It looks like the Army is trying to get a new rifle in a roundabout way, much like how the USMC is procuring a new rifle under the guise of a machine gun. What do you think?

Remington's M24A2 (a product name, not a military designation) is a possible candiate for the M24 upgrade.

Here are a few interesting specifications for the new M24 ...

• Trigger pull must be between 3 - 5 lbs. Operators must not be able to adjust the trigger.

• Magazine must have a minimum capacity of 5 rounds. It must not touch the ground when the bipod legs are at their shortest setting.

• The rifle, with minimum length of pull set and with suppressor attached, cannot be longer than 48".

• It cannot weigh more than 17 lbs with magazine full and with day optic and suppressor attached.

• MRBS (Mean rounds between stoppage) must be at least 1200. The MRBEFF (The mean round between essential function failure) must be at least 2300.

• The minimum accuracy must be 1 MOA (at 100m), although they are hoping for at least 0.8 MOA. These days 0.8 should be easily achieved.

• The rifle and optics must survive a 5 foot drop test.

• Iron sights that mound on the rail system must be included.

• The day scope must have variable magnification. The minimum magnification must be from 3.5-6.5x. The maximum magnification must be from 14-25x.

And let’s not get carried away with the sea state, says DT contributor Joe Buff. A multi-thousand ton destroyer is a pretty stable platform in any but the most tumultuous sea states and makes dialing in a shot on an admittedly tossing life raft more doable — a smart platform for the Team to operate from.

Well sure a big ship is a more stable platform, but that does not make it any less of a feat of marksmanship. Missing could have meant the difference between the American captain surviving and being executed by the frightened pirates.

We also have some information — unconfirmed, though we’re working on it — about how the shots were taken and what was used. Our firearms expert Eric Poole who writes for Tactical-Life posits that the snipers were using the MK-11 .308 sniper system manufactured by Knights Armament Co. This weapon is awesome, by the way (I’ve shot it a few times myself) and, if this is indeed what the shooters used, would mark a major, high-profile departure from legacy thinking about sniping which holds bolt-action rifles as the Gold Standard or marksmanship.

I also said that I though the Mk 11 was the likely weapons system.

Bolt actions and semi-auto’s can both be made accurate enough. Bolt actions can be made more accurate cheaper, but semi-autos give a much better rate of fire. The Army is sticking with the M24 Sniper Weapons System, based on the Remington 700 bolt action, for now because of cost.

Poole figures the DevGru frogmen removed the “overpowered” standard-issue Leupold scopes and opted for the Aimpoint CCO augmented by the PVS-14 night vision monocular. Though the SEAL version of the MK-11 Mod 0 is issued with suppressors, it’s unclear whether the operators used them, but I’d bet a million bucks they did.

Good point about scopes. The range was relatively close, so I don’t think the sound suppression of a suppressor would make a huge difference to the situation, but the decrease in recoil would be advantageous when making followup shots at a moving target. I think it is safe to assume these guys know now their weapons performs when suppressed (unlike video games, in real life suppressors make no change to the external ballistics of the projectile, but it does change the weight balance of the firearm)

One other question (among many) remains open…were there three shots or four? Poole reasons, and Allen and I agree, that someone had to shoot through the lifeboat window first, then fire the kill shots. My limited knowledge of ballistics leads me to believe the snipers could not rely on the effectiveness of the one window shot to actually strike the target where it was aimed based in the potential deflection of hitting that probably plastic (glass) window.

There are a lot of things we do not know.

Thanks to Paul for the link.

M-24 Sniper Weapons systems have been fielded to the U.S. armed services since 1987. Remington has been maintaining these weapons in Ilion, New York, and will be responsible for M-24 upgrades in the future. Remington’s proposal to upgrade the M-24 sniper rifle would save the federal government nearly $6 million dollars.

No word if the systems 10×42 Leupold Ultra M3A scope will be upgraded to something fancier and more expensive.

Hat Tip: Tactical Wire