NGSW, disruptive innovations, and the small military team?

[grayfox]

Clayton Christianson's book, "The innovator's dilemma" (1997) introduced a new paradigm called "disruptive innovation", a kind of "creative-destructive" product or service that starts small then eventually displaces or replaces large parts of a business/product economy:
“Disruptive Innovation describes a process by which a product or service initially takes root in simple applications at the bottom of a market—typically by being less expensive and more accessible—and then relentlessly moves upmarket, eventually displacing established competitors.” – Clayton Christianson

In the military arena, maybe the disruption is not so much lower cost as it is more "effective" while still being affordable. …Where is my thought line going?

Maybe this Ngsw weapon (upon which I am neutral by the way) is the beginning of a disruptive innovation, but maybe also not in the original construction/setup as being just carried by the individual soldier...

Army & Industry Teams Massively Modernize the Next-Generation Squad Weapon (NGSW) - Warrior Maven: Center for Military Modernization

This website Warrior maven has a couple of articles on the Ngsw, most of which is not news to the forum here. But when it mentioned potential uses by Airborne, Special Ops, groups like that, kind of started me thinking. What if the Ngsw-like weapon is combined with some other new technology, the combo of which might advance small-group operation and effectiveness? Force-multiplication strategy where a small 4-6 man squad could do damage like a platoon o larger? Such has been woven into lots of American military thinking IMO, we haven't liked the idea of swarming hordes charging right up to an enemy for bulk man to man combat (although we no doubt train to defend against this). It's not our offensive tactic of choice.

No, small group warfare enhanced by massive “fire” ability… close air support, artillery, area bombs… So this thread is to kick off some brain storming on what combinations of new technology would be implementable to enhance or increase the fire capability of the (if I have the term correct) squad or say 4-8 man team. I will start with an Ngsw combo but others might have some ideas. “Disruptive Innovation” for the small military team.

I see the potential of putting 1 or maybe 2 Ngsw weapons onto a squad-accompanying “unmanned ATV”. Granted it might not be able to go on every mission (like on swampy ground) but in many cases it could be a small unmannd pack mule, carrying the 2 Ngsw’s and ammo loadouts (thus avoiding the “too heavy to carry” problem). In addition to on-mule remote ops they can be offloaded and carried or fired, if desired, or if the little mule breaks down or something else. But it could be remotely positioned, operated and fired if desired, even staged a little off to the side of the group to set up an immediate “cross-fire” trap for oncoming troops. Along with that would be (I propose) an on-board anti-tank weapon like the javelin or maybe one of those man-portable kamikaze drones. Useful little U-atv.

Remember the purpose of a brainstorming session is to raise up some new ideas or applications, not just to shoot down somebody else’s wacky idea. So this might be wacky but this new Ngsw (upon which, remember, I am neutral) might combine with something else to make a truly disruptive innovation. Doesn’t necessarily have to “cost less” (as in the business world) but does have to be an affordable force-multiplier for a small team, for some missions.
What do y’all think?

[LRRPF52]

If you look at NGSW, what’s the main thing they constantly bring up that needs improvement?

Weight. What technology sector is weight the enemy of more than anything relative to others? Aviation and space.

On the land or sea, weight is an inconvenience. In the air and getting into space, weight reduction technologies aren’t nice-to-have, they are imperatives...absolutes.

What recent evolution of a technology set (that has actually been around since WWII in production form) would benefit the most from added lethality due to weight reduction?

In the context of strategy and tactics, the recent conflict illustrates how almost meaningless and vulnerable dismounted infantry are, aside from the precious moments when they launch a Precision-Guided Munition at either a tank or aircraft within fairly-close visual range to them. Man-portable weapons range and lethality are constrained by seeker mass, projectile mass, warhead mass, and propulsion mass packaged in a tube, with affixed electro-optics.

One of the greatest force-multipliers both in Unconventional and Conventional Warfare has been UAS.

But the most casualty-producing weapons mounted to UAS have generally been directed at destroying vehicles with larger ATG munitions, and providing ISR on dismounts, which can then feed geocoordinates into the fires net and attrit them that way.

But what if our UAS could also carry a weight-optimized direct fire small arms system, in addition to hanging SDBs and GBU-12s off the wings?

Wouldn’t that force it to descend into a more vulnerable profile closer to the ground to make a direct fire ballistic solution maybe not worth the effort, even if we crank it out at 3400fps?


The ground forces augmented by a programmable kill bot buddy has been a space several companies have been working on for the past 2 decades. An NCO I used to work with (who was on Land Warrior proponency out of the Pentagon for General McChrystal before he headed up the Airborne Land Warrior Platoon in 3-325 AIR in 82nd) carried a pack bot in Afghanistan in 2002 as part of a SOF Task Force. They were mounting weapons to the pack bot for cave clearing operations while watching with a rigged Land Warrior camera that he could drive remotely. They mounted a radio to the bot so they could have the terps give the Taliban hold-outs a chance to come out peacefully before they blasted them with a mounted GP-25 40mm Russian Grenade Launcher or shotgun.

I did a pretty detailed informal debrief with him when he got back from that tasking. Here’s a video you can see that shows what I’m talking about. At one point in the video, you can see where they mounted the radio:

[video=youtube_share;eaP0waiz43w]https://youtu.be/eaP0waiz43w[/video]

[grayfox]

Lot of acronyms '52, hope I followed that!

Or on an unmanned aerial system (UAS, right?), a small one (portable/man carried/launched) you could mount either cluster-type bomblets or self-propelled, or fin-guided dinky rockets/explosives... drop-launch then they fire off and go.
idea being to miniaturize since you could get "close" overhead, using an arc-trajectory - not a lot of recoil...?

I do like the idea of having that little mule or truckin' buddy to pack some of the gear for the guys...

The Navy is developing a drone-helo-carried anti-mine detector, capable of on-board sensing of underwater mines - which means detecting and interpreting electronic/emf/infrared/visible signals on-board, process with AI and then sending back identification and location to the "mothership" in real time. All the ship needs to do is prep and fire a countermeasure or avoid or whatever....
The day will come when anti-submarine detection will be done by these guys, or even over-horizon recon for small ship detachments.
The leap that the Navy tech is doing is this pod can do all the detect/identify/locate/range/ etc in real time, being carried by a drone chopper. No need to fly back to base and download it.

So what if the small-group's portable UAS (call it a sparrow-hawk) does real-time sensing, identification, location and transmit all that back to the unit, who then can send up a fire/forget load of correct type, to finish the enemy thingy off - or maybe that's already being done.

Maybe even combine the thermal/IR/NV sensing for use by our sparrow-hawk to uncover hidden but heat-signature targets, snipers, enemy squads, hidden gun emplacements...

[LRRPF52]

Yes, we’re actually several major iterations into net-centric warfare now across the Air, Land, Sea, and Space component forces.

Link-16 is on at least its 4th iteration for legacy air/land/sea/space platforms. F-22A has a massive leap over that with IFDL, and JSF/F-35 has a massive leap over IFDL with MADL. MADL has also been integrated into the combat-coded B-2As so they are interoperable with JSF.



The developments in Aerospace have eventually trickled down to the lowest-priority Land Component forces.

SOF has been using all kinds of RPVs, UAS, along with having constant support from MQ-9 Reaper.

The days of collecting sensor data and then returning to base to download it, feed it to the analysts, then send those products to the leadership, who then incorporate it into their planning process to be kicked down to subordinate elements are long gone.

I was thinking with NGSW technology, they could have a lightweight cannon in a drone, with a certain stored linked ammunition magazine depth in addition to the underslung Hellfires, GBU-12s, or SDBs, but I still think it would require a clean-sheet design unless they went podded.

From an air-planner perspective, I think I would rather have things that make bigger boom-boom on the hard points than a direct-fire cannon.

For some existing aerial platforms, hybrid polymer-cased ammo will significantly reduce the weight of ammunition that is carried, but I’m not seeing any big changes to volumetric displacement with drums and canisters.

[LRRPF52]

The other area I see potential for NGSW technology is in smaller firearms cases that can duplicate or exceed existing ballistic profiles of common small arms.

Something like a .224 Fireball case form factor pushing the same velocities as 5.56 NATO.

Something like 6.5 Grendel form factor could maybe generate .260 AI velocities, maybe increase the COL to 2.5” for optimum seating depth, but still have a firearm that feels like an AR-15, not a heavy and cumbersome AR-10.

The .270-08 form factor requires the large magazines from 7.62 NATO, which is a volumetric problem on the soldier’s load.

We’ve had this conversation here for many years on what the dismounted small arms configurations could look like with some improvements in propellant and case technology.

* Individual small arms the size and profile of the KAC PDW or other PDW-type weapons matching or exceeding 5.56 external ballistics, with a smaller magazine footprint.
* Carbines chambered in something smaller than 7.62 NATO that exceed 7.62 NATO external ballistics, with less recoil and smaller, lighter magazines.

I like the 2.500” COL cartridge form factor for the larger platform, which would out-perform 6.5 Creedmoor.

I think they went too big with NGSW just from a soldier’s load, recoil, and cartridge form factor perspective. That was driven by the arbitrary point of nailing down .277” bore diameter and projectile form factor that was dictated to the respondents for the RFIs.

[grayfox]

Good info, great reading, looks like I'm sorta late to the party, sorry about that!
The more I look at the ngsw, the more it looks like an over-extension of traditional small arms rather than a truly next generation leap of a disruptive innovation.

...If I were more pessimistic I'd say they were trying to eliminate mil-surp market and reloaders and such!

[LRRPF52]

The services are always asking for more, more, more performance.

Small arms doesn’t get anywhere near the priority many think it should because small arms like rifles and squad-level machine-guns are relatively inconsequential to conventional warfare.

For COIN/UW, they are extremely important due to concerns over collateral damage, but most of the US DoD’s budget is towards systems at much higher levels of the echelons of fire and all the combined arms assets that work together on the big fight.

By the time a dismounted soldier steps onto the ground in the wake of those systems, he’s only sifting through the rubble with smoking corpses buried underneath it and maybe some token pockets of misperceived resistance, who can no longer hear.

As gun guys, we tend to think that because we are familiar with rifles and such, then we know how much of the military works.

What I saw was that even for mid and many senior officers in combat arms, they simply didn’t have much of a clue of what was going on with slice elements and other major Army Career Management Fields, let alone what was happening in the Air Force or Navy.

A lot of that is being task-saturated in your own job scraping bark off the trees. You know you’re in a forest, but aren’t really sure how big it is and what’s going on around you outside of your area of perceived influence.

[LR1955]

The services are always asking for more, more, more performance.

Small arms doesn’t get anywhere near the priority many think it should because small arms like rifles and squad-level machine-guns are relatively inconsequential to conventional warfare.

For COIN/UW, they are extremely important due to concerns over collateral damage, but most of the US DoD’s budget is towards systems at much higher levels of the echelons of fire and all the combined arms assets that work together on the big fight.

By the time a dismounted soldier steps onto the ground in the wake of those systems, he’s only sifting through the rubble with smoking corpses buried underneath it and maybe some token pockets of misperceived resistance, who can no longer hear.

As gun guys, we tend to think that because we are familiar with rifles and such, then we know how much of the military works.

What I saw was that even for mid and many senior officers in combat arms, they simply didn’t have much of a clue of what was going on with slice elements and other major Army Career Management Fields, let alone what was happening in the Air Force or Navy.

A lot of that is being task-saturated in your own job scraping bark off the trees. You know you’re in a forest, but aren’t really sure how big it is and what’s going on around you outside of your area of perceived influence.

And that has been my point with the lethality thing for years. A guy in that forest can see only so far so to me it is better to develop a cartridge and weapon that is very fast to use and very lethal to 200 or 300 instead of a heavier, bulkier, weapon and ammo that is intended for 300 to X distance. I do not think any designer will come up with something equally good in both conditions so focus on the most likely scenario and give them something that really does give a quantum advantage over an enemy.