Textron Systems NGSW Rifle and LMG

[LRRPF52]

Well, and we all know that the military always remains in compliance with all of the regs.

I understand about ammo storage. I know the design is well intentioned. I have yet to see any long term testing on the specific polymers to maintain tolerances over time. I hope they do, but won't be surprised if they don't.

In most units who maintain and train the required number of NCOs who are ammo handler/HAZMAT/AMO certified like I was, with even a half-decent/semi-competent officer population, I never saw problems with that.

There was a Marine unit who deployed ahead of us to Kuwait and had ammo that had been stored improperly. When some Al Qaeda in Iraq bugger-scarfers attacked them on Failaka Island during what they thought was a safe training area (and killed at least one of them), the response involved running them down and pumping the driver and passenger of the Mazda truck full of 9mm from Berettas. My buddy who was a SOCCENT liaison at the time working with the Marines was one of the ones who chased down the vehicle and killed the passenger along with a Marine gunny, who shot the driver. My buddy said the rounds barely went under the creature's skin like mumps, didn’t penetrate like normal, so he had to dump the mag into him to kill him.

He said something about them having stored the ammo across multiple environmental extremes over time, with the ammo containers placed on the ground and in the heat, which are direct violations of ammo handling requirements for any ammo. Most cartridge boxes used to have warnings about storing the ammo in your glove box or car in the heat, keeping away from moisture or exposure.

In ammo handler’s course, there were specs for storing ammo above a certain height from the ground due to dew and leeching, as well as temperature, so this applies to all ammo, not just Cased Telescoping or the metallic/polymer hybrid cases being tested. I wouldn’t doubt that there is a small army of engineers and techs who have been dealing with these aspects of the CT and other competitors and worked out resilience to environmental conditions years ago.

I recall the lessons learned from the Hk G11 caseless ammo with its exposed propellant from the 1980s ACR trials.

[video=youtube_share;E_didDgUjn0]https://youtu.be/E_didDgUjn0[/video]