#Research

Recently, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives published a major report entitled the National Firearms Commerce And Trafficking Assessment (NFCTA). This report looked at the state of the firearm industry in the United States. It contains information on many interesting trends in America’s gun trade and is worth a detailed study.

The U.S. Army’s Combat Capabilities Development Command plays an important role in guiding the future of our warfighters’ lethality and survivability. Their mission statement is “To provide the research, engineering, and analytical expertise to deliver capabilities that enable the Army to deter and, when necessary, decisively defeat any adversary now and in the future.” To this end, they engage in scientific pursuits like advancements in weaponry, exploring quantum communication, improving electronic warfare effectiveness, and working on new ways to purify water in the field. At the heart of these endeavors lies the Army Research Laboratory. These military scientists have been responsible for many breakthroughs in areas such as grenade-launched drones and better 3D printing. Now they have teamed up with academic scientists at Purdue University to develop lead-free explosive material that could be used to produce nontoxic ammo, as announced in a July 16th press release from Purdue.

Taking the lead by the Cody Firearms Museum, a unique gathering of firearms museum curators took place in Cody, Wyoming. Representatives from museums such as the National Firearms Centre in Leeds, Springfield Armory National Historic Site, NRA Firearms Museum, Autry Museum of the West, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Smithsonian Armed Forces Gun Room, National Museum of the Marine Corps, and many other fascinating museums that have a sizable small arms collection showed up to talk guns. For the second year in a row this varied and diverse group of folks discussed the ins and outs of some of the more peculiar difficulties of curating firearms in museums. How do you work in a severely challenging political climate? How do you deal with NFA pieces that come in as unregistered? To what extent are researchers allowed in the collection? What are the ethics of restoring museum pieces?

There are endless tactical black or multi-cam bags on the market claiming to be “low profile”. These same bags display numerous Velcro patches, have pals webbing on the outside of the bag, and scream gun! However, the industry is starting to listen to those wanting a quality pack in a very non-descript package. In order to accomplish this task, the bag has to be able to sit next to your standard North Face or Jansport pack and not look substantially different. Let’s take a look at the Haley Strategic FlatPack.

In today’s episode, we follow Miles to Shot Show 2018 Media Day at the Range and visit Caracal USA.

At an AUSA breakfast conference yesterday, US Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley gave us a hint at exactly what the US Army’s next rifle could look like, and the focus was on extended range capability. The rifle, Milley said, will give a 10x improvement in capability through the type of ammunition, optics, and degree of chamber pressure specific to it, with the aim of providing the soldier a weapon with much more accuracy and range than the current M4 Carbine. Milley also clarified that the term “10x” was not intended to be a precise measurement of the capability growth, but rather a term indicating significant improvement. The new rifle will come as part of an effort that also includes new artillery, tanks, aircraft, and virtual reality training facilities, Milley said.

It’s almost 3 in the morning, and I’m lying awake in bed thinking about small arms. I’m trying to put everything out of my mind so I can go to sleep and wake up in the morning, go to the range, and bring you some raw ballistic data. So of course what pops into my head is an almost complete article about just why the Army’s latest whizzbang rifle program is doomed to collapse in a heap. All I have to do is write it.

In the comments section of my recent Brief Thoughts article regarding caseless ammunition, there was a discussion about whether the cookoff issues of caseless would also be problem for LSAT-style polymer cased telescoped ammunition. Based on conversations I have had with subject matter experts regarding polymer cased ammunition in general, I noted that a lower cookoff threshold is one of the challenges I would expect CT ammunition developers to face. However, after some back-and-forth in the comments, I decided to contact LSAT/CTSAS program officer Kori Phillips regarding this issue (as it was not something I covered in my three-part interview with her), and she kindly agreed to allow her comments on the matter to be published here on TFB. They are below:

When the subject is the future of infantry, the conversation inevitably turns to one thing: Powered, armored exoskeletons. Since the publication of Heinlein’s Starship Troopers in 1959, the concept of an armored suit with enhanced mobility from an internal power source has fascinated military futurists, quickly solidifying as a military fiction staple, and even appearing repeatedly in official “future soldier” concepts from armies and companies around the world.

Caseless: The ammunition designer’s holy grail, and the engineer’s worst nightmare. It would obsolete the cartridge case overnight, resulting in cheaper, lighter, and more compact ammunition. Weapons would be able to carry 50, 60, or more rounds in slim, inexpensive magazines, and expel them at a rate of fire much higher than current weapons are capable of – not only because the ammunition is lighter and therefore more could be carried to feed such thirsty guns, but because the extraction and ejection cycles of the weapons themselves could be eliminated.

At the 2017 Association of the United States Army annual meeting (AUSA 2017), US Army Research, Development, and Engineering Command (RDECOM) presented a concept for the US Army’s future soldier of the 2030 timeframe, which promised everything from powered exoskeletons, to futuristic optics, to individual network capability. I captured the Command’s two future soldier concept demo videos that were running at the conference, embedded below:

We have already seen the 6.5mm CT Carbine prototype brought out by Textron for the 2017 Association of the United States Army annual meeting, but TFB also got an up close and personal look at Textron’s cased telescoped machine guns. Textron has two different cased telescoped belt fed weapons in testing right now: A 5.56mm CT light machine gun, and a 7.62mm CT medium or general purpose machine gun.

The US Army’s new centralized procurement organization has been named: In his address at the Eisenhower Luncheon at the 2017 Association of the United States Army, US Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley announced the creation of a Futures and Modernization Command (FMC), which would oversee the process of research, development, testing, evaluation, and procurement (RDTE&P) from start to finish. In his address, General Milley outlined a new process which would fundamentally change the current procurement model to a new one based on that used by US Special Operations Command:

US Army, what on earth are you doing?

At the 2017 Association of the US Army (AUSA) Annual Meeting, Textron System displayed for the very first time their firing 6.5mm CT Carbine prototype. Previously, only non-firing mockups had been shown to the public, but after successful tests this summer the real thing was brought out to show at the conference, where TFB got its first look at the weapon.