Army Awards SIG NGSW Contract

[LRRPF52]

Thanks for the info! I recall seeing a fair amount of battle footage from Afghanistan where the M249 but no 7.62 weapons were visible. It seems that I was not seeing the whole picture.

Another trend we have seen in GWOT was the pivotal reliance on vehicles for most operations.

Even the unskinned tube-frame vehicles have belt-fed weapons attached to them.

Original and Up-Armored HMMWVs always had either TOW-2s, M2 .50 BMGs, Mk.19 40mm Machine-gun Grenade Launchers, or M240s with as much ammo stacked for the gunners and dismounts.

Then you have Strykers with CROWS, which can be anything from .50 BMG, Mk.19, and even Javelin. They’ve been installing 30mm cannons in Strykers as well.

We saw a lot of units that were envisioned as Light Infantry, Airmobile, or Airborne become Motorized in GWOT, even with theater-specific vehicles like MRAP.

A lot of this was done at the sacrifice of funding for the F-22 program before we could go into Full Rate Production with the Raptor, and the MRAPs and other vehicles were left in-theater with unit hand-offs.

We wasted billions on equipment that has almost no effectiveness in a conventional application, and then left it or gave it to local forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, even before the monstrous abortion that happened in Afghanistan with the rapid withdrawal.

I would rather have our planned 750 F-22s, with 200 perma-based in Europe, 200 perma-based in PACOM, and 100 on each coast of the US ready to plus-up the EUCOM and PACOM forces as-needed, with the remainder in fighter conversion units and OT&E at Edwards, Eglin, and the Fighter Weapons Instructor School at Nellis.

Instead, SECDEF Gates killed the Raptor before we could go FRP, and we have literally nothing to show for it but billions of war material in the hands of Iraqis and Taliban-who immediately handed over whatever was asked to Chicom, Russian, and Iranian foreign intelligence services.

The conversation about NGSW falls somewhere down into the bottom fraction of a % of my meter if we’re wanting to second-guess what the Army is doing with procurement.

Of all the programs of record I see on the current Army’s schedule, there are far more systems that will actually matter for expeditionary warfare and regional global conflicts.

I think recent developments make that decisively-clear when you look at Ukraine.

Just ask what weapons systems have affected the campaign more than anything, and what you would wish you had more of if you were senior leaders on either side.

Small arms would not be anywhere high on the list. Shooting through body armor isn’t really a concern as you sweep over the smoldering remains of APCs, trucks, and carcasses that look like charcoal briquettes.