I didn't see this posted elsewhere. I wonder if it's going to be produced by Lake City or a third party.

https://www.americanrifleman.o...er&utm_campaign=0517

From the article it sounded like Winchester got the contract.

Just glad they're finally letting our warfighters use JHP, regardless who manufactures it. Will the 5.56 be next?

This is going to be the real game-changer, vs. just the switch to a modular sidearm.

Last I checked the M882 9MM Ball round it had Winchester head stamps.

The current 9MM hollow point is a 147 Grain Hollow point DODIC A260, Nomenclature: 9mm MOD 0 MK243. The ones I handled had Federal head stamps. I didn't know it existed until I saw it issued to MPs and I looked it up. They are restricted to CONUS LE and "other" uses.

The article says the new ammo will be made by Winchester. This is consistent with the current method of buying pistol ammo from commercial sources as evidenced above.

I suspect that the new rounds and nomenclature are probably an effort to update/re baseline the standard issue rounds. I am interested to see the actual specifications, real world use cases and if/when they get to units.

The article actually does a good job of dispelling several myths on treaty compliance. All I will add is that the current Army Law of Land Ware Document FM 27-10 hasn't been updated since before I was born. AKO had a 1960s edition. There have been SJA decisions like the 2010 decision to allow MPs to carry JHPs on CONUS military installations. I suspect that the status quo will remain and line units will get FMJs unless there is a major change in Army regulations and thinking. With GEN Miley and SGM Daly at the top, there is a chance.

I am interested to see what NET/NEF will look like with the new pistols and if the Army updates it's pistols training program. If they don't update and/or do a bad NET/NEF than it's business as usual and they needn't have even purchased a new pistol. The only folks who conduct good pistol training in my experience is SOF and the Military Police. There may be others, but I haven't seen it yet.

I do know that a new training program is in the works. As with everything military, it will take a bit.

Interesting article. I do need to ask who or what is a plenipotentiary?

There goes WWB availability...

quote:

Originally posted by CD228:
The article actually does a good job of dispelling several myths on treaty compliance. All I will add is that the current Army Law of Land Ware Document FM 27-10 hasn't been updated since before I was born. AKO had a 1960s edition.

When I was in the Army, favorable SJA opinions were hard to get, and I suspect it’s no different now. First was the Never say “Yes” to anything and you can’t get in trouble yourself mindset, and many SJA attorneys simply didn’t understand the law. I had one major tell me that it was illegal to record conversations without a court order if both parties weren’t aware of the fact, and that was only one example. And arguing or even showing them contrary decisions in black and white usually did no good unless they were outranked by another military lawyer.

Regarding ammunition, I clearly remember an opinion by one SJA years ago that .30 caliber open tip match bullets were prohibited by law of warfare treaties. That was of course changed later, but it was an issue for a time.

It seems to me that there is little practical reason to improve .30 caliber bullets (though it would be nice), and evidently the newest 5.56mm NATO ammunition used by the US works okay, so I doubt that there will be much push to go to expanding bullets for rifles, but this is a good development.

This is somewhat related.

http://www.thefirearmblog.com/...17-modular-handguns/

If it is true, $207 is a bargain.

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:

quote:

Originally posted by CD228:
The article actually does a good job of dispelling several myths on treaty compliance. All I will add is that the current Army Law of Land Ware Document FM 27-10 hasn't been updated since before I was born. AKO had a 1960s edition.

When I was in the Army, favorable SJA opinions were hard to get, and I suspect it’s no different now. First was the Never say “Yes” to anything and you can’t get in trouble yourself mindset, and many SJA attorneys simply didn’t understand the law. I had one major tell me that it was illegal to record conversations without a court order if both parties weren’t aware of the fact, and that was only one example. And arguing or even showing them contrary decisions in black and white usually did no good unless they were outranked by another military lawyer.

Regarding ammunition, I clearly remember an opinion by one SJA years ago that .30 caliber open tip match bullets were prohibited by law of warfare treaties. That was of course changed later, but it was an issue for a time.

It seems to me that there is little practical reason to improve .30 caliber bullets (though it would be nice), and evidently the newest 5.56mm NATO ammunition used by the US works okay, so I doubt that there will be much push to go to expanding bullets for rifles, but this is a good development.

It's my understanding that the OTM issue went to the big SJA. I saw a copy of his finding on-line once, I forgot to down load it. Now all ammo goes through legal review before it gets to the troops. Also, according to my old SJA, "If the Army issues it, You can kill people with it". So for example if the bad guy is shooting at you with an AK and you are a TOW gunner it's totally legal to shoot him with a missile because he is trying to kill you and the Army has already approved TOW missiles for enemy consumption. He was rather bemused that the SIGO asked him about that, but I digress.

The SJAs are a lot easier to work with now. The secret is not to tell them what you are going to do, its to ask them "how do I meet my intent in a legal manner?" A good SJA will tell you what you need to do to make it legal. In 2010 we were calling in gunships on mosques, while other units were bitching about the ROE. Our lawyer pointed out that if the enemy was using a mosque and shooting from it, the mosque was no longer a protected structure. YMMV.

M855A1 has it's problems, but it shoots rather well. I am sure that they will work the bugs out. Part of the problem was the lack of info and the plethora of bad info. I will also point out that M855 for all it's issues killed a lot bad guys during it's service life. There are also a number of other 5.56mm rounds in the system like MK 262, MK 318, M995 "Black Tip" and the fabled "brown tip".

The Army keeps missing what LE and the Civilian sector long ago learned. Shot placement is the critical factor in lethality with bullet design secondary. If the Army took marksmanship seriously our weapons qual would look more like the USMC.

quote:

Originally posted by CD228:
A good SJA ....

Of the many SJA attorneys I dealt with, I knew one who was excellent, one who was good, and another who wasn’t terrible.

Glad your experiences weren’t all bad either.

quote:

Originally posted by David Lee:
Interesting article. I do need to ask who or what is a plenipotentiary?

It's a ten dollar word for the biggest hog in the trough. More specifically it's the person in charge of the program.

quote:

Originally posted by CD228:
If the Army took marksmanship seriously our weapons qual would look more like the USMC.

USMC quals aren't particularly impressive these days.

Even with the use of iron sights in rifles in the USMC being a thing of the past.

quote:

Originally posted by sns3guppy:

quote:

Originally posted by CD228:
If the Army took marksmanship seriously our weapons qual would look more like the USMC.

USMC quals aren't particularly impressive these days.

Even with the use of iron sights in rifles in the USMC being a thing of the past.

Do they still tell you were the round actually hit? With the Army qual you can hit the 300 yard target in it's right foot and still get expert. The pistol qual gives you 40 rounds to hit 30 targets.

quote:

Originally posted by CD228:
Last I checked the M882 9MM Ball round it had Winchester head stamps.

Back in the late 80's we were issued Israeli manufactured TZZ head stamped 45 ACP. Winchester and IMI had a strategic partnership for small arms ammo production and there was a lot of IMI pistol ammo in the supply system at that time. I don't know if the new XM1153 contract is going to tax Winchester's domestic production capacity but if it does expect to see some IMI appearing in the supply chain.

quote:

Originally posted by SgtGold:

quote:

Originally posted by CD228:
Last I checked the M882 9MM Ball round it had Winchester head stamps.

Back in the late 80's we were issued Israeli manufactured TZZ head stamped 45 ACP. Winchester and IMI had a strategic partnership for small arms ammo production and there was a lot of IMI pistol ammo in the supply system at that time. I don't know if the new XM1153 contract is going to tax Winchester's domestic production capacity but if it does expect to see some IMI appearing in the supply chain.

During the hot and heavy years I saw WIN head stamped 5.56mm rounds show up for training purposes CONUS. If you sniffed around in the right corner of the web you would hear that Winchester was importing both Israeli and South Korean Ammo to fill the training gap for the DOD. I believe you are correct that there will be Izzy ammo un the system, but I am betting that it will have WIN head stamps. Unless WIN seriously built up their capacity these last couple years.