Part II of "Requirements for replacements of currently issued 5.56 M-855 and 7.62 M-8

[stanc]

Frankly, I would welcome some neat pictures of holey metal and splashed gelatin, but I cannot in all honesty advocate those tests until we're pretty sure the rest of the story holds water.

I don't have a clue what you mean by that. The idea is to determine 6.5 Grendel performance vs 5.56 and 7.62 NATO, not to write a novel. :confused:

LR1955 has indicated more than his personal views in the questions and challenges he gave us when he started Part I of this thread. He correctly points out that probability of hit is a major factor. He also tells us that flatter trajectories inside of 500 meters are an important factor in improving probability of hit by the normal infantryman. These won't be resolved by the suggested tests.

Huh? Hit probability can only be determined via testing.

We're working toward formalizing the discussion in a format similar to that normally employed in articulating requirements for a capability. One of the advantages is that working through the document helps us be sure we've captured the less obvious, but still critical, issues that go into making a particular concept useful in the acquisition sense. Even more important, we get to identify the things that are most critical so that those who have the resources and are willing to expend them will have better confidence that their tests and analyses have meaning.

And a requirements document will certainly be valuable, during the presentation phase.

It isn't needed (nor will it help) to determine what performance that loadings with currently-available bullets will deliver. That can only be discovered by shooting.

The whole point of this thread is to develop that story by:
[INDENT]

1. describing the needs and goals,
   
2. articulating the needs and goals in a way that allows analytic testing of alternative solutions, and
   
3. defining physical tests to determine which, if any, of the alternative solutions meet the threshold needs.
   

[/INDENT]

Once we've got the major details nailed down, I will become part of the choir singing for tests...

Although you're doing the "story" bit, again, the problem seems to be that you're concerned with the quest for the best possible cartridge, whereas John and I were discussing just finding out where the intermediate caliber concept stands in the form of 6.5 Grendel.

The two ideas are not mutually exclusive. It's quite okay for somebody to test 6.5 Grendel and have somebody else create a requirements document during the same time frame. For that matter, having 6.5 Grendel test data could be of assistance in formulating the requirements document. Otherwise, you're establishing requirements without any real idea if the goals are achieveable.