Future Weapons: Inside the Army’s Pursuit of a High-Tech New Round

[Peter1469]

Future Weapons: Inside the Army’s Pursuit of a High-Tech New Round

I posted a thread about the Army going to a 6.8mm round for new rifles and squad automatic weapons to make the infantry more lethal. Greater range, accuracy, and power than the current 5.56mm round.

This week, U.S. Army leaders revealed a much clearer picture of the service's plan to replace its M249 squad automatic weapon and M4A1 carbine with weapons that share an advanced 6.8mm round.

For more than a year, modernization officials have offered few details about the Next Generation Squad Weapon program. But over the past three months, the service has taken tangible steps to advance the effort from concept to prototype.



The Army released a vague Oct. 4 draft solicitation describing its plans to award future deals to companies to build prototypes of the Next Generation Squad Weapon-Rifle, or NGSW-R, and the Next Generation Squad Weapon-Automatic Rifle, or NGSW-AR, chambered for a newly designed, "government-provided" 6.8mm cartridge.


The solicitation followed an announcement in July that the Army had awarded five contracts to gun makers to develop prototypes of only the auto rifle.


Brig. Gen. Anthony Potts, commander of Program Executive Office Soldier, explained how the solicitations work together at the 2018 Association of the United States Army's Annual Meeting and Exhibition.


The prototypes from the contracts awarded in July are scheduled to be delivered to the Army next June for evaluation, he said.


Added lethality


The release of the Oct. 4 solicitation is designed to get feedback from the defense industry about making adjustments to the Army-developed 6.8mm round so it works efficiently in both the rifle and auto rifle versions of the NGSW, Potts explained.


"The rationale for doing that is we truly want to get to a common cartridge," he said. "You want the engineers that are developing these weapons to be able to optimize both concurrently. If you put the AR out first, then they are going to optimize that round for the AR; [if] you put out the rifle first, then they are going to optimize it for the rifle. The round might be too heavy and too big for the rifle, and one might get you a round that's not quite enough for an automatic rifle."


The Army's interest in developing an advanced 6.8mm round to make the squad more lethal emerged out of a 2017 Small Arms Ammunition Configuration Study, said Brig. Gen. David Hodne, director of the Soldier Lethality Cross-Functional Team.

[Cletus]

The Army is great at coming up with solutions for nonexistent problems.

[Peter1469]

The Army is great at coming up with solutions for nonexistent problems.

Also, as I pointed out in the first thread, 5.56 is the NATO compliant round for rifles and SAWs. Not sure how going to a 6.8 round is going to go over with our allies- they certainly are not going to spend money to replace all of the light weapons.

[Cletus]

Also, as I pointed out in the first thread, 5.56 is the NATO compliant round for rifles and SAWs. Not sure how going to a 6.8 round is going to go over with our allies- they certainly are not going to spend money to replace all of the light weapons.

Spot on.

[Peter1469]

Spot on.

We spend a lot of time and money to get potential NATO members into compliance with compatibility rules. This plan is counter to those goals. If NATO goes to war we won't be able to resupply ammo to them and they won't be able to resupply ammo to us.