There's not a ton written about this that I can find, but cracks are appearing in the US military's plan to replace the M4 with a heavier battle rifle designed to defeat body armor. Sig Sauer, which also holds contracts for the current generation pistol and LMG, won a contract last year to also provide the US military with a new rifle. This rifle is to be called the XM7. The civilian equivalent is the Sig Spear. Calling this thing an assault rifle is a bit of a stretch, as it is very heavy and uses heavy ammunition. It turns out that the rifle is failing to penetrate modern body armor without the use of tungsten bullets. Also its reliability is questionable.
It is 1990 and the Pentagon just spent $300 million in a failed effort to replace the M16 platform
It is 2005 and the Pentagon just spent $770 million in a failed effort to replace the M16 platform
It is 2023 and the Army plans to spend $7.4 billion in an effort to replace the M16 platform
Hey now, these "failures" paid for a lot of nice home renovations on northern Virginia!
Damn with jumps in spending like this we'll be spending the entire GDP by 2045 on a weapon that fires gummy bears I guess.
That's straight up 10 billion dollars in todays money to get nowhere. It's kind of impressive to design a system where you can spend that amount of resources for nothing
What exactly is needed from a next gen weapon?
It's a tool that shoots a piece of metal in a direction. It needs to be light-weight, accurate, good for logistics and durable while also having few annoyances for the soldier using it.
At a certain point you meet enough of these factors for it to be good enough and differences between rifles become moot.
recently demonstrated that the rifle seemingly fails, at point-blank ranges, to meet its base criteria of penetrating Level 4 body armor (unassisted). True, the Army never explicitly set this goal, but it has nonetheless insinuated at every level, from media to Congress, that the rifle will penetrate said armor unassisted.
The fundamental problem with the program is there remains not enough tungsten available from China, as Army knows, to make the goal of making every round armor piercing even remotely feasible. The plan also assumes that the world’s by far largest supplier will have zero problems selling tungsten to America only for it to be shot back at its troops during World War III.
lmao
The thing is there is already a gun (the SCAR-H) that does what the yanks want in terms of firing a heavier round for armour penetration, is already combat proven in yank special forces and is almost 2lbs lighter than the XM7. But because it uses already existing ammunition, and because it's not made by Sig (the company with all the contracts) the government rejected it lol.
Is that what happened? Always wondered why that big neat-looking rifle I used to see in all the media just suddenly fell off
Yeah it got rejected from the program. See my other comments in the thread for the whole story
Seriously the new rifle is clowshoes overdesigned when your average grunt wants basically what you described. This fucking elephant gun the yanks are trying to push is so goddam humongous lol.
The irony is that after WWII, all the western countries were trying to move towards smaller, faster, high pressure bullets, while the US insisted on 7.62.
Then UK, West Germany, France all issue battle rifles while the US gets its ass kicked in Korea and realizes they were right, and adopt the 5.56.
From what I've read, it seems that high velocity 5.56x45 tungsten core rounds will also penetrate modern body armor. So why the bigger gun? Shouldn't the US just start mining tungsten?
Shouldn’t the US just start mining tungsten?
Whoopsie, it sure would have been nice if we weren't ramping up tensions with China and Russia, so that they could sell us the resources that we need to fight them. Here's a map showing the sheer scale of how much more tungsten China has. Bolivia is apparently pretty high up in the rankings too:evo:
all the tungsten is located in countries that either hate the US or isn’t pro-US
which dumbass approved this contract lol
Well the point of the gun/contact was to be able to go though the armour without needing the tungsten bullets, but it failed at that. It still needs them.
They basically spent billions of dollars to travel in a massive circle lol. Just US DOD things
I can’t help but notice that the United States isn’t even on the map lmao
Canada is though and I'm sure they'd be fine sharing (because otherwise Canada would just become the US Northern Territories).
I think the threat of invasion gets a lot less threatening if it hinges on you supplying the actual bullets needed to do it. Just say no, what are they gonna do, shoot you? They cant
not hard to defend against the plane that crashes anyways. Just let'er go
I think the green tip 5.56 rounds only penetrate up to level 3+ armour. The army wanted to penetrate level four with this new 6.8 ammunition in base form, which is designed to stop a black tip 30.06. So more penetration than armour piercing 5.56. They have failed at this.
Level four armour, in terms of ammunition fired by assault/battle rifles, can only be defeated by the modern 308/7.62x51 black tip with a tungsten carbide core. Not the old black tips, which it is rated to stop. The whole point of making the 6.8x51 round was to be able to defeat level four armour without needing this core by increasing efficiency, and it's failed at that.
I think the green tip 5.56 rounds only penetrate up to level 3+ armour.
Ah. I am likely mistaken. Either way it seems that an extremely dense penetrator is necessary. When the contract was announced I do remember reading that the new 6.8 military rounds were to be constructed with a steel head to allow higher chamber pressures. Even this innovation was insufficient to produce the desired results.
the new 6.8 military rounds were to be constructed with a steel head to allow higher chamber pressures
I think the core of the idea was exactly the higher pressures - instead of making the bullet itself more capable of penetration, you just shoot it out with a lot more energy by having really overpressurized rounds. But greater pressure is harsher on the internal components, and they needed to increase the pressure to such a high level that conventional brass cases couldn't actually handle it, hence the steel.
There's also some other things brought about by the overpressure - all the NGSW entries had these fancy suppressors to help with the ridiculous recoil & muzzle flash that the guns produced, and the wear on the barrels was so high that the US actually adopted a normal, non-overpressurized variant of the ammo for training, since otherwise you'd end up having to constantly change barrels even during peacetime. Of course, this normal ammo doesn't actually have the recoil or ballistic properties of the fancy type that's supposed to actually be used in combat, meaning that US soldiers would spend most of their time training on a gun that shoots much softer than what they'd be using in real conditions.
And in the end, as aaaaaaadjsf said, this didn't actually even work - so now they have a round that's heavier, recoils really hard, destroys barrels, and it can't even meet the penetration goal.
One thing that I still don't understand is why they went with a steel head on a brass case rather than just a full steel case. Steel and brass have similar density, so steel case of the same thickness would have roughly the same weight. Are they able to make brass cases thinner? Or maybe the superior recyclability of brass cases was a concern?
Brass is used in a lot of mechanisms where friction needs to be reduced. It is kind of like the Teflon of metals. As a relatively soft metal, if you have a mechanism where brass interfaces with a harder metal, the brass will incur the majority of the wear, without gumming up the works nearly as much as aluminum (another relatively soft metal).
the wear on the barrels was so high that the US actually adopted a normal, non-overpressurized variant of the ammo for training, since otherwise you’d end up having to constantly change barrels even during peacetime
cant they just make the barrel out of a harder metal? chromium/titanium/tungsten alloyed with steel?
Then the gun gets even heavier, it's already almost 10lbs to try deal with all the extra forces.
This was just one incredible grift. Right back at where they started essentially.
there have to be parts that can be replaced by plastic. even if those parts are subject to heat, some thermoplastics are stable upwards of 300C. parts like magazines, the handrail, the stock (that one is probably already plastic). how is it this hard to design a gun thats better than one designed in the 80s? hell, maybe just have a barrel with an inner shell of titanium-steel alloy and an outer shell of any old steel
Yeah that was the point of the 6.8. But as you said, it wasn't enough. And now they are back at square one, needing tungsten core ammunition to defeat level four body armour.
Seems like the most pointless exercise. Unless you're a military contractor, of course. You get a nice new car and house lol
Imagine taking the global supply of Tungsten and exclusively processing it into bullets.
can we just accept that, without fundamentally new technology, guns aren't going to get meaningfully better?
yawn theyve been failing to replace the m4 since probably before the early 00s
Yeah it's the XM5 or XM7 now lol. And it's just as bad, might be even worse this time because they re engineered the ammunition to achieve nothing new.
XM just stands for experimental. I don't know how they number them though.
i remember a period where the xm8 was put into a shit ton of games as a "future weapon"
in fact iirc mass effect's default assault rifle is literally just an xm8 with some colorful LEDs
I too can invent an armor-defeating next generation weapon if I'm allowed to use tungsten bullets.
Also fuck it just bring back SPIW, make every gun a shotgun
I can invent armor defeating next generation weapons if I'm allowed to use a pipe and some other household products.
Either way, I think red-dot sights have done more to advance gun tech than any material or mechanical advancements. Just getting the bullet to go where you want it seems as important as whether you can overcome armor or cover.
with a heavier battle rifle designed to defeat body armor
Doesn't this already exist as a modern weapons platform? The SCAR-H is supposed to be that.
Lmao so instead of spending money on an existing gun that actually works at the thing they want it to do they decided to go with a gun that didn’t yet exist and has failed to do what they want? :amerikkka-clap:
In the end, yeah.
Basically the army wanted to defeat level four body armour, and no 5.56 round that the M4/16 fires, even the armour penetrating ones, can do that. So they want to replace these guns.
The only round that was available that can be fired by assault/battle rifles, that can defeat level four armour is the modern black tip 7.62x51mm round with a tungsten carbide core. The SCAR-H can fire this, it is chambered in 7.62x51. But the army and sig thought they could increase the efficiency of the 7.62x51 to a point that it could defeat level four armour without needing the tungsten core. That is what the point of the 6.8x51 round, and the new Sig rifle was.
It turns out the increase in efficiency is not enough to penetrate level four armour. They still need the tungsten core to do that, even with the 6.8x51 round. So the army is in the exact same situation as before, needing special ammunition to defeat the level four body armour. Only now with a gun 2lbs heavier than the SCAR-H, firing some over-engineered ammunition that's no better than the ammo the SCAR-H fires.
Penetration this, penetration that, just give everyone body armor and BARs with .30-06 ball ammo again so they can have long range boxing matches
Okay unironically make weapons less deadly
An injured person is out of the war anyway! Long range boxing matches is the future.
The FN SCAR was one of the rejected submissions for the NGSW contract for which the Sig Spear was selected.
But the SCAR is lighter (7.9lbs vs 9.8lbs), a proven weapon already in use with special forces and can fire the 7.62x51mm round. The 6.8x51mm round they want to use in the XM7 is already failing body armour penetration tests, so what's the point of using it then?
This sounds like some contract fuckery, in that the new weapon has to be made by Sig.
It is interesting that in the last 5 or 6 years Sig has secured contracts for basically all the new light arms. I'm not a big enough gun nut to have an opinion on whether the contracts were deserved based on the relative quality of their submissions.
Me neither, but even with my base knowledge it sounds like the US DOD wanted to dump money into manufacturing a whole new ammunition type and gun, and the Sig contracts allowed them to fulfill that role with the 6.8x51mm round.
From what I've gathered from gun community scuttlebutt, it's a combination of very aggressively pricing their bids, and being very savvy about navigating and circumventing the testing process. So we're in this place of "maybe Sig's stuff is good? maybe they can actually make enough without cutting corners?"
They're timing this exactly correctly, as the US military is in the long ongoing process of refitting all their equipment after two decades of war on terror shit using tech from the 80s. Stuff like scopes and accessories of course are a huge bonanza, and legitimately a powerful force multiplier. But the actual tech of the shooty bits has plateaued for decades, and we see stuff like the m17 and m5, which are, at best, slightly nicer than what they were previously using.
It also has a ridiculously long barrel and recoil mechanism/supressor to try control the recoil of the new ammunition. Its just mad that they want this thing to be a standard issue service rifle lol.
My assumption is that you can hit a guy wearing body armor with the rifle and it will do damage.
That was the point, but it's failed at that.
They wanted to penetrate level four armour (rated up to black tip 30.06) with the new 6.8x51mm ammunition without needing any special cores or armour penetrating ammunition, due to the increased efficiency of the 6.8x51 vs the 7.62x51.
But that increased efficiency is no where near as big as they thought it would be, so the new 6.8x51 ammunition cannot do that. Just like the 7.62x51 ammunition, the 6.8x51 needs a tungsten core to penetrate level four armour. Which makes it's entire existence pointless.
The military is in the exact same situation as before, needing the special ammunition to defeat level four body armour. And they can't go back to 5.56 ammunition for the new guns, because even green tip armour penetrating 5.56 can already be defeated by level 3+ body armour.
:think-about-it:
Lol. It is heavier, so honestly probably the only thing it does better than the other guns.
Probably the F-22 which was a genuinely groundbreaking design, although it's so expensive to build, fly and maintain that they will need a new air superiority design anyways if WW3 acutally happens.
no new guns until some actual major reliable tech advancement (and good luck in our current griftsystem. expect the quantum leap to come from China).
digital-electric firing system maybe, or actual inexpensive smart munitions capable of being fired from an easily modifiable conventional weapon. coilguns if (and only IF) some major leaps in energy storage and/or generation are made. more likely we get some new form of propellent and get hyper-velocity firearms first, which will take care of the body armor thing with less tungsten! :bender-tungsten:
We have electric ignition (Sparklock) systems in commercial use, they just require batteries (and are unreliable in cold weather etc) so they're generally only used on autocannon and larger systems by militaries. And hobbyist muzzleloaders for the steampunk vibes.
yeah those are pretty cool i can see the tech becoming more reliable. my ideal next-gen firearm would be sparklock & caseless, with a battery in the magazine at the bottom of the propellent block (and a backup in the stock).
next-next-gen would be same system but now a full "smart gun" with the barrel and receiver free floating in some kind of "memory fluid" capable of tiny adjustments in response to windspeed, muscle twitching, or target data. maybe special rounds with a tiny gyrojet as a "second stage" after the propellent is used up to create a true hypervelocity round. oh and TUNGSTEN lol.
sci-fi shit though.
Guns that always work >>>>>>> gun that works marginally better 50% of the time
Russia is proving that against nato as we speak
Defense contracting is the easiest job. Just throw out some dumb shit to impress boomers and literal kids in the military and you get to be a millionaire
You can just declare that the laws of physics aren't real and get a 7 billion dollar contract lmao.
"We going to re-engineer the bullet so it can go though armour without needing to be armour piercing" was the entire project here lol.
The grim reaper knocking meme but its the InrangeTV mud shovel going from small arm to small arm.
Edit: Although the article is a bit unfair in that it just says that it fails one round into a mud test, but thats with the mud going in with the dust cover open. It is worse with mud than the M16 cause that uses DI, but theres a lot of other modern rifles that also fare pretty badly without their dust covers.
I think InRangeTV has always been pretty insistent on not taking mud tests too seriously. It's not a scientific test or anything.
Yeah, its pretty much the worst case scenario imaginable as far as mud goes, and also usually just done once.
It is funny they keep being referenced by random media outlets trying to make a point about guns, I think a clip of an AK variant got featured on RT(or another East European media org) once? Which is particularly funny cause the AK usually fares pretty poorly.
I've heard a decent bit of backlash that pentagon wars is kinda bullshit, idk the Bradley might still suck but the guy its all about is apparently mega brain wormed, he thought planes shouldnt have radar cause "It cant tell a tank from a truck full of civilians" and instead the pilots should just have really good eyes.
Of course the main guy has mega :brainworms:, he was a senior officer in the imperial war machine. They all do.
In fairness, the Pentagon response to this reasoning is "we don't care, kill'em all".
I definitely see arguments against radar because it's a kind of crutch to get around poor scouting and ground intelligence. Also, in the modern era of supersonic missiles, what does radar get you, exactly?
what does radar get you, exactly?
an anti-aircraft missile lock on your plane
Of course it’s bullshit: it was made by liberals. I would still recommend it just because it dramatizes that basic functionality and safety are subordinate to maintaining the system of expenditures in military R&D. The movie itself doesn’t question the need for a particular armament or what is given up to create it just that it took too long and cost too much to develop.
Fingers crossed for a new addition to the list of Things in the US Military that Don't Work in the Rain.
