What if you took the reverse approach to the NGSW program?

The primary criticism of the XM5 has been that while the unified cartridge is convenient, it is largely unnecessary given the role of everyone aside from the 240B and designated marksman being to suppress enemies, not kill, thus the inability of 5.56 to pierce plate at range is not a concern.

With this logic, what if you went in the other direction? Could the adoption of an even lighter intermediate cartridge be viable? In modern combined arms, particularly when you have good logistics on your side, the role of infantry is primarily for close-quarters indoor combat and to spot targets for artillery or air support, so you could plausibly just give most soldiers something closer to PDWs to lighten their combat load or use the weight savings for portable drones.

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  1. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    You wouldn't even need to downgrade the round much to fit it into a PDW if you used CT 5.56 or something similar. It's short enough to even be grip fed as long as its single stack, but I'd imagine you'd still want to downgrade closer to 5.7x28mm to be more appropriate for a shorter barrel.

  2. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Additional weight per cartridge was pretty much a given, assuming you want more velocity without giving up maximum effective range. Just don't use a fat ass cartridge base that cuts magazine capacity by a whopping 33% to do it.

    Since we clearly don't give a frick about burning out barrels, they coule have loaded a .30 remington sized case pissing hot and zip 103gr 6mm round at similar velocities to 6.8 with minimal loss to magazine capacity and more links per belt too. Or better yet, replace all your belt feds with 6.8 Furry and leave the damn manuever element carbines alone.

  3. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Yes, You would want to go in the other direction. Unfortunately the the US Army is autisticly obsessed with having individual rifle men "overmatch" taliban gpmgs with there carbines. The more obvious and not moronic backwards looking solution is making advancements in loiter munitions, drones and drone delivered munitions, and precision light mortars. Instead they ended up with the clusterfrick that is issuing every rifleman a DMR chambered in a magnum caliber because muh marksmanship and muh rifleman culture.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      This sounds like the 60s all over again with the ordinance department's refusal to simply adopt the AR15 over the M14. Surely after all this time and the congressional hearings over the M16's ammunition you'd think that the procurement culture would have changed a bit.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        While I do agree that a PDW style weapon to allow the individual to carry more precision HE weapons would have been the smarter way to go, there's at least a solid argument that modern smartscopes mean that the engagement range of the rifle will actually be used because no longer do you have to actually be skilled shooter, but instead you just need to laze the distance, put the box in the crosshair, and pull the trigger. This is a pretty dramatic difference from the 60s where you had to make those shots with irons while being an immaculate marksman.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          True, but if you actually have line of sight that far out then you're probably in open field, and if you're in an open field then what is the point of infantry? An IFV is going to make any small arms irrelevant.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Long range suppression via aimed fire to fix the target in place for HE to paste them? I dunno, explosives are the future and guns are gonna get to the point where they're only used because the other guy is too close for you to blow them up. Maybe the engagement distance is more of a side benefit to the main ballistic concern which was being able to defeat current and future body armor while causing significant flesh damage afterwards, which I can see as very important given how much actual PDWs were detested for their ineffectiveness on stopping targets in close quarters from a couple of reports.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              counterpoint: high caliber guns for precise delivery of explosives at shorter and mid ranges

              you still need some way to protect the artillery at closer ranges (hence ships carrying CIWS, for a similar example)

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                I don't think you're getting enough HE in a man portable weapon with an acceptable rate of fire and ammo load is possible with how anemic any sort of HE loaded caliber below .50BMG is, plus you do want to have something that you can use without worrying about killing yourself if you need to push through cramped quarters.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >hence ships carrying CIWS, for a similar example
                it's largely being replaced by SeaRAM on most newer boats, except for the aircraft carriers which appear to be going for 3x phalanx CIWS + 2 x 21 count RIM-116 missile launchers to provide wider coverage with different capabilities (Phalanx is better at intercepting regular artillery/motar munitions vs the RAM missiles which are better at intercepting anti-ship missiles, UAVs, etc.

                But yeah, the LCS class for example get SeaRAM instead of Phalanx since there aren't many situations where they'll be facing traditional artillery munitions, but there are situations they might run into an incoming anti-ship missile

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >you'd think that the procurement culture would have changed a bit
        It did change, a lot, after Maccy boy disbanded the Ordnance Board. But the cult of the rifleman is embedded too deep in Anglo-American culture, so without active controls in place to weed out fudd decision-making, it was inevitable that the same rifleman bullshit would come back and start affecting smallarms procurement again

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Their*

  4. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I had a thought today why don't we just double the number of machine guns then give infantrymen combat shotguns with flechette ammunition it'd be like what the SALVO and SPEW programs wanted optimal hit probability within 100 yards and an infantryman doesn't have to expose himself as long to put out that many shots only problem would be bulky ammunition inability to suppress and ammunition expense which I guess is a lot

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Actually you might be onto something for a different reason, if loitering munitions start to become commonplace then you'll want someone with a shotgun to shoot down incoming drones.

  5. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I've been suggesting the army needs a new PDW caliber and gun for specific CQB units.

    Something like 5.7x28 or just straight-up normal 9mm but with a steel/brass hybrid case like the new SIG 6.8 bullet uses to get super high pressures and thus really fast-moving bullets.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      What would you change about 5.7x28? Just scaling up the pressure for better AP?

      Now that the krauts have finally relented on 5.7x28 being standardized we might actually see some new PDW developments.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >Just scaling up the pressure for better AP?
        Yeah pretty much, it's only ~50k PSI, if the SIG brass/steel hybrid can do 80k PSI that's a solid increase in potential performance.

        If you're really worried about AP you could even develop a tungsten penetrator and the 5.7x28 bullets are small enough that the tungsten wouldn't be TOO expensive (it would still be expensive though).

  6. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    The primary criticism of the whole fricking program should be adopting a SAW/LMG shooting a round with 80k PSI chamber pressure and a non quick change barrel. Very few people seem to bring this up as an issue, in fact calling the LMG an actual great choice while the rifle is moronic.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >non quick change barrel
      Wait really? How many rounds can this even fire before it gets too hot?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >MUH CHAMBER PRESSURE
      midwit detected, any system built to handle a pressure will handle said pressure. That's why blackpowder era cartridges often couldn't handle 10k PSI while modern smokeless can handle 65,000.
      >but muh loud gun!
      not a function of chamber pressure

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >midwit detected
        Turn the detector around, homosexual
        >Increased chamber comes from more powder burning faster, which increases heat
        >high pressure pushes projectile faster, increasing heat from friction
        >heat exacerbates barrel wear, causes thermal expansion, weakens metal parts
        You can't design around thermodynamics, moron.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >it's impossible for metallurgy and barrel treatment to have advanced at all since the 50s when the M240 was designed, or the 70s when the M249 was designed
          They don't have a quick change barrel because metallurgy has advanced t the point where there's no reason to have the soldier fricking around with it rather than an armorer.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >we engineered away the laws of physics
            >source: dude, trust me.

            [...]
            >and a non quick change barrel
            The Army specifically requested SIG to remove it.

            SIG designed it with a quick swap barrel, and they still offer the same gun to other militaries with the quick change barrel.

            The army are the ones that didn't want it.

            The army being moronic instead of Sig is not an argument in the programs favor. The entire program that lead to Sig winning is big army being moronic and building weapons to fight the War in Afghanistan again.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Bro you don't understand bro
            They invented a super alloy bro
            Bro no ones ever used it before bro
            Like bro it blows all other barrel materials away bro
            It's so secret it's classified bro
            It can't apply to any other cartridge though bro

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        I’m not a metallurgist but can’t the surface of the inside of the barrel, particularly the rifling, be affected by increasingly high pressures? I get that you can just make bigger bolts and beefier barrel extensions but is there no limiting factor to how far you can raise pressure?

        Chamber pressure does affect the loudness of a gun. It is proportional to the uncorking pressure and that produces sound. Case volume/powder charge and barrel length being equal, the higher pressure cartridge will be louder.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >non quick change barrel
      Wait really? How many rounds can this even fire before it gets too hot?

      >and a non quick change barrel
      The Army specifically requested SIG to remove it.

      SIG designed it with a quick swap barrel, and they still offer the same gun to other militaries with the quick change barrel.

      The army are the ones that didn't want it.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Why did they request for it to be removed?

        I don't think you're getting enough HE in a man portable weapon with an acceptable rate of fire and ammo load is possible with how anemic any sort of HE loaded caliber below .50BMG is, plus you do want to have something that you can use without worrying about killing yourself if you need to push through cramped quarters.

        Even explosive .50 BMG dedicates a lot of its space to powder so that it can be used from extremely long ranges, could you design man-portable HE round around the idea of a low-velocity grenade?

        Something more like the 25mm grenade program in the 80s/90s but able to take advantage of modern material science. I'd imagine that anything low velocity would be easier to use polymer casing for.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >Why did they request for it to be removed?
          Likely because it's already super quick to change the barrel if you've got ~60-90 seconds of spare time.

          I think you might even be able to remove the disassembly pins and swap the barrel using only a round of ammo as your pin punch.

          And frankly considering the additional weight of the 6.8 ammo, I don't think they expect it to be firing enough to need a quick barrel swap in most situations.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Why would you bother with a dumb round HE when the world is moving to PGMs on the individual squad level? I thought you were advocating for equipping every rifleman with explosive ammo as a way to defeat plates, but if you are talking about using an actual HE round, that role is outmoded. The question was how to defeat enemy plates in CQB without risking killing yourself from a fragment flying backwards, where I could maybe see a meme fat and slow round that's designed with a small explosive penetrator without going full HE.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            You're right, I am not that familiar with explosive terminology, I was thinking of HE as being a generic term which could apply to any kind of anti armor explosive round, but it seems its just simple explosives. Would it be possible to miniaturize an EFP or shaped charge at a reasonable size? Something like an 8-12ga shell?

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              HE = fragmentation kills, in my understanding of the vocab. As to the idea of an EFP, you could probably scale it down but the problems are twofold. One, it would be very expensive to manufacture for every round, and two, it would probably just poke a small hole in the target instead of delivering an incapacitating wound which means multiple shots are required to stop which means the bad guy gets a chance to shoot back and kill you before he realizes he's dead.

  7. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    The fact of the matter is that the M249 SAW is that it's an LMG being used for the role of an Automatic Rifleman. Same problem the soviets had with the RPD which is why it was replaced with the RPK. An auto rifleman should be able to operate effectively and both suppressive fire and rifleman. The M249 should be kept as a crew served light support weapon, the M240B as a heavy support weapon, and AR platform with a longer heavy barrel, comp, full auto capability, and bipod along with a 40 round magazine should be used for the SAW role just like the RPK or BAR was/are used.

  8. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Sure. Sig’s steel base hybrid case design is IMO a small paradigm shift in the world of rifle ammunition. If effectively increases the energy density inside a case per unit volume. Take a 5.7 case, lengthen it a bit, and apply the same hybrid treatment to it. Load it with a .224 or .204 FABRL type bullet (light for caliber, ultra low form factor to make up for the loss of sectional density and retain BC). You could achieve the same external ballistics and penetration characteristics as a 5.56. I ran the numbers through powley computer a while back, and the short answer is that yeah, it could work and be a bona fide intermediate cartridge in terms of range and energy. IIRC a ~30gr 5.7x28 weighs somewhere in the ballpark of like 95 grains. So this couldn’t possible be heavier than, say, 115gr. An enormous weight saving over 5.56 (m855 = ~186gr). An additional benefit would be non-lol-tier quad stack mags that aren’t unreasonably wide and difficult to carry. Another benefit would be low recoil. And this is all if the 2 cartridge system is deemed superior to a single cartridge solution. For a single cartridge just scale sig’s 6.8x51 down. ~10mm case head, ~2.5” OAL, again .224 FABRL type projectile but mid to heavy-ish for caliber (like 70-75gr), in a 20” barrel. Armor/barrier penetration do not scale with caliber, so if anything, the finer shape (and equal SD and velocity) of the .224 may provide even better penetration characteristics than 6.8x51. You’d have something like a 70-75gr bullet, 0.45-0.5 G1BC, going north of 3000fps.. with only minor increases in weight, probabaly offset slightly by the difference in density of steel vs brass.. Crunch the numbers. A 5.56 sized optimum cartridge is possible.

    Idk, maybe there is a reason to the insistence of the army of an increased caliber.

    And speaking of lightening the systems weight, why no ultralight constant recoil machineguns?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >Maybe there is a reason to the insistence of the army of an increased caliber.
      My understanding is that its the range requirement, a scaled down one would presumably start tumbling at the distances they want it to pierce armor at. I'd imagine they started either by scaling down 7.62 or scaling up 5.56 and came to this conclusion.

      I think their range requirement is justified for a caliber that needs to be used by the designated marksman and the machine gunner, but most properties of the round are more questionable for everyone else.

      HE = fragmentation kills, in my understanding of the vocab. As to the idea of an EFP, you could probably scale it down but the problems are twofold. One, it would be very expensive to manufacture for every round, and two, it would probably just poke a small hole in the target instead of delivering an incapacitating wound which means multiple shots are required to stop which means the bad guy gets a chance to shoot back and kill you before he realizes he's dead.

      If only depleted uranium wasn't so controversial, it'd be much cheaper than tungsten and since its pyrophoric you could probably get serious tissue damage out of it.

      Forgot to add. But one more benefit of the 80kpsi 5.7 FABRL is that since the bullet would be light for caliber, not as much powder relative to bore area is needed to propel it to to the desired high velocity. This means a low relative capacity and thus good energy extraction / performance from short barrels. If absolutely nothing else, this would make for a really fun gun, especially in full auto.

      I've always been under the impression that you want larger bores for better short barrel performance and this is why 7.62 soviet, .300 BLK, and virtually every pistol round are larger bore. Is the idea that higher pressure implies that the powder is burning faster and most of it will burn before the bullet exits the shorter barrel?

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Makes sense. But there is such a huge cost to the 6.8x51 especially if it is intended to replace 5.56. Ammo weight, ammo bulk, rifle size and weight, magazine capacity, recoil in full auto, etc. these features have such a massive premium placed on them.. could they not find some other way to achieve the performance they want instead of scaling up? If something works, then how would scaling it up/down change its performance?

        It just occurred to me that wind deflection does scale with caliber so I suppose that is one benefit of a larger caliber. An important one if the whole point is 600yd+ Hit probability.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        This is correct regarding bore size for short barrel optimization. Large bore relative to powder charge. It’s why 300 blackout works so well in short barrels and hits the point of diminishing returns with respect to velocity gained per additional inch of barrel length around 9 or 10 inches, but something like 308 or 300 win mag needs a 20+“ barrel to achieve the same efficiency. The powder burn rate doesn’t change as far as I know, it’s just a matter of the pressure curve in the barrel. If you start with 1 case volume at x pressure (initial gas volume, approx, and starting pressure) and the bullet sweeps 2 case volumes until it gets to the end of the barrel, then the volume has increased 3x and thus the pressure has dropped 3x. Case volume and pressure being equal, The larger bore sweeps more volume and so pressure drops faster .

        That’s one gripe I have with the 6.8x51. It is an astonishingly overbore round and is at home in a long barrel. Yeah I’m sure it’s lethal af from a 13” barrel but it feels seriously gimped. 308 is already slightly more overbore than 5.56 and we know that 5.56 loves barrel length. Now neck that down AND raise the pressure and you get something that needs a 20+”” barrel for optimal performance. Otherwise you’re spitting a bunch of perfectly good gas pressure out the muzzle. The silencer on the M5 is fricking mandatory Jfl imagine how loud that’s gonna be without one.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          I should add that I’m no authority on the matter of internal ballistics, it just seems like that’s what happens inside the barrel. Playing around with ballistics computers and reading up a little on gas port pressure, uncorking pressure, and so on, that’s just the impression I get.

  9. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Forgot to add. But one more benefit of the 80kpsi 5.7 FABRL is that since the bullet would be light for caliber, not as much powder relative to bore area is needed to propel it to to the desired high velocity. This means a low relative capacity and thus good energy extraction / performance from short barrels. If absolutely nothing else, this would make for a really fun gun, especially in full auto.

  10. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    .17 hmr except centerfire and even more magnum, and with tungsten penetrators

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