Tactical Life posts that the military is changing to the 6.8 in SAW and M4

[VASCAR2]

With the use of simulators there is not near as much live fire. Military is concerned about range contamination with lead and different material. Another advantage of Laser weapons, no spent brass, polymer cases, no depleted uranium, copper, steel cased or lead projectiles.

[LRRPF52]

So what is the life expectancy of a combat rifle? If the average combat rifle is lost, damaged beyond repair in service within 6 mos, then throat life is kind of moot....firing conditions not withstanding.

Maybe not a flux capacitor, but a cold explosion, low temp burn powder? Miniature compressed air capsule behind the projectile?

Rifles generally out-live the soldiers. My issued M4 and M4A1 carbines have probably been transferred via Foreign Military Sales well over a decade ago. Same for the M16A1s and M16A2s that I was issued prior to that.

[LRRPF52]

I still think they've found a way to incorporate a flux capacitor, or something similar, to achieve this....

They think that the polymer in its insulative capacity is making the case more efficient.

Not sure how that exceeds a 26" barreled .270 Weatherby Magnum with a 16" NGSR, but if they're hitting the MV, it's got to be brutal on the throat.

I can see why they wouldn't want to use a smaller bore diameter than .277" when the case is so fat like that, because they're already making the 28 Nosler look like a normal cartridge with the amount of overbore there is.

The moment seasoned soldiers see the mags for this abortion, they're going to say, "Not only no, but hell no."

The cartridges are light, but very bulky. You'll be limited to carrying even less rounds than a 7.62 NATO rifle, which was an abortion the day the M14 hit the street already. There was a lot of dying in place in the Fort Benning studies, which probably put the final nail in the M14's coffin back in the early 1960s.

They're going to need a magnum staggered column magazine for this. Mags will end up looking like bricks.

I just found some of my 7mm WSM samples, and the 6.8 PCP NGSW case is either a .270 WSM, or extremely close to it.

To be getting max 7mm STW 26" (3400fps) velocities from a 16" .270 WSM barrel sounds insane to me.

Here are .270 WSM, 7.62 NATO, and M855 5.56 NATO:

[n9nwo]

Look, here is the idea

6.5x39 (Grendel) would work with current M4 weapons requiring only a barrel and bolt swap.
6.5x45 would require a new rifle but is close to idea.
6.5x51 (260 Rem or 6.5 Creedmore) is too big

Not seeing the 6.8mm as anything but a compromise.

Also the .338NM (8.59x63 vs the .338LM/8.59x70) would make a good replacement for the 7.62x51 in the M240 series of MG

[A5BLASTER]

Look, here is the idea

6.5x39 (Grendel) would work with current M4 weapons requiring only a barrel and bolt swap.
6.5x45 would require a new rifle but is close to idea.
6.5x51 (260 Rem or 6.5 Creedmore) is too big

Not seeing the 6.8mm as anything but a compromise.

Also the .338NM (8.59x63 vs the .338LM/8.59x70) would make a good replacement for the 7.62x51 in the M240 series of MG

You forgot new mag for that 6.5x39 as well as new bolt and barrel. The 39 case and the grendel case. 2 different cases don't run throw 223/556 patterned mags.

[montana]

Look, here is the idea

6.5x39 (Grendel) would work with current M4 weapons requiring only a barrel and bolt swap.
6.5x45 would require a new rifle but is close to idea.
6.5x51 (260 Rem or 6.5 Creedmore) is too big

Not seeing the 6.8mm as anything but a compromise.

Also the .338NM (8.59x63 vs the .338LM/8.59x70) would make a good replacement for the 7.62x51 in the M240 series of MG

As much as the Grendel bolts have improved, I doubt they would measure up to military standards. It would probably take a redesighn of the AR upper and lower similar to the LWRC SIX 8 and a similar proprietary magazine.

[Sinclair]

Look, here is the idea

6.5x39 (Grendel) would work with current M4 weapons requiring only a barrel and bolt swap.
6.5x45 would require a new rifle but is close to idea.
6.5x51 (260 Rem or 6.5 Creedmore) is too big

Not seeing the 6.8mm as anything but a compromise.

Also the .338NM (8.59x63 vs the .338LM/8.59x70) would make a good replacement for the 7.62x51 in the M240 series of MG

n9nwo, There are two axioms about the US Military that have governed equipment procurement since the inception of the War Department:

1) They are always fully prepared, equipped, and stockpiled to fight the last war.

2) What the Grunt needs to survive on the battle field, wherever it might be, has little to nothing to do with the the procurement department's selection process.

I have examples if anyone wants to debate me.

[LRRPF52]

The Army's current impetus is based on the pie-in-the-sky requirement to penetrate certain hard body armor at 600m, using carbines and automatic rifles organic to the Infantry Squad.

This comes across to me as inappropriate for how Infantry fight, since Infantry are a main effort in COIN, not "near-peer" dismounted force-on-force scenarios.

If we see masses of motorized and armored units congregating at a certain area, we call in echelons of fire from the sky and surface-to-surface PGMs to decimate them.

A commander who plans to engage Infantry with Infantry when he has so many different modern assets at his disposal is failing at his job.

By focusing on a shoulder-fired weapon that has this capability, you get a system that is so overkill in the close range, that it lends itself less than useful compared to existing 5.56 NATO weapons with the M855A1, but would make an somewhat ideal bolt gun sniper load.

I think they might have gotten fixated on soldier's load only measured in weight, versus weight and volumetric displacement.

You must take both weight and space into consideration when developing a shoulder-fired rifle/machinegun cartridge.

The only cartridges that really did that in the past 100yrs in the US Army seem to be the .276 Pedersen and the 5.56 NATO.

.30 Caliber 1906 and 7.62 NATO said to the soldier, "Screw you!"

I'm really interested in the gizmo solutions they'll come up with to make weight and reduce recoil effects, because a hot-loaded .270 WSM is going to be screaming in the recoil department.

[Keef]

A commander who plans to engage Infantry with Infantry when he has so many different modern assets at his disposal is failing at his job.

Would this future weapon be needed if a large elite fighting squad from a peer nation(who are using today's best body armor), invaded a major city (say Washington DC), with intentions to take over or maybe just cause maximum damage?

[grayfox]

I'm not a complete strategerist here, but if such a squad were deployed, it seems it would be mostly a) suicide squad looking for "heaven" or (b) some kind of distraction to the main thrust elsewhere. In those cases the opposing weapons would be pretty much irrelevant, in that any type of close quarters/precision arms/air-ground combo's, would work (personally in that scenario I would like to see something of the Navy's "directed energy" ie, land-portable radar/laser stream directed at them. Cook 'em in their little cockroach hard-shells!!) ... so I still don't get why the Army is looking at what they say they're looking at...
IMO Don Quixote had more of a chance to find what he sought...!!!

[LRRPF52]

Would this future weapon be needed if a large elite fighting squad from a peer nation(who are using today's best body armor), invaded a major city (say Washington DC), with intentions to take over or maybe just cause maximum damage?

Not sure if serious, but you have to get across the Atlantic first. The US Navy controls all of the major sea lanes of the world, and if some piss ant dictator or savage 2-legged bipedal humanoid nutbag decides to get stupid in any of those AOs, we smoke-check his entire military on our terms, erasing it from the face of the earth in a matter of days.

If a nation is stupid enough to challenge us in our areas of strength, they get dealt with in that manner, complete military force reduction to smoldering remains, escharred carcasses hanging out of their Russian-built garbage APCs and tanks, smoking holes and thermal splatter scattered over the terrain, and total regime change.

This is why the major world power observers have leaned heavily on asymmetric actions in order to get us off balance, which has only inoculated us to those threat profiles because we then react to them, throw everything we have against them after re-learning a lot of painful lessons the hard way, until we have all the geopolitical military threat profiles covered with pretty extensive playbooks.

Vietnam should have weakened us by Soviet Strategy, but it only made us stronger
We saw that with Vietnam, where we sent a technological force structured for tactical nuclear exchanges into a LIC/COIN environment. The Russians, Chinese, and some other Soviet satellite states gave scores of cheap MiG-17s, MiG-19s, MiG-21s, SA-2s, and AAA to the North Vietnamese, and devised pretty basic (but effective) tactics to defeat the strengths of the F-105D (a 1950s-devised supersonic penetration nuke strike fighter) runs into North Vietnam.

We responded with a complete fighter inventory analysis in the US and settled on sending the F-4C over to fly cover for the F-105s, learned that the missiles that were ideal for shooting down non-maneuvering bombers don't work so well, and that we actually need to still focus on our basic fighter maneuver tactics to enjoy better exchange ratios.

The result was a retention of the nuclear strike capability, with the addition of the re-learning of BFM through permanent school houses in the Navy and USAF, as well as vast improvements to the missile and guidance technology to enable higher pk against maneuvering fighters. The aircraft borne out of that generation went on to enjoy such lop-sided kill ratios against Russian fighters, that it's embarrassing to bring up Russian fighter performance in serious discussion. (F-15: 104-0, F-16 77-1).

While the Army wanted to forget about Vietnam and COIN, SF maintained fighting the COIN fight as one of its primary wartime and peacetime missions, and we picked up unique SMU capabilities along the way in the late 1970s after the 1972 Olympics incident in Munich with the Israeli soccer team massacre/kidnapping by bipedal humanoid-looking savages (trained and agitated by the Soviet KGB).

ODS Validated our Force Modernization, Training, and lessons-learned for Conventional Warfare
As those capabilities evolved over the 1980s and 1990s, after our overwhelming success in Desert Storm and especially with the lessons-learned from Mogadishu disseminated down into the regular combat divisions, the force was balanced out for both COIN and conventional warfare, despite the Army still dragging its heels in conditioning officers how to fight the COIN fight on the conventional side (they did little or nothing to focus on this for some reason).

OEF and OIF Have re-trained the Infantry and lighter units for COIN
Umpteen years of Afghanistan and Iraq, and now an almost pure Low Intensity conflict in Syria have honed the force into finally being able to have at least enough leaders who know when to plan layers of B-52Hs, F-22As, and F-15Es doing a modern JDAM Arc Light, as well as the 2007 surge of getting as many Infantry embedded into the local areas being contested by foreign insurgents in Iraq, while SMUs and Ranger Regiment hunted them down like dogs.

Instead of the myopic nuclear force of the 1950s-1960s that was TBM, ICBM, and bomber-centric (that gave a rip about Joe learning how to shoot or fight), we now have a force that has:

SLBMs
ICBMs
TBMs
Stealth, supersonic, and legacy strategic bombers (with a new stealth bomber in development/soon to hit production)

Long Range PGMs deliverable from tactical assets (JASSM, JSOW, LRSO, SLAM-ER)
Air Dominance Omnirole and Multirole, networked fighter assets
Precision-Guided Surface-to-Surface munitions platforms in both artillery and missiles (MLRS, Excalibur)
Precision-Guided Surface-to-Surface naval platforms that are currently integrating with 5th Gen Omnirole and drone platforms
Hundreds of remote-piloted weaponized and surveillance drones, to include Very Low Observables (Reaper, etc.)

7 Active Duty and National Guard Special Forces Groups (1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, 10th, 19th, 20th SFGs)
3 Ranger Battalions
JSOC
11 Armored, Cavalry, Airborne, Infantry, and Airmobile Combat Divisions who have been doing COIN for the better part of the past 2 decades
8 National Guard Combat Divisions that have been rotating through extended COIN deployments for the past 18 years


You hit us with COIN, we eliminate cell leaders and networks for sport, embed infantry into the targeted populace, build infrastructure, and choke out the insurgents from all sides, drone-striking or bombing them with Hellfires, JDAMs, and SDB IIs as they try to move from one AO to the next in civilian vehicles.

You try to go toe-to-toe with us using fighters and tanks, and we will sweep your Air Force from the sky while simultaneously striking your airfields, destroying all your perimeter defense radars, SAM sites, and C4 nodes in compressed time windows that make Desert Storm look like a Sunday picnic.

We maintain a massive nuclear deterrent throughout all of this, while extended Cyberwar and now Space (been doing Space warfare since at least the 1970s).

So why do we need a .270 Magnum for the Infantryman?
So in that context, I ask, "What vision is there for a .270 WSM firing a monolithic or EPR within the Infantry Squad?"

It sounds like a collateral disaster waiting to happen in the COIN fight, where Intel, SOF, Infantry, and drones are your main efforts.

Look at SOCOM's selection of 6.5 Creedmoor for their Sniper Support Rifle. That makes all kinds of sense given the above, whereas a monstrous case .270 Magnum in the Infantry Squad makes zero sense.

[Keef]

Not sure if serious, but you have to get across the Atlantic first. The US Navy controls all of the major sea lanes of the world, and if some piss ant dictator or savage 2-legged bipedal humanoid nutbag decides to get stupid in any of those AOs, we smoke-check his entire military on our terms, erasing it from the face of the earth in a matter of days.

Yeah I am serious, but I was more thinking along the lines of Russia or China. With the advances in battery/electric motor technology MECH suits are entering the realm of likely hood, not just a possibility.

This was made in 2005.
https://bleex.me.berkeley.edu/research/e.../exohiker/

Here is info on a more current one.
https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/innovation/...ys-n722676
If normal(wealthy) people can access this technology I would imagine most real militaries are working on something better. Picture something like this, but made to carry heavy armor plate most rifles won't penetrate. Remember the carnage those dudes did with their homemade bullet resistant suits a few years ago?

[grayfox]

funny thing though about all of those types of armors... molotov-like fire-bomb-gasoline incendiary (all pretty cheap) will incapacitate or kill them, I'm pretty sure... again, not an expert and we need to respect what new tech can bring, but sometimes old tech still can work wonders.
The mind and heart are the ultimate weapons, so dictator - be afraid, much-o afraid...

[Sinclair]

funny thing though about all of those types of armors... molotov-like fire-bomb-gasoline incendiary (all pretty cheap) will incapacitate or kill them, I'm pretty sure... again, not an expert and we need to respect what new tech can bring, but sometimes old tech still can work wonders.
The mind and heart are the ultimate weapons, so dictator - be afraid, much-o afraid...

After the fall of Saigon, it was said that the most technologically advanced army in the World had been defeated by the most technologically backward army in the World and it was only matter of time before the Air Force and the Navy would suffer the same fate. I agree that technology must be respected, but the Finns defeated Russian tanks by jamming chunks of firewood in between the tracks and the drive sprockets. Afghans threw steel cables into the path of Russian helicopters to entangle the rotor blades. Technology only works if your opponent is playing by the same rules. History has taught some of use that if it is a David vs the Giant scenario, the Giant had better beware! The only weapon that exist in the World is the Human brain, everything else is just tools (paraphrase of a Jeff Cooper quote)

[Keef]

This is true, but it's also true that 1.1-2million vietnamese and about 2million afgans died in their "victories".

That said I don't know why we are talking about 3rd world fights, I thought this new guns requirements were for fighting a nation closer to our strength.

[Sinclair]

Keef,
We are, but Russia and China are not the only countries that hate us and would like to put an end to our way of life. Being prepared means prepared for anything, anytime, anywhere. We focused on Global Nuclear War long after it would have amounted to mutual destruction and therefore suicide for any country to start one.

[grayfox]

At any rate, this new SAW seems to be an answer without a problem.

[LR1955]

After the fall of Saigon, it was said that the most technologically advanced army in the World had been defeated by the most technologically backward army in the World and it was only matter of time before the Air Force and the Navy would suffer the same fate. I agree that technology must be respected, but the Finns defeated Russian tanks by jamming chunks of firewood in between the tracks and the drive sprockets. Afghans threw steel cables into the path of Russian helicopters to entangle the rotor blades. Technology only works if your opponent is playing by the same rules. History has taught some of use that if it is a David vs the Giant scenario, the Giant had better beware! The only weapon that exist in the World is the Human brain, everything else is just tools (paraphrase of a Jeff Cooper quote)

Sinclair:

Wrong answers. The NVA invaded South Vietnam with a modern combined arms mechanized army and overran the country in a week. The South Vietnamese were deployed to fight insurgents, not a combined arms army. Also, at the demand of Ted Kennedy, we stopped supporting South Vietnam with arms and funding so they didn't even have the equipment or munitions to fight an insurgency, let alone a huge combined arms force. A modern army beat an army focused on insurgency.

The Finns didn't defeat the Russians either. The Finnish military was slowly being eliminated and the morale was extremely low. The Finns eventually accepted the peace treaty that Stalin dictated to them and remained part of the Soviet system until the 80's (I believe). The Finns were defeated unless you think that allowing an invader to take control of half your country then ensure you follow their every order for the next fifty years means the Finns won.

Throwing cables into the paths of helicopters? I wonder what their success rate was. Kind of hard to judge when to drop a cable when something is going 150 mph and is swerving as a defensive measure. I guess they used the Stingers we gave them only after they missed with the steel cables? Facts are different. Our supplying them with Stingers was the decisive weapon in countering Soviet air operations, not dropping steel cables.

There is a reason why a weapon gets updated or redesigned. It is because it did not or does not meet a requirement. And our countries defense is based on projecting power and fighting in every environment and in any scenario that we think can occur. So, our weapons must function in all conditions and be versatile enough to be effective in any scenario our planners propose. Apparently the issued 5.56 is no longer capable of defeating the type of body armor our enemies are issuing like it could 30 years ago. Se we may be looking at something different. I still have not seen any formal requirement for this SAW.

LR55

[JASmith]

At the risk of sounding like “Me Too!”, I can vouch for the accuracy of BOTH LR”s comments.

I spent 3-years in theater, with the second tour predominantly training Cambodian Air Force pilots. The supply chain in 1972 was deliberately choked to a level where even a fleet of about 30 T-28 fighter bombers (4ea Mk 82 500 lb per sortie) could not be supported for normal combat operations.

Contemporaneous news showed the South Vietnamese president complaining that they were being shipped only enough artillery ammunition to supply each tube with three rounds per day.

We left Vietnam because we chose not to win. That gauranteed the debacle we saw.

I then spent a few decades in weapons R&D with emphasis on definition and advocacy of new weapons.

Like the Army, Air Force was, in the late ‘70s and ‘80s, focused solely on the Fulda Gap and Soviet airfields and pretended the Vietnam experience did not exist. A person with my history and mindset about options an adversary can exerciselft me rather frustrated with the single focus on a peer competitor.

As ‘52 pointed out, being adept at ALL levels at conflict is critically important. Failing in small conflicts — economic, cultural, trade, gangs, and small insurgencies — only begets big wars.

[grayfox]

And I, for my part, would never advocate a zero research & development effort. Certainly newer, more capable rifles as well as squad auto weaponry is needed, I would definitely grant that. If this current saw project results in such a newer, more capable weapon, I'd be glad. However, I remain skeptical of what a corporate R&D bureaucracy could come up with if they do not listen to those from the field, and those who can see what might be coming from enemies large or small. I saw the same thing back when I was in the USN.... and by serving during 'Nam (was not in country, was on a sub).

The one "disadvantage" we as a country have stems from our primarily defensive posture: someone who is bent on aggression, as hitler was, can develop purely to achieve that aim, while someone bent on defending itself must prepare for all contingencies... such is the nature of offense vs defense.

So, AFAIC, I have a wait and see stance on this one, don't see any good as of yet. Now there are other new weapons I've read a bit about, they do look very promising.