How could or should the 6.5 mm Grendel be improved?

[Guardsman26]

Sorta like this? :eek:

[video=youtube;rLHU-_OhT8g]www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLHU-_OhT8g[/video]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLHU-_OhT8g

Stan,

Yes. Absolutely. The point this film makes is not that 5.56 mm can't hit at longer ranges, but that it can't even suppress. When our friends Hall and Hitchman proposed SCHV because combat ranges seldom exceeded 300 metres, they completely forgot to think about suppression. Just having lots of rounds to fire in the general direction of the enemy isn't suppression. Suppression, as anyone with military experience here will know, is making the enemy keep his head down.

UK analysis of combat engagements post WW2 by the Ideal Calibre Panel similarly concluded that the killing is mostly done at ranges of less than 300 metres both in attack and defence, but that it also looked at suppression and concluded that this can take place at ranges out to at least 1,000 metres. If you think about a simple platoon or company attack, you have one section / squad that lays down covering (suppressive) fire while the two other squads manoeuvre into an assault position. If the Platoon Leader is any good, then hopefully the final assault will not be over more than 50 metres. But frequently the fire support team will be laying down fire at ranges above 600 metres.

Would a 6.5 mm Grendel have made a difference? Absolutely. An 8 gram bullet has a much larger sound signature as well as the ability to reach out to 1,000 metres. In a machine gun that could have been very useful in the situation described in the video.

You're carrying 25 rounds instead of 30 in a weapon that weighs more or less the same. What's not to like? In short, the Grendel isn't perfect, but it's a such a superior solution to 5.56 mm NATO that it deserves a wider military audience. I wonder how long before it gets the recognition it deserves?

Going back to the original title of this thread, perhaps all the Grendel needs is a military spec bullet that penetrates intermediate barriers, yaws quickly in soft tissue and is reliable in machine guns (by virtue of having a cannelure).