How could or should the 6.5 mm Grendel be improved?

[stanc]

As power goes up, so does recoil, taking us away from an assault rifle.

My conclusions after mulling over this for most of my life are that approaching the small arms mix from the intent to fix assault rifles, is futile, because we have excellent assault rifles currently.

Some people think assault rifles are inadequate for infantry combat, and we should go back to battle rifles -- only this time in a format with lower weight and recoil than possible with 7.62 NATO.

We need to approach it from a big picture new generation of small arms, with fixing the SAW/LMG concept, and making a better DMR/SASS, while employing some other indirect assets lower in the organization. I see the Grendel as a great candidate for addressing the SASS and LMG, while displacing 7.62 NATO to vehicle-mounted only.

I think that would require a change in attitude among military decision makers, a change that IMO seems unlikely. Historical SOP has been one cartridge for individual weapon, sniper rifle, squad automatic weapon, and light machine gun. While that got a little mixed up after 5.56 NATO was fielded, necessitating use of two calibers, I just don't see them adopting 6.5 as a third caliber and keeping both 5.56 and 7.62 in the system.

It seems to me that the only way to get a new rifle/machine gun caliber adopted is as a replacement for one or both current chamberings.