Army Awards SIG NGSW Contract

[lazyengineer]

Carrying less ammunition because it is heavier does not necessarily mean you expend it quicker. There is no obligation to expend limited ammunition at an unidentified target, at least where I come from.

Some of our guys chose to use 7.62 instead of 5.56 in Afghanistan recently, meaning they carried less ammunition. They preferred hitting power over ammunition. No reports of running out of ammunition because of that choice.

Opposing that experience is the battle of Long Tan in 1966 where the guys were running out of ammunition and needed an emergency air drop to survive. No suggestion it was the guys carrying SLR's (7.62) over the M16's or vice versa that ran low first.

I put it down to fire discipline. If you have to shoot in the general direction of the enemy in fire and movement then shoot less and make them count.

It's a balance. If your entire group makes every shot count, they could stand to actually be overrun considerably faster. In military combat you really can miss fast enough to help win, as suppressive fire has a usefulness.

5.56 is an absolutely incredible little round, since due to it's relatively small case-diameter, you can stuff a whole bunch in a handy little mag and handy total-weapon-system at 30 rounds capacity. And the wall-thickness of a barrel and chamber can be thinner for the same pressure; allowing it to run 62000+ PSI in a small and light package, and so push that bullet to very effective and lethal effect due to that high pressure. A squad member going room to room with an M4 on full-auto, is going to be able to manage that light package and engage full-auto effectively, and not run out of ammo as fast.

On top of that, when it comes to rapid aimed engagement of effective fire, the NTIT course of fire at Camp Perry is a real eye opener on the lore of the "battle rifle" vs the effectiveness of a smaller-light "assault rifle". This is a stage where a 6 man fire time in prone position engages 8 silhottes at 600 yards. 50 seconds of semi-auto fire, hits count, misses don't. A competitive 5.56 fire-team will individually lay down about 25 hits per rifleman in those 50 seconds. With very few misses. An M14 team team can barely get half those number of aimed rounds down-on-target, and the miss ratio is considerably higher. A 5.56 round at 600 yards is plenty effective at incapacitating an enemy target, especially when you can get them downrange and on-target that much faster. Don't get me wrong, if you're engaging at 600+ yards, the .308 class round goes farther and hits harder, and when hunting game at 1 shot at a time, heavier makes sense. But the 5.56 capability to be a pragmatic 300 round loadout M4 room runner, and then send rounds out to 600 yards, is pretty tough to beat on both fronts at the same time. In a package that's quite light because of the DI gas system, which means no piston, but it also means a softer materials of construction like aluminum work; because the force balance is all in-line, and the receiver itself takes very little stress. At machine-gun rental ranges, aluminum AR15's outlast steel AK's.

If this 6.8 project is to have a supplemental DMR improved weapon, then that sounds great. If it's intended to outfit a whole squad of typical infantryman - it's a dumb project. And one that's never going to go anywhere, other than next years regularly scheduled "ARMY ADOPTS NEW RIFLE" headline (when no, not really, they didn't really).

Bringing it back full-circle; as a civilian who doesn't generally run full auto, and even if you do, needing a 300 round loadout isn't an item in our world. Grendel is ideal in the civilian world because you still get that light and handy AR15 weapon system package, with the hardest hitting and longest range general-purpose round you can fit into it. Would I outfit a regular GI squad with M4's in 6.5 Grendel over 5.56? maybe if I was in Afgahnistan and that extra range really mattered, but for general purpose do-all handy full-auto lots of rounds usage? Probably not.