The Military and Veterans' Room
Inside the Army's plan to ditch the M-4 and the 5.56:
This caliber debate is 100 years old. The army is finally taking it seriously and may pick a round between the 5.56 and 7.62.
Some intermediate calibers being tested include the .260 Remington, 6.5 Creedmoor, .264 USA as well as other non-commercial intermediate calibers, including cased telescoped ammo, Army officials said.
If selected by senior leaders, the weapon could resolve a close-quarters weapons debate about calibers that critics say dates to the 1920s and has influenced military small arms ever since.
If successful, the new rifle and round combination would give troops a weapon they can carry with about the same number of rounds as the current 5.56 mm but with greater range and accuracy in their firepower — with little change in weight.
The new rifle would likely replace the M16/M4 platform, which has been in the hands of troops since the 1960s and undergone multiple modifications and upgrades.
Maj. Jason Bohannon, lethality branch chief at the Army’s Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Benning, Georgia, and Matt Walker, deputy director of the branch and a retired command sergeant major, spoke recently to Army Times about broad efforts in small arms weapons research and development.
‘Better option’
Work on the new round began in recent years, Bohannon said, and much of the next steps in developing both the round and rifle will be driven by the Small Arms Ammunition Configuration study.
The study has been going on since at least 2014, according to the Army.
The study is expected to conclude in the next three months, Walker said.
Portions of that report and its findings will likely be made public, but other portions may be deemed sensitive, they said.
Multiple active and retired military arms advocates and industry experts have presented papers and data on the alleged “overmatch” that U.S. troops face on the battlefield with their current calibers.
One oft-noted recent study was authored by then-Army Maj. Thomas Ehrhart, who wrote a 2009 paper titled, “Increasing Small Arms Lethality in Afghanistan: Taking back the Infantry Half-Kilometer.”
The paper drew from soldiers’ experience in Afghanistan firefights.
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Originally Posted by Safety
