NGSW and other Military Rifle R&D

DocSolarisReich

Esoteric Spaceman
Yet US Army doesn't have that much artillery when compared to Russia or China.

The US Army doesn't have that much of *anything* when compared to Russia or China.


Ukraine is a great demonstration that the old maxim of "airpower and artillery destroy ground, armor takes ground, infantry holds ground" still holds. You usually need all of these 3 tools to properly fight a war, period. All 3 were used generously there.

No one, least of all me, is saying that doesn't hold. I'm just tired of accepting tendentious arguments about 'but we neeeed this super rifle to defeat body armour' when small arms are only a small part of the battle, not even the most important, and again, the proliferation of body armour is being exaggerated for this argument, as is the actual effect of that armour on small unit engagements.

That argument can get turned on you - in grand scheme of army logistics, small arms ammo, slightly bulkier or less, is a rounding error when compared to arty ammo.

Anyone who says that going from 30 round magazines to 20 round magazines isn't going to end up reducing the number of rounds carried by infantrymen in their LBE at the point of contact and that this is going to mean the amount of firepower available to the rifle section for fire and maneuver is necessarily reduced, is either ignorant of infantry combat or lying. This change will result in Joes dying, not that Big Army cares about that.
 

Zachowon

The Army Life for me! The POG life for me!
Founder
As if we do not have hundred of years of experience on how to conduct an artillery battle. It's actually the one thing that the US Army is actually proficient at, since we still cling to the outdated firepower and attrition centric French model of war.

But Artillery IS still the king, ESPECIALLY in peer to peer conflicts. Massed artillery is the deciding factor of most army group engagements, unless an armored breakthrough can be achieved. The fact that we are too friendly fire averse to let arty fire freely because our precious flyboys might get a booboo is itself an example of how we do not have the stones to actually fight a peer adversary that can actually shoot back.

And the irony of the NextGen let's fucking goooooo wheraboo criticizing artillery for having bulky ammunition that is difficult logistically is too fucking rich. Because that's exactly what NextGen advocates are asking for; bulkier ammunition for small arms.
Uh...
You do know the ammo they are wanting to switch to for small arms is lighter then what we are currently using right? That is a MAJOR thing they are focusing on....
And I mean moving artillery to shooting positions takes time. Time they could be used for firing, especially if counter fire is on the table.

It isnpossible for our fpyboys to be hit by friendly arty fire. We don't wanna risk that for sure.
The US Army doesn't have that much of *anything* when compared to Russia or China.




No one, least of all me, is saying that doesn't hold. I'm just tired of accepting tendentious arguments about 'but we neeeed this super rifle to defeat body armour' when small arms are only a small part of the battle, not even the most important, and again, the proliferation of body armour is being exaggerated for this argument, as is the actual effect of that armour on small unit engagements.



Anyone who says that going from 30 round magazines to 20 round magazines isn't going to end up reducing the number of rounds carried by infantrymen in their LBE at the point of contact and that this is going to mean the amount of firepower available to the rifle section for fire and maneuver is necessarily reduced, is either ignorant of infantry combat or lying. This change will result in Joes dying, not that Big Army cares about that.
We have more modern tanks then both of them do. Nor do they have as many Attavk helicopters...
We also have more up to date equipment then both if them.

And the 6.8 ammo the Army is going to hs to be lighter then 5.56 rounds they are already using. That is part of the requirements given to the companies invovled.
 

DocSolarisReich

Esoteric Spaceman
And the 6.8 ammo the Army is going to hs to be lighter then 5.56 rounds they are already using. That is part of the requirements given to the companies invovled.

Doesn't matter when it's also bulkier volumetrically. This is why they're talking about 20rnd magazines in the first place. And any putative weight savings will just evaporate when commanders find more gear to add to your packing list anyway.
 

Marduk

Well-known member
Moderator
Staff Member
No one, least of all me, is saying that doesn't hold. I'm just tired of accepting tendentious arguments about 'but we neeeed this super rifle to defeat body armour' when small arms are only a small part of the battle, not even the most important, and again, the proliferation of body armour is being exaggerated for this argument, as is the actual effect of that armour on small unit engagements.
While it may not be true now, there genuinely are chances it could become true in 5 or 10 years. Also, as i said, sandboxes aren't going away, be realistic.

Anyone who says that going from 30 round magazines to 20 round magazines isn't going to end up reducing the number of rounds carried by infantrymen in their LBE at the point of contact and that this is going to mean the amount of firepower available to the rifle section for fire and maneuver is necessarily reduced, is either ignorant of infantry combat or lying. This change will result in Joes dying, not that Big Army cares about that.
I doubt they will stick with 20 round mag for long. 25, 30 or even bigger is possible and eventually will happen. Hell, there are 30 round mags even for 7.62x51 right now.
Reminder that even M16 had 20 round mags as standard in its early days.
 

DocSolarisReich

Esoteric Spaceman
I doubt they will stick with 20 round mag for long. 25, 30 or even bigger is possible and eventually will happen. Hell, there are 30 round mags even for 7.62x51 right now.

30rnd magazines for the FAL existed from the inception of the program. No one, not even Canada or Australia who actually issued and used the heavy barrel FAL with bipod in the automatic rifleman role, issued them, because they're fuck off massive and long and prevent you from taking a proper prone supported firing position.
 

Marduk

Well-known member
Moderator
Staff Member
30rnd magazines for the FAL existed from the inception of the program. No one, not even Canada or Australia who actually issued and used the heavy barrel FAL with bipod in the automatic rifleman role, issued them, because they're fuck off massive and long and prevent you from taking a proper prone supported firing position.
Nor did they bother using a different bipod.
Still 6.5 is smaller than that though.
 

DocSolarisReich

Esoteric Spaceman
Nor did they bother using a different bipod.
Still 6.5 is smaller than that though.

The Sig and GD case is based on 7.62x51, just necked down to 6.8. Textron is shorter but thicker than 7.62x51 due to being telescoped. Volumetrically, from a number of rounds per standard shipping rectangular prism and rounds per standard magazine pouch point of view, this is a bad idea.
 

Zachowon

The Army Life for me! The POG life for me!
Founder
Doesn't matter when it's also bulkier volumetrically. This is why they're talking about 20rnd magazines in the first place. And any putative weight savings will just evaporate when commanders find more gear to add to your packing list anyway.
The Sig and GD case is based on 7.62x51, just necked down to 6.8. Textron is shorter but thicker than 7.62x51 due to being telescoped. Volumetrically, from a number of rounds per standard shipping rectangular prism and rounds per standard magazine pouch point of view, this is a bad idea.
They are also lighter then 5.56 in brass
 

LindyAF

Well-known member
It might have made more sense to just build a gun that can handle M855A1 better than the M4 can, since my understanding is that the chamber pressure with that round exceeds 5.56 specs and wears a lot more on the M4.
 

DocSolarisReich

Esoteric Spaceman
Yes, no, sort of. M4s run hotter in terms of temp and energy in the system due to the gas port being closer to the chamber and this tends to put extra wear and tear of the locking lugs. Worse, the current M4 feed ramp extensions cut into the upper receiver don’t feed the tungsten tipped special NATO AP rounds (m995, AP3, AP4) - the extension on the M4 uppers are short and steep and the extra hard tungsten tips tend to dig into the aluminum of the ramp cut.
 

Aaron Fox

Well-known member
It might have made more sense to just build a gun that can handle M855A1 better than the M4 can, since my understanding is that the chamber pressure with that round exceeds 5.56 specs and wears a lot more on the M4.
If it were that simple, then the US Army would have done that already, the problem is, it isn't that simple (or practical)...
 

LindyAF

Well-known member
If it were that simple, then the US Army would have done that already, the problem is, it isn't that simple (or practical)...

I'm sure it isn't trivial, it doesn't seem like it'd orders of magnitude more difficult than the NGSW proposals are. Yes, it'd be somewhat impractical, but not more so than a new rifle already is.

In the videos here the SIG people talk about their gun design and brass-steel hybrid cartridge allowing for higher pressures. So why not have that in 5.56x45 instead of 6.8x51?
 

DocSolarisReich

Esoteric Spaceman
I'm sure it isn't trivial, it doesn't seem like it'd orders of magnitude more difficult than the NGSW proposals are. Yes, it'd be somewhat impractical, but not more so than a new rifle already is.

In the videos here the SIG people talk about their gun design and brass-steel hybrid cartridge allowing for higher pressures. So why not have that in 5.56x45 instead of 6.8x51?

Because that (and/or making custom uppers with steel ramp extension inserts) wouldn’t give SIG a near monopoly on US Army small arms. The MIC wants feeding from the taxpayer trough.
 

Marduk

Well-known member
Moderator
Staff Member
The Sig and GD case is based on 7.62x51, just necked down to 6.8. Textron is shorter but thicker than 7.62x51 due to being telescoped. Volumetrically, from a number of rounds per standard shipping rectangular prism and rounds per standard magazine pouch point of view, this is a bad idea.
Shorter? Wouldn't that make a good setup for 30 rd banana mags? Bulk wise that would be only slightly worse than intermediate AK mags, and that's not a bad position to be in.
 

DocSolarisReich

Esoteric Spaceman
Shorter? Wouldn't that make a good setup for 30 rd banana mags? Bulk wise that would be only slightly worse than intermediate AK mags, and that's not a bad position to be in.

Not tapered like 7.62x39 or 5.45x39, straight walled like 5.56. Not good for feeding from curved mags, same reason why 5.56 AKs suck unless they have special mags.
 

Navarro

Well-known member
As if we do not have hundred of years of experience on how to conduct an artillery battle. It's actually the one thing that the US Army is actually proficient at, since we still cling to the outdated firepower and attrition centric French model of war.

Really, lol? The US Army's last three conventional campaigns - 1991, 2001, 2003 - were textbook maneuver warfare operations. To pretend that they were some kind of WW1-esque "artillery barrages and waves of men going over the top" kind of affair is so out-of-touch with reality it's hilarious, especially from ex-military. But then, I'm talking to someone who thinks Robert E. Howard was a social scientist.

The US Army doesn't have that much of *anything* when compared to Russia or China.

I don't know much about the Chinese, but you're so laughably wrong about Russia you make yourself a joke. Let's look at this (admittedly amateur) analysis:


There is another reason for this. Russian military prowess is slowly losing distance technology wise from the world's current leaders. Note how the vast majority of Russian hardware was built, or in case of newest pieces, at least planned and somewhat prototyped in the Soviet Union and is now being finished off... consider the time it took them to get it done, people in USA complain about F-35, but consider that PAK-FA, aka Su-57 aka Russia's 5th gen fighter is the result of a project started in late 80's as an answer to US Advanced Tactical Fighter program, which has resulted in F-22. But F-22 is in service since quite a long time, while SU-57 is still being developed, with about a dozen planes built, 2 of them serial, its first flight over a decade ago, official introduction few months ago, and its always just so close to being finished and having mass scale introduction into the air force, current ambition being 78 planes, we'll see how downscaled that gets by budget limitations.

Same story with Object 148 aka T-14 aka Armata - an implementation of some nice tech developed in work for Object 195 which was also started in the 80's, worked on until prototype stage in late 2000's and then cancelled. There were grand plans for over 2k of them in 2020, but so far there are only dozens semi-prototypes built, and slow bugfixing is being done with them, yet older T-72/T-90 variants are still being modernized, with clear intent to not replace them anytime soon.

Both of these are also being aggressively offered for export even to not so closely allied but merely friendly countries like Egypt and Algeria, showing the clear desperation for extra funding.

Cam you see the pattern? Despite trying hard with its 4% GDP military spending (while for many NATO countries mere 2% is apparently too ambitious, and USA stands at around 3.5%), and squeezing the industrial, material and technological leftovers of Soviet superpower level military ambitions for everything they are worth, they are struggling really hard to keep up, and inevitably falling behind. Much slower than expected due to these extreme efforts, but they are. What are they going to scare EU with when these thousands of modernized T-72's and their variants are going to be considered as obsolete as T-55's are now? They certainly won't have thousands of T-14's to replace them, because for that they would need to be well into building them already. They may have a few hundreds, maybe around a thousand of them at most, and they will need to split them between the west, the south ("dear allies" and possible rogue republics) and the east (very big, mean and hungry dragon). And what will they be working to supplement the Armata's with? They won't have an ex-soviet program to take as groundwork for it anymore, they will have to do that from scratch, and pay for it, which you can see how they struggle with even for building the things already.

By the size of population and economy, Russia is going to slowly trend to being merely one step, and in time a small step, above Turkey. Which is just one NATO country, with a big but not particularly advanced army, and decent, but not bleeding edge technologically defense industry. Also with nukes. But even Pakistan has nukes, and they are a step below that.

Hence, if Russia wants to throw its weight around in the west (they already have to play defensively in the east, but the south is not doing any better than them) and not get laughed out, it has to be within 10-20 years, perhaps 30 at most, while its military still can punch above its economic weight, because that advantage is decaying with every decade, and it has lost 3 decades worth of it already.

tl;dr; They're lagging behind in every aspect of military technology, and the gap is only widening. They have a dozen 5th-gen fighters, their flagship is a Soviet relic that broke down and had to be towed to its home port, and they're still in the process of decline. And they don't have the money to actually do any R&D or mass-produce any new designs. Take the Armata for instance - very good gee-whiz design with lots of kool features, impressive ... until it turns out they only have about a dozen prototypes right now and they break down travelling a short distance in a straight line (not to mention that it's itself a Soviet inheritance). So yes; the US Army might have less equipment than Russia has left over from the Soviet days when they really had a top-notch army. But almost all that kit is obsolete, very poorly-maintained, or both.
 
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BlackDragon98

Freikorps Kommandant
Banned - Politics
The US Army has been "replacing" the 5.56mm and AR-15/M4 receiver system for literal decades.
All those projects have come to nothing but a waste of millions of dollars.
Like the US Army projects to replaced the M1 Abrams, M2/M3 Bradley, and the M113 APC.
Waste of money.

Closest thing that came to fruition was the XM25.
Real game changer that was field tested in Afghanistan and the troops loved it.
Made those Talib rats scramble off with their tails between their legs.
And then one little failure and it gets yeeted to oblivion.
Coming from the same people who approved the Hasbro M-16, which I find very hilarious.
Almost as if the Cabal up top don't want the balance to tip, so they can keep this sham war in the MidEast going as long as possible.

Another problem is that Congress is in charge of the Army and how much money they get and all that stuff.
Remember the Zumwalt class?
Congressional idiocy cancelled the project despite the fact that doing so would render all the investment worthless and cause the main gun's ammo to skyrocket in price to $1M a shell.
And now they want to chuck a railgun in it's place despite the most up to date system being decades away from being viable.

Another big problem with the US Army's infantry arsenal is it's shotgun.
US Army still uses a pump action when Russia's got a full auto shotgun (Saiga 12) that's just as reliable.
Saiga 12 is so good, even some branches of the US military use it.
While the AA-12 has been literally been available for decades.

Thus, I don't foresee any real changes coming to the US Army's infantry arsenal anytime soon.
By the time Congress gets it's head out of it's ass, I'll be as old as Rip van Wrinkle.
 

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