#Infantry

NATO member and ally the Republic of Estonia has released a tender with up to €75 million (roughly $86 million USD) for nearly 20,000 new rifles in both the 5.56mm and 7.62mm calibers, according to reports from IHS Janes’ and other outlets. The new contract is intended to supply both brigades of the Estonian Land Forces with new weapons, replacing their aging Ak4 (license-built Swedish G3s) and Galil rifles.

At the 2017 National Defense Industry Association small arms conference in April, the US Army revealed its efforts to produce new improved varieties of 40mm low velocity ammunition for the M203 and M320 grenade launchers. Product Director for Medium Caliber Ammunition Christopher Seacord’s presentation at NDIA lists three new types of 40mm ammunition: XM1166 High Explosive Air Burst (HEAB), XM1167 Door Breach (DB), and XM1168 Short Range Anti-Personnel (SRAP):

According to a Military.com article, an element of 1st Battalion, 6th Marines will be deploying a 13-man squad of Infantry fully equipped with M27 IARs, suppressors, drum magazines, and other pieces of experimental gear. Called the “Über Squad”, it will be chosen from companies within 1/6, and will use the gear through an entire workup, training, and deployment cycle to Europe. From Military.com:

After over 30 years of using the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, it seems the US Army may be moving away from the concept of squad-level belt-fed automatic firepower in favor of a lower-capacity but more precise (and probably magazine-fed) weapon. In a recent Special Notice posted to FBO.gov, the US Army formally announced its intention to replace the M249 with a magazine-fed weapon, dubbed the Next Generation Squad Automatic Rifle (NGSAR). The Special Notice also announced a classified set of Industry Days for demonstration of potential NGSAR weapons, to be held July 25-27 of this year. The new Special Notice seems more similar to a Request for Information (RFI) than a Request for Proposal (RFP), and explicitly states that no contracts will be awarded or offers accepted:

By this point in the second decade of the 21st Century, unmanned aerial vehicles armed with precision weapons are not strange or unusual. Indeed, they have so profoundly impacted the popular psyche as to have had pop songs written about them. However, these systems generally make a distinction between the aerial vehicle and the ordnance itself (e.g., an MQ-9 Reaper and its AGM-114 Hellfire missile payload). Then, what is unusual is a weapon which combines these two systems into one, a device that is both UAV and missile, both bomb and surveillance drone. Israeli news outlet iHLS reports on a device that is exactly that: The UVision Hero-400EC, a loitering reconnaissance drone that can fly directly into an enemy position to deliver a 10 kilogram explosive warhead.

Gentlemen, it has begun: The Silencing is upon us.

Much of the recent discourse regarding the future of infantry combat has centered around the long engagement distances encountered during the Afghan campaign, and the rise of designated marksmen as key elements in the infantry squad. However, arguably more important than the long-range ambushes of the Taliban were the urban engagements in both that campaign and the operations in Iraq. It seems the highest echelons of the US Army agree, as Chief of Staff General Mark Milley commented recently about the future urbanization of the battlefield (via Military.com):

The bullpup rifle tends to be – when it comes up – a pretty divisive subject among “tactical” rifle shooters. Bullpup detractors dismiss the layout as clunky and awkward, while its proponents cite the advantage of longer barrels and shorter overall lengths. Both camps are often correct in their criticism, but there is another aspect of the bullpup that I think often goes poorly addressed – if it is addressed at all. That is the subject of balance.

Military procurement is a very precise business, in which the costs, drawbacks, and benefits of different ideas and proposals are weighed in the balance, and those that don’t make the grade are relegated to research status or cancelled outright. It’s also a very messy business, rife with opportunities for graft and corruption, and one that by its nature is prone to wasting money. It’s certainly true that our current system of military procurement badly needs reform to prevent waste of taxpayer dollars and to ensure the best equipment is purchased at the right price.

Last year, we wrote about a new integrated night vision optic system that would allow data from a US Army soldier’s weapon-mounted night vision device to be fed directly to his helmet-mounted night vision monocle. Such a system could be a major step forward in night vision combat optics systems, which are today one of the most important advantages possessed by Western and especially United States infantry. Now, it seems this project has borne fruit: The Army has ordered advanced night vision systems of this variety from DRS Technologies, a US-founded, Italian-owned company making the Enhanced Night Vision Goggle (ENVG) system. The company published a release through its news outlet, DRS News:

In the first two parts of this article on a new long range infantry rifle paradigm, we painted a picture of what sort of weapons would be needed to maximize the infantry’s long-range capability, in theory allowing them to achieve “overmatch” versus enemy infantry armed with existing .22 and .30 caliber weapons. We created estimates for both the cost and weight of the infantry rifle, and we also examined the problem of training soldiers to maximize their capabilities with the new longer-ranged weapons.

More and more, it seems like we are on the cusp of a break in the small arms “plateau”, and that major changes may be coming both in the technology and use of infantry small arms and ammunition. The biggest harbinger of this coming paradigm shift has been Picatinny’s Lightweight Small Arms Technologies (LSAT) program, now superseded by the Cased Telescoped Small Arms Systems (CTSAS) program. As CTSAS and similar programs make headway, it seems increasingly likely that some sort of next generation lightweight ammunition paradigm will force a shift in infantry small arms, and that the current fleet of metallic-cased ammunition and the weapons designed to fire it will have to be replaced by new designs.

How can one balance the trade-offs inherent in ammunition design to create a true one-caliber infantry weapon system that is both effective and lightweight? This is a question I’ve been exploring for close to a decade, and writing about for over four years. The question is extremely compelling to me because so much is demanded of the answer: Unlike with two-caliber systems, all the needs of the infantry must be met with one single caliber configuration, so each and every dimension must be carefully measured to allow the lowest possible weight, which is arguably the most important single characteristic of small arms ammunition.

We’ve discussed a lot of different rounds in this series so far, but today we’re going to discuss a round that actually has a shot of being adopted (at least in some form) by the United States military as a next-generation small arms ammunition configuration. That round is the .264 USA, developed over the past few years by the Army Marksmanship Unit (AMU).

Previously, we talked about the Soviet 7.62x39mm caliber, which was paired with the famous Kalashnikov automatic rifle. With its much heavier bullet, larger caliber, and lower velocity, the 7.62x39mm contrasts heavily with the US 5.56mm caliber, and US weapons manufacturers took note. The .300 AAC Blackout is in many ways similar to the 7.62x39mm caliber, being – like the 6.8 SPC – inspired by it, but designed to add new capabilities. The origin of the Blackout lies in the earlier .300 Whisper, a wildcat developed by JD Jones from the .221 Remington Fireball to fire both heavy subsonic projectiles and lighter supersonic rounds with ballistic characteristics similar to the 7.62x39mm, while being highly compatible with existing AR-15 type rifles. Versus the older Whisper, the Blackout is little changed, but its introduction, backed by the force of Advanced Armament Corp, Remington, Barnes, and other companies, made it virtually an overnight success on the US civilian market.