New Army "Caliber Configuration Study"

[cory]

It depends on what you have in mind. If a 6.5mm cartridge was adopted, you could count on many different loads being developed and adopted, just as with 7.62 NATO and every cartridge preceding it. At a minimum, there'd be:

- Ball
- Tracer
- AP
- HPBT
- Blank
- Dummy

If what you're getting at is issuing different loads for different areas -- for example, Frangible for house clearing, and HPBT for desert regions -- that is unlikely to happen. SOP is to issue one general purpose, standard ball round for rifles and machine guns, for use in all regions and operations.

No I meant more of an Area of Operation. i.e. the HPBT would likely be the ideal round for Afghanistan. The Frangible or AP would be more of Gen III warfare AOs.