Posted on 04/08/2011 9:58:52 AM PDT by re_tail20
Kit Up spoke with Army Secretary John McHugh this morning at a round table interview with top defense scribes in DC.
I pinged him on the glacial pace of the improved carbine program (the replacement or redesign of the M4) and he seemed to indicate that while he sees the program as proceeding apace given the requirements and bureaucratic hurdles with such a massive change the end result will be a "replacement" of the M4, not just a revamped version, say, with a gas piston operating system or tweaked components.
We have a two part plan to over time replace the M4 with the next variant, whatever that may be. We are working the requirements for a [request for proposals] for an eventual replacement of the M4 and a new generation of personal carbine.
Now, you'll remember that my friend Matt Cox over at Army Times got his hands on a briefing slide circulated by PEO Soldier Brig. Gen. Pete Fuller on the Hill showing the near-term improvements the service planned to make to the M4, including a heavier barrel, improved trigger pull, a gas piston system and ambidextrous controls.
A lot of gun watchers think this is a straw man that the Army will erect to impede the fielding of a real replacement for the M4 that there's a large institutional pull in the service to wait until that "leap ahead" technology presents itself for a full-on replacement of the standard-issue carbine. I did sense some frustration with PM-level officials that this requirements process was getting bogged down (particularly on the subcompact weapon) and that some folks were impeding the process.
Not so, says McHugh:
(Excerpt) Read more at kitup.military.com ...
LOGIC says: Add queers and females into the gun toting troops and you will have to reduce the weight of the weapons.
I mean the trigger pull.
Sorry.
I still don’t think there’s a good auto trigger out there.
There’s no picture to post because there’s no replacement yet.
It’s just an officer talking about what’s on his “wish list” for the future.
Nice sampling!
I’ll take one of each please!
Are these higher caliber rifles?
That’s the real issue I believe and
the secondary would be maintenance.
How do you feel about the SCAR?
There is, but it's not on an M16/A1/A2/M4.
The ACR and XCR are both 5.56 mm, 6.8 mm, and 7.62 mm, as barrels and bolts for each caliber can be interchanged in their state of the art frames, unlike the M-16 and M-4, which are only 5.56 mm each.
The SCAR is interchangeable too, but only 5.56 mm and 7.62 mm as of right now.
Each of these is piston operated, and thus much more resistant to dirt, dust, mud, sand, and snow. unlike the M-16 and M-4 and their direct gas operation.
The 7.62 mm version of the SCAR is already in production and use with Special Operations Command, so it has a head start.
The trigger’s great, if you can hold it on target ;)
I fired one of the Brits L2A1s back in the mid-1980s and the FA feature was practically useless, much like the M-14. Of course, it was a precursor to the SAW and worked OK if you sat on it.
Friday night I was watching footage of firefights in Aghanistan on Youtube and ran across a video of German troops engaged in combat. They had a futuristic looking rifle I believe called the G36. I also noticed a video of Swedish soldiers in a firefight and they had their own rifle which was unusual looking. Do you know anything about their rifles and if so, how do they compare to our M4?
Not suggesting this for our combat troops, but a .22 rimfire that fired on full-auto only, at a high cyclic rate, would be a hell of a weapon. Think something like a Calico. You can carry 500 rounds of .22 LR IN the weapon, since a brick of 500 .22 LR only weighs between 3-4 pounds. At that weight-to-number of rounds ratio, 20 pounds of ammo works out to about six bricks.... 3,000 rounds. For comparison, 20 pounds of 5.56 only gives you 600 rounds.
I fired one of the Brits L2A1s back in the mid-1980s and the FA feature was practically useless, much like the M-14. Of course, it was a precursor to the SAW and worked OK if you sat on it.
I taught the NATO weapons familiarization course at the 5th Army NCO Academt at Bad Tolz in Germany during the mid-1960s, including the British small arms in use by the British Army of the Rhine. All the British L1A1 rifles I had available- about 30- were semi-auto only, the Brits using their rechambered L4 Bren Guns or L7 A2 beltfeds, known as the Gimp. The Brits routinely referred to the L1A1 as the SLR [pronounced *slur*] for *self-loading rifle. Most of the Brits who got to try the German G1 version of the FN-FAL or the H&K G3 on full chat figured out pretty quickly why their L1A1s were semi-only, and blessed their Brens. I ran into a couple of *old hand* senior NCOs who had used early FALs before the British were producing their own rifles {at Enfield and the BSA motorbike works] in North Africa who were quite happy with the full-auto option for the FAL, as were the Gurkhas, who kept their burst very short, two or three rounds at most.
The Australians also used their own version of the L1A1, but some of these had the full-auto selector and ejector block fitted, as did all of their L2A1 heavy-barrel autorifle versions of the L1A1. That may be the version you recall, or there may have been some full-auto L1A1s in use outside the NATO areas of Europe. But not with BAOR, in my experience.
Note that the standard M2A1 .50-caliber size ammo can, which holds 105 rounds of .50 M2, 840 rounds of 5,56mm or 1000 rounds of M1911 .45 ball, will very nicely carry about 5000 rounds of .22 Long Rifle. Often, it's the bulk of the ammo as much as its weight that causes the difficulties.
By the way: the Calico M100 comes with either a 50 or 1000- round helical magazine fitted as standard. And I've seen one with a 3-shot burst trigger, so one that would give five or ten rounds per trigger pull would seem equally possible. Add in a compact flash and sound suppressor, and you'd have a pretty neat tool for quiet work in the dark.
They work well enough that the guards at the Pentagon use them. So too do several Special Ops groups who can use ANYTHING they want, and the Mexican Army has set up a plant to manufacture a copy of the things, which they call the Xiuhcoatl or FX-05. Which means we'll be seeing them used in drug gang hits in the U.S. Southwest along the border before too long.
By the way: don't sell the Korean K11 short, either.
Way cool.
Check out Patriot Ordnance Factory...P308. Awesome.
They appear (to me at least) that they are setup for suppressors. Are they?
The G36 is. And I'd suspect that it's very likely that the Mexican FX-05 Xiuhcoatl is too; it's development was followed VERY closely by the Mexican Special Forces community, who had input into its design. And the Mexican boffins are working on an air-burst grenade delivery system for it similiar to the US XM25; whether a 25mm like the US version, a 20mm like the Korean, or other is unclear at this time. But I suspect that once in the hands of troops, the Zetas drug gang hitmen will have them shoirtly thereafter.
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