6.5 Grendel versus 6mm ARC for whitetail

[LRRPF52]

When they say “DoD entities”, they aren’t talking about SEALs in SOCOM.

There has been an effort to divert attention from the actual origins of the RFP by mentioning SEAL Team 3, but if it had actually been a solicitation within SOCOM and NAVSPECWAR, you’d hear all about it and be able to see the solicitations for rifles and ammunition. SOCOM has become very big-Army-like in terms of bureaucracy, acquisition, overweight with staff officers everywhere, huge budget, public relations, etc.

It’s also telling that the units who asked for a solution have been actively fighting enemy combatants during GWOT, and already had 7.62 NATO carbines in their inventories that were not meeting their requirements due to weight and limited performance at distance, with close range penalties and limited magazine-carrying capacity on the soldier’s load. They’ve tried various types of 7.62 NATO solutions for decades after the limitations of 5.56 were apparent for DMs and Snipers when reaching out past 450m.

There’s a good discussion about this by a former JSOC operator on P&S podcast from several years back.

He deployed to his unit after they had already been midway into their deployment, and had to sign for and manage their ASP as one of his additional duties. He found crates and stacks of SR-25, M-14, and other 7.62 NATO mags and asked them what was the deal with those.

They said they tried everyone carrying SR-25s or 7.62 rifles for a bit to deal with distance, but it turned out to be an abortion.

Guys had to have mags stacked on the backs of their plate carriers and inside assault packs just to have a basic load, and would ask dudes behind them for a mag change.

Some would even have a mag bag on the helos for insertion and feed from them to service targets on the infil so as to not deplete any mags from their fighting load kit.

He described it as needing a combat squire to carry 7.62 mags for you basically, which was obviously not viable.