The link has several photos.

https://www.armytimes.com/news...Early%20Bird%20Brief

Army’s next squad weapon will fire a never-before-seen ammo combination

INDIANAPOLIS ― The Army’s plan for a new squad automatic rifle will bring a type of ammunition combination, from bullet to casing, that’s never seen the battlefield.

Army Lt. Col. Andrew Lunoff, product manager for the service’s small caliber ammunition program, said that the round currently under consideration is the 6.8mm caliber.

Lunoff was speaking on a panel on intermediate caliber development at the annual National Defense Industrial Association Armaments Systems Symposium here.

The 6.8mm round is the offspring of a project formerly known as the Enhanced Rifle Cartridge Program that put together Special Operations Command, the Army Marksmanship Unit and Remington Arms to create an alternative to the 5.56mm round currently in use across the force.

That size ammo falls in the sweet spot the Army is looking for, with all the good characteristics of the heavier 7.62mm but with more lethality and accuracy — and coming in at an automatic 10 percent weight savings.

But work doesn’t end with the projectile, which hasn’t been officially named as the caliber but is the basis for much of current testing.

Lt. Col. Loyd Beal III, product manager for the Army’s crew served weapons program, said the requirements to lighten the load will mean not just a new projectile for increased lethality, but a new case to carry that bullet.

“The requirement is going to drive us to a new type of ammunition,” Beal said. “It’s going to have to be lighter. You can’t just go out and get a brass type, which pushes us to a polymer or some type of steel or something I don’t even know about yet.”

Beal added that while there has been a lot of promise in the development of Cased Telescope Ammunition, advances in other configurations give the Army a menu of options for developing the cartridge combination.

The intermediate caliber development is a simultaneous project with the Army’s plan to make the replacement for the Squad Automatic Weapon, known as the Next Generation Squad Automatic Rifle.

The NGSAR program, officials said, will inform not only a new machine gun, but it will soon follow with a new carbine for individual soldiers.

As the round is developed, Lunoff outlined the Army’s priorities.

First is a combat round, followed soon after by a blank round for training. Those are near-term goals.

Next, the service will need reduced range training rounds, tracer rounds, drill ammunition for weapon cycling, combat tracers and short range “paintball” type training rounds for close-quarter shooting.

SOCOM snipers will see barrel changes as early as next year to the commercially available 6.5mm round that will increase range, lethality, accuracy and reduce recoil.

Prototypes of the intermediate caliber for the NGSAR program are expected to be ready for testing by late 2019, early 2020, with the rifle being fielded to units by 2021, Beal said.

Prediction: they'll screw around for a couple years spending several million dollars on R&D, and end up staying with the 5.56 or another brass cased round.

quote:

Originally posted by arfmel:
Prediction: they'll screw around for a couple years spending several million dollars on R&D, and end up staying with the 5.56 or another brass cased round.

this is always the correct answer

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Someone at LWRC must have been taking folks out to dinner. They were big, maybe still are, on this cartridge.

I understand that there has been significant technological development in ammunition over the past 50 years, and that neither the 5.56 or the .308 are necessarily the best at their given roles. But I just don't have any faith in the Army getting this right.

I don't think they know what they want. This sounds like another search for an FDE (fucking does everything) round that is going to disappoint someone for something, or will me misused by the army brass.

We'll spend a bunch of money, do tons of R&D, build a bunch of new guns, and then figure out that while a soldier can carry more of them, and they fly flatter and farther, but then we will discover that the new round won't do something soldiers need where the .308 worked just fine.

I might be getting cynical in my old age, but this strikes me more as a "do something" activity than a real requirement.

I'll also bet that a 6.8mm cartridge turns out to be larger than what will eventually be wanted for a new infantry rifle, which will probably and ideally be closer to 6mm, which means that the new squad auto and the new infantry rifle won't be able to share ammo.

What is wrong with a squad weapon in the same caliber as the rifle, a medium MG on a bipod, or mount in .30 caliber and an HMG in .50? It seems to me that the Army is trying to get rid of the traditional medium MG, and I think that is a mistake. A medium MG is a better vehicle mounted or static defense weapon than a squad auto.

Grump, get off my lawn... grump.

We'll see...

Improving on the current status quo of M4/5.56, M249/5.56, and M240/sniper weapon 7.62 is really easy, even with COTS items.

The hard part is an improvement significant enough to justify the billions it will take to change out not only the weapon systems but also all the ammo, all the spare parts, all the training and the entire supply chain.

Just like the SCAR and HK 416. Yup, improvement over the M4. Enough that SOCOM will buy them with their own budget vs. getting M4s from big Army? Nope.

Personally, I think it will take a true technological breakthrough, not a mere X percent improvement in lethality and y percent weight reduction vs. 7.62 (but a weight increase over 5.56).

A breakthrough on the level of the brass cased cartridge or smokeless powder or the machine gun. Or, figure out the integrated fire control (that would need a new weapon platform anyway). A day, NV, Thermal scope with auto-ranging connected to the rifle...OK might as well chamber that in 6.8 while we're at it.