Kit Up reports that the engineers at the Army’s Picatinny Arsenal will be testing eight LSAT Machine Guns and 50,000 rounds of the LSAT caseless ammunition. From Kit Up blog …

The engineers at Picatinny are sending eight M249 SAW-like prototype machine guns that are specially-designed to fire the cased telescoped ammo for testers to put through the paces, including shoot house runs, field maneuvers and range quals at the squad and individual level. They’ll have 50,000 rounds on hand for the tests.

…

Phillips said the tests at Benning will begin in September and last about three weeks. Then the program is in limbo since it received no money for fiscal 2012. Phillips hopes that if the tests go well, it will get the notice of Army weapons developers and get some cash funneled its way for more weapons and a bigger trial.

Caseless ammunition does away with the brass or steel cartridge cases. Instead of being held in the case, the bullet is held by compressed smokeless powder that is burn’t up in the chamber and barrel. The advantage of this is cost and decreased weight.

UPDATE: LSAT comes in two varieties, caseless and plastic cased, this is the latter.

[ Many thanks to Lance for emailing me the link. ]