Army Awards SIG NGSW Contract

[LR1955]

LR, would you mind elaborating on this? 7.62x54R has a (slightly) higher velocity than 7.62x51mm, shoots similar weight projectiles, has a history of pretty decent accuracy, and the PKM (and the like-chambered Dragunov sniper rifle) aren't known for reliability problems. I didn't get a ton of trigger time on the PKM but it seemed functional and I never saw a stoppage. I'm not saying it's superior to 7.62x51mm, but I think it holds it's own for use in a GP machinegun.

Just my 2 cents.

John

John:

The 7.62 X 54 R and 7.62 NATO are comparable but I wouldn't put them as equals. Rimmed cartridges in machineguns is not the best combination. Also, M-80 has an edge ballistically.

I can not get into comparing them for accuracy because they are both rounds of ball ammunition. I have shot a number of bullets pulled from 7.62 X 54 R, both the steel core ball and the lead core Heavy Ball, handloaded using LC brass and 4895 through M-24's (yes, I really did) and found the steel core ball to be pretty terrible and the 180 grain lead core 'Heavy Ball' to be about as good as our issued 173 grain ball. I do not know if the bullets have been upgraded like our 7.62 ball so take that into consideration.

No comparison between a PKM shooting Cold War era 7.62 X 54 R and a M-60 or M-240 shooting Cold War era M-80 Ball in terms of accuracy. Hands down, M-60 and M-240 will hold a tighter beaten zone. No doubt about it in my mind.

Although I give the edge to the M-240 and NATO ball at any distance compared to a PKM and 7.62 X 54 R, either way the beaten zone will be huge and hitting anything will be more probability given a number of rounds fired than anything else.

The point is though that if a US Infantry unit was pinned down due to PKM's firing some sort of issued 7.62 X 54 R ammo, it was probably because the US unit chose not to maneuver or did not use their own M-240s to suppress the fire. I can't second guess units but this claim just doesn't make much sense to me.

LR

[Fess]

I deliberately used the phrase "pinned down", which does not require as tight a beaten zone. I have not been keeping track of what weapons and ammo are carried by US soldiers on foot patrols. I know that range was an issue when foot patrols carried M249's. Are they mostly carrying full length M240s now? I keep seeing references to the shorter M240L. What ammo are they using? You mention 173gr. I had been under the impression that they had been using M80, although what has happened after the the development of M80A1, I have no idea.

Most of my impressions of relative range came from Jim Schatz's 2016 NDIA Armament Systems Forum presentation entitled "A Path To Overmatch, Next Generation Individual Weapon System. In his graphs, the Russian 7.62R PKP's (25.9"barrel) and SVDS (23.6" barrel) outrange the US 5.56 and 7.62 weapons. In doing some research today, I see that a TFB article that uses calculations to show that there is little difference between the Russian and US cartridges with the same barrel lengths. I don't know if the numbers for BC, MV, etc are correct, though.
https://ndiastorage.blob.core.usgovcloud...Schatz.pdf
https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2016...r-russian/

[grayfox]

Been following this with some interest, always something new for me to learn.
But Fess in your last comment you mention same barrel lengths - barrel for barrel... which theoretically would be nice but in the field I imagine it's more about performance of weapon for weapon, right?

[Old Bob]

Another view of the NGSW by a USMC vet, instructor & writer...

https://gatdaily.com/is-it-the-m14-all-o...paign=4_28

[Fess]

Been following this with some interest, always something new for me to learn.
But Fess in your last comment you mention same barrel lengths - barrel for barrel... which theoretically would be nice but in the field I imagine it's more about performance of weapon for weapon, right?

Yes. The post was getting confusing so I stopped adding numbers, but you are right, the Russian weapons tend to have longer barrels. For example, the PKP has a 25.9" barrel and a PKM has a 23.8" barrel. The M240b has a 24.8" barrel and the M240L has a 21.7" barrel. There are different models of the SVD, with barrels ranging from 24.4" to 21.7. The US has trended towards shorter barrels over time, with the M110 at 20". If I remember correctly, Britain and New Zealand have some 7.65x51 DMR rifles with 16" barrels.
The NDIA (National Defense Industrial Association) presentation link show a "threat range" graph. The PKP is listed at 1500m while the M240 is listed as 1100 meters. The biggest difference is with 5.56x45 weapons vs 7.62x54R ones, of course. The "threat range" of M4's is listed at 500m and the M249 at 800m whereas the SVDS is listed at 1000m and the PKP, again at 1500m.

You have been on firearms forums long enough to know that it is hard to get concrete numbers on the effective range of various weapons, and the presentation argues that the US forces are significantly outranged by weapons that it commonly faces. The TFB article claims, "not so much, if the US troops have a m240."

[LRRPF52]

I deliberately used the phrase "pinned down", which does not require as tight a beaten zone. I have not been keeping track of what weapons and ammo are carried by US soldiers on foot patrols. I know that range was an issue when foot patrols carried M249's. Are they mostly carrying full length M240s now? I keep seeing references to the shorter M240L. What ammo are they using? You mention 173gr. I had been under the impression that they had been using M80, although what has happened after the the development of M80A1, I have no idea.

Most of my impressions of relative range came from Jim Schatz's 2016 NDIA Armament Systems Forum presentation entitled "A Path To Overmatch, Next Generation Individual Weapon System. In his graphs, the Russian 7.62R PKP's (25.9"barrel) and SVDS (23.6" barrel) outrange the US 5.56 and 7.62 weapons. In doing some research today, I see that a TFB article that uses calculations to show that there is little difference between the Russian and US cartridges with the same barrel lengths. I don't know if the numbers for BC, MV, etc are correct, though.
https://ndiastorage.blob.core.usgovcloud...Schatz.pdf
https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2016...r-russian/

[video=youtube_share;b2Jwhe-BDKQ]https://youtu.be/b2Jwhe-BDKQ[/video]

In dismounted Infantry Platoons, we have always had some type of full power 7.62mm Automatic Rifle or Medium Machine-guns, even dating back to The Great War.

In the Great War, Army Expeditionary Force Infantry Platoons had Chuacer Automatic Rifles chambered in M2 .30 Cal Rifle (.30-06).

The BAR was later fielded and became a staple of Infantry Squads in World War II.

Machine-Gun Companies also fielded M1919 Browning .30 Caliber MGs for Platoon and Company support.

The M60/M14 combo was adopted before Vietnam, taking lessons-learned from WWII and Korea and thinking that a single caliber T65-based system would work well somehow.

This proved to be unfeasible in force-on-force exercises conducted at Fort Benning when facing Warsaw Pact and other units equipped with AKs, so the SCHV concept gained traction, even though the Army Ordnance Corps were biased towards the 7.62 NATO/M14 combo and M60.

M60s were issued and fielded more like a Squad Automatic Rifle and Platoon Medium Machine-gun in Vietnam, with varying MTO&E changes dependent on time in the War, as well as unit preferences.

The Army recognized a need for a SAW in the 1970s, conducted the SAW trials, which awarded to the FN Minimi M249 submission.

Army and USMC Infantry MTO&E included both SAWs and M60s, while the USMC adopted an improved variant of the M60 with the M60E3, which didn’t have bipods attached to every barrel, but did nothing to fix the reliability problems with the M60.

By that point, every Rifle Squad included a SAW, M203/M16, and Riflemen. Weapons Squads or Weapons Platoons fielded the M60s.

In the 1990s, we switched over to the M240 (a Belgian FN MAG58 under US manufacture), replacing the M60s one-for-one without any changes to the MTO&E structure.

While the M240 was heavier, it was noticeably more reliable than the M60 ever hoped to be, which was a welcome to us. I lived through the M60 and M240 changeover about halfway through my time in the Army, and was in different weapons squads with both.

For Afghanistan and Iraq, M14s were fielded as DM systems to augment the Platoon’s pretty diverse firepower.

Battalion-level Sniper teams were tasked out to the Line Companies, so Sniper Support was a staple in GWOT.

An Infantry Platoon typically has the following weapons systems, in order of effectiveness and casualty-producing capacity:

USAF TACP/JTAC with high level of training in calling in CAS, attached
Forward Observer with decent level of training in calling in artillery, mortars, and CAS, attached from the relevant Field Artillery Slice element in the Brigade
Sniper Team attached from Battalion Scout Platoon
Weapons Squads with Javelins and M240s
DMs with either ACOG-equipped M4s or some type of 7.62 NATO semi auto rifle
1 SAW per Fire Team
Riflemen with M4s
M203s

Some Weapons Squads got Carl Gustavs as well, which can be added to all the AT4s carried by several riflemen and sometimes Team Leaders.

Many of the Small Arms Symposium presentations talking about overmatch are simply buzzword-filled propaganda that focus on one weapon system as the myopic solution to a problem that doesn’t really exist, designed to fuel the interest in furthering small arms research and development from an incorrect approach. They often lack context of the overall force structure, MTO&E, historical changes to MTO&E and why those changes were made, actual capabilities based on training and leadership limits, range limits per unit throughout the year, and mismanagement of training resources by commanders as a rule.

[LRRPF52]

The real problems are:

Organizational culture: Risk-averse officer and senior NCOs who are generally incompetent in all things military history and Infantry-related, no real exposure to foreign cultures, no real understanding of terrain and how to think.

Weight: Linked ammunition especially is heavy for 7.62 NATO, and thereby constrains maneuver and energy of gun teams and Riflemen who have to carry extra linked ammo.

These problems are overcome with all the other systems in the Army, USMC, and Air Force that more than compensate for their failings in a conventional fight, where Infantry plays a limited role, and more mechanized infantry are the ones who will actually see relevance after multiple layers of echelons of fire.

If you go look right now at all the funded Army systems, you will have a very hard time even picking out NGSW from the mix.

Far more consequential and heavily-funded programs rule that budget, and when you see what they are, you realize how relatively-meaningless small arms actually are.

Examples:

UH-60V
HIMARS
A-ISR
AH-64E Digital Long Bow Networked Apache
MLRS
Multiple types of UAVs
Medical Vehicles
New Family of Trucks
AMPVs
M1A2 SEPv4
New NBC vehicles
New mobile EW vehicles and systems

Etc. etc. The last time I looked at it, it became a time-consuming process that would require a funded research project just to get a baseline handle on everything they’re working on to upgrade the Army. NGSW is lost in the list easily, nowhere near as funded as most of these other programs that are much more effectual on the battlefield.

The same goes for personnel allocation to the various Career Management Fields. You want your best and brightest going to Aviation, Artillery, Armor, Intelligence, and fields where leaders are managing expensive systems and highly-trained technicians that maintain and employ those systems.

Infantry is typically looked at with very minimal emphasis by many in the Army once you get to the Pentagon level. The older I get, the more I see why that is instead of faulting them for it.

It’s hard for us to accept as gun folks, but just the way it is.

If we had more civilian ownership of tanks, artillery, helicopters with rocket pods, etc., we’d get it.

[Fess]

Thanks for the info! I recall seeing a fair amount of battle footage from Afghanistan where the M249 but no 7.62 weapons were visible. It seems that I was not seeing the whole picture.

[LRRPF52]

Thanks for the info! I recall seeing a fair amount of battle footage from Afghanistan where the M249 but no 7.62 weapons were visible. It seems that I was not seeing the whole picture.

Another trend we have seen in GWOT was the pivotal reliance on vehicles for most operations.

Even the unskinned tube-frame vehicles have belt-fed weapons attached to them.

Original and Up-Armored HMMWVs always had either TOW-2s, M2 .50 BMGs, Mk.19 40mm Machine-gun Grenade Launchers, or M240s with as much ammo stacked for the gunners and dismounts.

Then you have Strykers with CROWS, which can be anything from .50 BMG, Mk.19, and even Javelin. They’ve been installing 30mm cannons in Strykers as well.

We saw a lot of units that were envisioned as Light Infantry, Airmobile, or Airborne become Motorized in GWOT, even with theater-specific vehicles like MRAP.

A lot of this was done at the sacrifice of funding for the F-22 program before we could go into Full Rate Production with the Raptor, and the MRAPs and other vehicles were left in-theater with unit hand-offs.

We wasted billions on equipment that has almost no effectiveness in a conventional application, and then left it or gave it to local forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, even before the monstrous abortion that happened in Afghanistan with the rapid withdrawal.

I would rather have our planned 750 F-22s, with 200 perma-based in Europe, 200 perma-based in PACOM, and 100 on each coast of the US ready to plus-up the EUCOM and PACOM forces as-needed, with the remainder in fighter conversion units and OT&E at Edwards, Eglin, and the Fighter Weapons Instructor School at Nellis.

Instead, SECDEF Gates killed the Raptor before we could go FRP, and we have literally nothing to show for it but billions of war material in the hands of Iraqis and Taliban-who immediately handed over whatever was asked to Chicom, Russian, and Iranian foreign intelligence services.

The conversation about NGSW falls somewhere down into the bottom fraction of a % of my meter if we’re wanting to second-guess what the Army is doing with procurement.

Of all the programs of record I see on the current Army’s schedule, there are far more systems that will actually matter for expeditionary warfare and regional global conflicts.

I think recent developments make that decisively-clear when you look at Ukraine.

Just ask what weapons systems have affected the campaign more than anything, and what you would wish you had more of if you were senior leaders on either side.

Small arms would not be anywhere high on the list. Shooting through body armor isn’t really a concern as you sweep over the smoldering remains of APCs, trucks, and carcasses that look like charcoal briquettes.

[LRRPF52]

For a small arms development though, the M250 seems to be the most interesting at 12lb.

I just wish they could have gone with lighter weight ammo for the Joes.

I think there will be very heavy initial pushback on the M5 due to reduced round count, high recoil, but cool factor also will play into perception.

We have never successfully fielded a single caliber system for rifles and machine-guns.

[BluntForceTrauma]

YouTube video with former green beret having one of the best discussions yet about the 6.8 NGSW HERE.

Oh, and I rest my case....

[biodsl]

"The ultimate Afghanistan battle rifle."

[Double Naught Spy]

"The ultimate Afghanistan battle rifle."

Always prepared for the last war...

[LRRPF52]

Hmmmm, where I have I heard all of his points before?

Meanwhile, "a DoD entity" who got sick of their SR-25s and SCAR-Hs weight/maneuverability, is using 12” - 18” 6mm ARC, after telling Hornady 6.5 Grendel was fine for what they wanted.

[video=youtube_share;urEKLym1LGw]https://youtu.be/urEKLym1LGw[/video]

Key takeaways:

Ammo and rifle too heavy
Can’t carry enough rounds for Riflemen for the last 100yds fight
Surface Danger Zones on military bases can’t support the effective range and ballistic reach of the M5

M250 NGSW SAW is a great replacement for the SAW and M240 to out-range the PKM, while being lighter

Better to issue M250s to each Rifle Squad, with M5s only as DMRs, everyone else still carry M4s.

Get rid of 7.62 NATO

[Happy2Shoot]

Hmmmm, where I have I heard all of his points before?

Meanwhile, "a DoD entity" who got sick of their SR-25s and SCAR-Hs weight/maneuverability, is using 12” - 18” 6mm ARC, after telling Hornady 6.5 Grendel was fine for what they wanted.

[video=youtube_share;urEKLym1LGw]https://youtu.be/urEKLym1LGw[/video]

Key takeaways:

Ammo and rifle too heavy
Can’t carry enough rounds for Riflemen for the last 100yds fight
Surface Danger Zones on military bases can’t support the effective range and ballistic reach of the M5

M250 NGSW SAW is a great replacement for the SAW and M240 to out-range the PKM, while being lighter

Better to issue M250s to each Rifle Squad, with M5s only as DMRs, everyone else still carry M4s.

Get rid of 7.62 NATO

I didn't watch 25 minutes of the video, but from what I saw.

Green Beret? Really? Not sure I care what he has to say about what is good for the average Joe in the regular service. His world view is highly specialized.

He wants a light weight, belt fed machinegun that is very accurate. How much weight are you really saving as a percentage of total loadout? 5%? I bet the total load for a regular Joe is significantly different (more) than a Green Beret. 2 long barrels with mass to soak up lots of heat before you have to switch barrels, bipod, 800 - 1200 rounds, optical sight, binos, 2 to 3 man team . Less weight means more jump and recoil. Accurate? What is this a machine-sniper-gun? Cone of fire at 1000 yds is 20 to 40 feet, Good! Anyone outside the Marine Corps ever heard of a "combined arms dilemma"? Machineguns don't kill that many people. Never have. What they do, is get people to sit the fuck down while you get closer to them or call in indirect fire.

If I was special, and in an 8 man team, with 200 to 1000 enemy fighters within 30 minutes of me, no reinforcements for 2 to 4 hours, completely outside of the umbrella of artillery, I guess I would want a light weight machinegun.

[BluntForceTrauma]

Machineguns don't kill that many people. Never have.

I don't have firsthand experience, but what I seem to remember reading is that in WW2, for example, the German MG42 was THE killing machine, and all the riflemen supported it. (Not including mortars and artillery.)

Machine guns acquitted themselves quite well in WW1, I believe, and against mass attacks in the Pacific and in Korea.

Modern warfare is, of course, continually evolving. Don't know how useful they were in Vietnam and the latest wars in the Middle East.

However, according to the the video I posted above, the 6.8 NGSW was developed in direct response to the Taliban tactic of attacking at long range with PKM machine guns.

So, again, based on my limited knowledge, I might dispute your claim that "Machine guns don't kill that many people."

[Happy2Shoot]

70% of casualties from WWII and Korea were from shrapnel. That leaves 30% for everything else.

[Happy2Shoot]

If someone is attacking from from a distance greater than 600 yards, call for artillery, or motars, or helos, or fixed wing. If you went outside of covering fire you were wrong

[LRRPF52]

If someone is attacking from from a distance greater than 600 yards, call for artillery, or motars, or helos, or fixed wing. If you went outside of covering fire you were wrong

Depends on the ROE. After changes in the WH and Pentagon, they restricted indirect fires considerably to minimize collateral damage on civilians.

At least half the guys in SF come from Infantry CMF before going to Selection and Q Course. Most of the rest were Combat Engineers, Combat Medics, Forward Observers, Cav Scouts, Commo guys, and other CMFs. Quite a few former USMC 0311s, 0321s, 0331s, and 0341s as well.

SF operated in larger units most of the time throughout OEF and OIF, often alongside ANA, ANP, Iraqi Army, Iraqi Commandos, US Infantry units, and NATO or coalition SOF and Infantry units.

Force structure for dismounted patrols usually included SAWs or Mk.46s, Mk.48s, M240s, M110s, and SCAR-Hs, on top of M4A1s in some iteration of SOPMOD.

For Iraq, small elements might see a sniper operations section left behind for overwatch in a building providing coverage for other units doing cordon and search, HVT seizure, or static surveillance/recce for insurgents.

[LRRPF52]

[video=youtube_share;f5YWXrZdNpA]https://youtu.be/f5YWXrZdNpA[/video]