Army Awards SIG NGSW Contract

[LRRPF52]

I deliberately used the phrase "pinned down", which does not require as tight a beaten zone. I have not been keeping track of what weapons and ammo are carried by US soldiers on foot patrols. I know that range was an issue when foot patrols carried M249's. Are they mostly carrying full length M240s now? I keep seeing references to the shorter M240L. What ammo are they using? You mention 173gr. I had been under the impression that they had been using M80, although what has happened after the the development of M80A1, I have no idea.

Most of my impressions of relative range came from Jim Schatz's 2016 NDIA Armament Systems Forum presentation entitled "A Path To Overmatch, Next Generation Individual Weapon System. In his graphs, the Russian 7.62R PKP's (25.9"barrel) and SVDS (23.6" barrel) outrange the US 5.56 and 7.62 weapons. In doing some research today, I see that a TFB article that uses calculations to show that there is little difference between the Russian and US cartridges with the same barrel lengths. I don't know if the numbers for BC, MV, etc are correct, though.
https://ndiastorage.blob.core.usgovcloud...Schatz.pdf
https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2016...r-russian/

[video=youtube_share;b2Jwhe-BDKQ]https://youtu.be/b2Jwhe-BDKQ[/video]

In dismounted Infantry Platoons, we have always had some type of full power 7.62mm Automatic Rifle or Medium Machine-guns, even dating back to The Great War.

In the Great War, Army Expeditionary Force Infantry Platoons had Chuacer Automatic Rifles chambered in M2 .30 Cal Rifle (.30-06).

The BAR was later fielded and became a staple of Infantry Squads in World War II.

Machine-Gun Companies also fielded M1919 Browning .30 Caliber MGs for Platoon and Company support.

The M60/M14 combo was adopted before Vietnam, taking lessons-learned from WWII and Korea and thinking that a single caliber T65-based system would work well somehow.

This proved to be unfeasible in force-on-force exercises conducted at Fort Benning when facing Warsaw Pact and other units equipped with AKs, so the SCHV concept gained traction, even though the Army Ordnance Corps were biased towards the 7.62 NATO/M14 combo and M60.

M60s were issued and fielded more like a Squad Automatic Rifle and Platoon Medium Machine-gun in Vietnam, with varying MTO&E changes dependent on time in the War, as well as unit preferences.

The Army recognized a need for a SAW in the 1970s, conducted the SAW trials, which awarded to the FN Minimi M249 submission.

Army and USMC Infantry MTO&E included both SAWs and M60s, while the USMC adopted an improved variant of the M60 with the M60E3, which didn’t have bipods attached to every barrel, but did nothing to fix the reliability problems with the M60.

By that point, every Rifle Squad included a SAW, M203/M16, and Riflemen. Weapons Squads or Weapons Platoons fielded the M60s.

In the 1990s, we switched over to the M240 (a Belgian FN MAG58 under US manufacture), replacing the M60s one-for-one without any changes to the MTO&E structure.

While the M240 was heavier, it was noticeably more reliable than the M60 ever hoped to be, which was a welcome to us. I lived through the M60 and M240 changeover about halfway through my time in the Army, and was in different weapons squads with both.

For Afghanistan and Iraq, M14s were fielded as DM systems to augment the Platoon’s pretty diverse firepower.

Battalion-level Sniper teams were tasked out to the Line Companies, so Sniper Support was a staple in GWOT.

An Infantry Platoon typically has the following weapons systems, in order of effectiveness and casualty-producing capacity:

USAF TACP/JTAC with high level of training in calling in CAS, attached
Forward Observer with decent level of training in calling in artillery, mortars, and CAS, attached from the relevant Field Artillery Slice element in the Brigade
Sniper Team attached from Battalion Scout Platoon
Weapons Squads with Javelins and M240s
DMs with either ACOG-equipped M4s or some type of 7.62 NATO semi auto rifle
1 SAW per Fire Team
Riflemen with M4s
M203s

Some Weapons Squads got Carl Gustavs as well, which can be added to all the AT4s carried by several riflemen and sometimes Team Leaders.

Many of the Small Arms Symposium presentations talking about overmatch are simply buzzword-filled propaganda that focus on one weapon system as the myopic solution to a problem that doesn’t really exist, designed to fuel the interest in furthering small arms research and development from an incorrect approach. They often lack context of the overall force structure, MTO&E, historical changes to MTO&E and why those changes were made, actual capabilities based on training and leadership limits, range limits per unit throughout the year, and mismanagement of training resources by commanders as a rule.