 NATO, which the insurgents quickly figured out, then placed their mortars and spotters just outside of the range of their 7.62 NATO weapons. Brits dumped the 7.62 NATO from their bolt gun inventory after that and went to .338 LM AIs. A simple barrel change could have put them back into business with one of the 6.5-08 class of cartridges and extended them out to 1200m, while reducing the recoil a bit.

This performance has been available since the late 1800s, with much lower chamber pressure than the ill-conceived .30 cal "Light Rifle" cartridge.


As to this NGSR cartridge, sure they can get those speeds. They are talking about pushing chamber pressure to 80ksi on the premise that if artillery pieces can run at those pressures, then shoulder-fired small arms should be able to also. All it takes is pressure and the containment vessel to make it happen. Without a revolutionary breakthrough in materials science and propellent technology, the thing will weigh and recoil a lot more than an M14. We're talking about smoking the performance of a 26" .270 Weatherby Magnum by at least 200fps, with a copper core, copper jacket, tungsten-tipped projectile.

I think the whole premise of fighting Russians with their body armor in infantry vs infantry combat is insane. If we look at what happened this past February in Syria, where the Russians took 2 armored battalions with artillery and combat engineer support, and launched an assault on some US SOF and Kurd forces at the Conoco Phillips plant over the Euphrates, we get a better picture of how the US deals with motorized and armored ground component forces.

ISR platforms involving every flying platform with sensors feeds into a network, and echelons of fire from B-52H, F-15E, F-22A, MQ-9, USMC 155mm Artillery (they've fired more artillery rounds in Syria than any other Artillery unit since Vietnam), then A-10C and AH-64D. When the Warthogs and Apaches finally got on station, there were only residual thermal signatures of body parts and equipment littering the desert floor like confetti-pilots complained that they would need to bring back their ordnance.

But we need an Infantry Service Rifle that can defeat Russian body armor at 600m because.......who cares about SDZs, shoot houses, and collateral effects doing COIN (the only practical environment for dismounted infantry).

Imagine clearing rooms with this type of weapon, where a 125gr EPR traveling 3400fps from the muzzle, with very high SD and BC just cuts through everything and onto the next row of homes/shacks across the street. Effects on human targets at close range will look more like varmint hunting with a .22-250, with heads and limbs deconstructing instantly from the hydrodynamic force, sending basically liquid matter in every direction, while the tungsten penetrator and copper core continue at normal rifle velocities through whatever was behind the enemy combatants (who will be insurgents or non-uniformed actors 90% of the time if the past 70 years is any indicator).

Commanders will cringe at the thought of the current and next generation of soldiers drawing these things from the Arms Room, because of the overmatching ballistic potential of this type of weapon compared to 20th century shoulder-fired weapons, and since it isn't on tracks and is supposed to be man-portable, they can't control it very well.