#Sdm

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.

The US Army will be holding a second Industry Day for its Next Generation Squad Automatic Rifle program, which seeks to replace the M249 light machine gun with a new longer-ranged, lower signature automatic rifle. The Industry Day will be held at Picatinny Arsenal on December 12th and 13th. The Army is also accepting white papers concerning NGSAR by January 16th, 2018. The updated NGSAR listing is available here.

The Firearm Blog would like to extend its thanks to reader and contributor Giorgio, who lent his journalistic services to us at this years IDEX conference in Abu Dhabi in February. Thanks, Giorgio!

As part of Kalashnikov Concern’s new product rollout for the Russian government’s ARMY 2016 military technology conference, the company has announced a new designated marksman’s rifle, named the SVK. Earlier this year, an article in PopMech.ru showed off a Kalashnikov Concern design called “SK-16”, but an anonymous source told TFB that development of that rifle has ceased, due to problems with the design, and the new SVK will be taking its place. The SVK uses similar receiver architecture to the Kalashnikov Concern MA, also announced this week, with a steel upper receiver spine supporting a Picatinny-type rail and providing a guide rod for the operating group, as well as rigidity for the whole firearm. The rest of the receiver is made of polymer (aluminum on the prototypes), and contains the fire control group and the magazine housing.

The venerable SVD “Dragunov” (after its designer, Yevgeny Dragunov) was one of the first successful squad designated marksman’s rifles ever developed, and it spawned numerous copycats and competitors. In the more than half-century after it was developed, however, virtually no successors to the design have been developed in Russia itself – until now. The Russian 164th edition of Popular Mechanics carries the story on a new precision carbine.