Status of US Small Arms Projects

Herman said:
Interesting Wiki about the M27 IAR for the USMC. Not sure what the current status of the system is. The Dutch Marines use a similar weapon made by Diemaco (now Colt Canada). They apparently aren't very enamoured by the thing.

Since Iraq and Afghanistan, the 5.56 x 45 cartridge is apparently not being regarded as a 400 meter cartridge anymore, as it was originally intended to be, but it is now being seen as a 200-250 meter round. The suppresive effect is apparently especially suspect. Everybody wants to rather shoot with 7.62 x 51 but no-one wants to carry the guns and expecially the ammunition!
that old M-14 never seems to go away does it.
 
An M27 type rifle in 7.62 x 51 would really be interesting. Something that weighs about 7kg, selective fire and with a full-auto rate similar to that of the BAR, i.e. about 400 rpm. Ideally it should fire from a closed bolt at semi auto the satisfy the accuracy requirement for a DMR, and from an open bolt at full auto, to allow a reasonable volume of full auto fire without over-heating rapidly. Something like this actually existed, as the WW2 FG42 and the Johnson LMG. The FG 42 was actually too light and the rate of fire was excessive. The Johnson was better as far as rate of fire was concerned, was somewhat heavier and had the advantage of a quick-change barrel.
 
jsport said:
Herman said:
Interesting Wiki about the M27 IAR for the USMC. Not sure what the current status of the system is. The Dutch Marines use a similar weapon made by Diemaco (now Colt Canada). They apparently aren't very enamoured by the thing.

Since Iraq and Afghanistan, the 5.56 x 45 cartridge is apparently not being regarded as a 400 meter cartridge anymore, as it was originally intended to be, but it is now being seen as a 200-250 meter round. The suppresive effect is apparently especially suspect. Everybody wants to rather shoot with 7.62 x 51 but no-one wants to carry the guns and expecially the ammunition!
that old M-14 never seems to go away does it.

I believe the M110 has almost entirely replaced it in the Army and the Marines.
 
Herman said:
... The Dutch Marines use a similar weapon made by Diemaco (now Colt Canada). They apparently aren't very enamoured by the thing...

That'd be the LOAW (Licht Ondersteunend Automatisch Wapen/Light Support Automatic Weapon). Colt Canada is now delivering an upgraded, modernized LOAWNLD. Not sure what the details are ... obvious changes are forward rail, 30-rd metal magazines (in place of Diemaco polymer mags), and an adjustable butt stocks.
 

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http://www.modernwarinstitute.org/bullet-innovation-from-and-for-boots-on-the-ground/
 
Herman said:
An M27 type rifle in 7.62 x 51 would really be interesting. Something that weighs about 7kg, selective fire and with a full-auto rate similar to that of the BAR, i.e. about 400 rpm. Ideally it should fire from a closed bolt at semi auto the satisfy the accuracy requirement for a DMR, and from an open bolt at full auto, to allow a reasonable volume of full auto fire without over-heating rapidly. Something like this actually existed, as the WW2 FG42 and the Johnson LMG. The FG 42 was actually too light and the rate of fire was excessive. The Johnson was better as far as rate of fire was concerned, was somewhat heavier and had the advantage of a quick-change barrel.

The closest to that in service at the moment may be the New Zealand Army's Designated Marksman Weapon. It is based on the AR-10, comes from LMT of America and is basically the same as the British Army's L129A1 Sharpshooter, with two additions: a 20" rather than 16" barrel, and a full-auto switch. See: http://kitup.military.com/2011/10/new-zealands-new-designated-marksman-rifle.html
 
marauder2048 said:
jsport said:
Herman said:
Interesting Wiki about the M27 IAR for the USMC. Not sure what the current status of the system is. The Dutch Marines use a similar weapon made by Diemaco (now Colt Canada). They apparently aren't very enamoured by the thing.

Since Iraq and Afghanistan, the 5.56 x 45 cartridge is apparently not being regarded as a 400 meter cartridge anymore, as it was originally intended to be, but it is now being seen as a 200-250 meter round. The suppresive effect is apparently especially suspect. Everybody wants to rather shoot with 7.62 x 51 but no-one wants to carry the guns and expecially the ammunition!
that old M-14 never seems to go away does it.

I believe the M110 has almost entirely replaced it in the Army and the Marines.
Familar w/ SASS. Cost will likely assure the 14s will remain at arms reach.
 
http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2012armaments/Wednesday13969Armstrong.pdf

EBR vs SASS
 
They finally killed the XM25: https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2018/08/13/rip-army-finally-cancels-xm25-punisher/

It, along with the XM8, were a all too typical Rumsfeld disaster.
 
Grey Havoc said:
They finally killed the XM25: https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2018/08/13/rip-army-finally-cancels-xm25-punisher/

It, along with the XM8, were a all too typical Rumsfeld disaster.

Thank you posting, but more questions than answers as both systems did have use and still do.
 
This is a strange saga. The XM-25 was field trialed in Afghanistan and the troops loved it when used as intended for long range counter defilade engagements. There seems to have been some in Army bureaucracy that wanted to kill it and set up a contrived test based on using it for indoors close quarters combat where its size, firing complexity, and explosive effects would make it totally inappropriate.

Finally, the contractor responsible for the “dumb” part of the hardware (Heckler And Koch), refused to deliver 20 test units and appears to have presented legal concerns to the use of air burst munitions.

The Army could have replaced H&K but didn’t. Orbital sued H&K and won $7.5Million but the program is now dead. In the end, it seems the troops in the field get the shaft while unknown bureaucrats celebrate and probably score promotions.
 
I've watched such topics for decades and grew to wonder why people have such a short term memory.
U.S. small arms development has produced the BAR, the Garand and the M79 in the past 100 years.
Nothing else has risen above "underwhelming" or "cancelled".
This is the same as with all their tank, IFV and military helicopter development programs that have been failures after the last successful generation (Abrams/Bradley/Blackhawk/Apache) in the 70's and 80's.

U.S. small arms programs get a lot of attention, but don't deserve it.

The commercial development is much more noteworthy. The work done on accessories (especially sights and the incredibly shrunk lasers) and reduced weight components is quite remarkable. Sub-MOA hunting rifles have appeared at extremely low pricing.
 
fredymac said:
This is a strange saga. The XM-25 was field trialed in Afghanistan and the troops loved it when used as intended for long range counter defilade engagements. There seems to have been some in Army bureaucracy that wanted to kill it and set up a contrived test based on using it for indoors close quarters combat where its size, firing complexity, and explosive effects would make it totally inappropriate.

Finally, the contractor responsible for the “dumb” part of the hardware (Heckler And Koch), refused to deliver 20 test units and appears to have presented legal concerns to the use of air burst munitions.

The Army could have replaced H&K but didn’t. Orbital sued H&K and won $7.5Million but the program is now dead. In the end, it seems the troops in the field get the shaft while unknown bureaucrats celebrate and probably score promotions.
The Army procured the Carl Gustaf M3A1 with air burst rounds for troops in Astan, so in the end the capability of the XM-25 was roughly obtained. Just without all the whizz bang technology.
 
An 84mm recoilless rifle and ammunition for it is certainly much heavier though. Seems less well suited for taking out an individual.
 
Size, weight, number of rounds a single person can carry, number of weapons issued per squad. The Army has been trying to come up with something that objectively amplifies the lethality of every infantry squad and the XM-25 finally seemed to offer a real answer. All previous efforts produced results superior to an M-16/M-4 but not sufficiently superior to warrant a general re-issue.

The Marines seem to have settled on giving everyone a SAW in the form of the M-27. The Army looks like it has too many internal cliques with no real agenda other than stopping anything that might work. Now they are at it again with light weighted guns and telescoped ammo which begs the question of how this will end differently than LSAT.
 
LSAT hasn't really ended up at all. It's still ongoing and the technology seems to be an input into NGSAR.

In addition to the CG round, there are 40mm counter-defilade rounds either available or in development. That makes a lot of sense since they can be fired from existing launchers with improved fire control.
 
The XM25 always looked to me like a solution looking for a problem. While it did some remarkable work on miniaturisation, it did not seem to fit into how an Infantry Section was meant to operate. It was too heavy for most soldiers to carry and too bulky. The round was too small to be really offer an improvement in lethality. Like other supposedly superb new weapons (SPIWS, etc) it came at the wrong time, in the middle of a long war when budgets would be stretched to fulfill the most basic needs.
 
An old Forgotten Weapons video on a 1980s Hughes caseless ammo rifle demonstrator:
 
Everybody wants to rather shoot with 7.62 x 51 but no-one wants to carry the guns and expecially the ammunition!
The poor darlings!

I find it ironic that reading "In 1999, Universal Need Statement was issued for an Infantry Automatic Rifle (IAR). Around 2000, the 1st Marine Division’s 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines Regiment conducted initial, limited IAR trials which confirmed the desirability of a light automatic rifle.
The key difference between a lighter infantry rifle and a more heavily built automatic rifle is the ability of the latter to maintain sustained continuous fire without: stoppages; overheating the barrel or receiver...."

I find it odd that the need and time to continuously reload the magazine feed M27 isn't mentioned, compared to that of a belt feed LMG...I truly thought this operational short coming was inherently identified with performance and the replacement of the BAR in U.S. service.
Where as I totally agree with the short comings of the 5.56mm round vs 7.62mm
Much of these's problems the Australian army solved with their F89 Minimi, by using the Australian SS109 cartridge, mounting
sight and training to employ 5-10 round bursts.
As for the weight of the M249/F89...try carrying and employing a MAG-58 GPMG in an assault...

Regards
Pioneer
 
I find it odd that the need and time to continuously reload the magazine feed M27 isn't mentioned, compared to that of a belt feed LMG...I truly thought this operational short coming was inherently identified with performance and the replacement of the BAR in U.S. service.

It's not that clear-cut. A magazine-fed gun does need to be reloaded more often but it can be reloaded rather quickly. A belt-fed gun doesn't need to reload as often but takes quite awhile to reload when it does. If you are firing from an emplaced position with an assistant who can keep making up the belt before it runs out (or at least prep the reload belts) that's one thing, but for a solo gunner on the assault, the actual gun uptime might be better with magazines -- especially if you go for something like a 60-round drum for the initial loadout followed by 30- or 40-round magazines for reloads. And the gun will be a lot easier to handle without a 200-round belt hanging off it. So if you are using the gun as a base of fire, yes, you probably want a belt. As a support gun in the assault, you may well want a magazine. So in a perfect world, you maybe want magazine-fed automatic rifles in the infantry platoon's rifle squads and a couple of belt-fed GPMGs in the platoon's weapons squad.

The Marines were looking at a drum for the IAR fairly recently.

 
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I find it odd that the need and time to continuously reload the magazine feed M27 isn't mentioned, compared to that of a belt feed LMG...I truly thought this operational short coming was inherently identified with performance and the replacement of the BAR in U.S. service.

It's not that clear-cut. A magazine-fed gun does need to be reloaded more often but it can be reploaded rather quickly. A belt-fed gun doesn't need to reload as often but takes quite awhile to reload when it does. If you are firing from an emplaced position with an assistant who can keep making up the belt before it runs out (or at least prep the reload belts) that's one thing, but for a solo gunner on the assault, the actual gun uptime might be better with magazines -- especially if you go for something like a 60-round drum for the initial loadout followed by 30- or 40-round magazines for reloads. And the gun will be a lot easier to handle without a 200-round belt hanging off it. So if you are using the gun as a base of fire, yes, you probably want a belt. As a support gun in the assault, you may well want a magazine. So in a perfect world, you maybe want magazine-fed automatic rifles in the infantry platoon's rifle squads and a couple of belt-fed GPMGs in the platoon's weapons squad.

The Marines were looking at a drum for the IAR fairly recently.

Thanks for your reply TomS
The fact that 'The Marines are looking at a drum for the IAR fairly recently', only indicates to me the original short comings of the notion of a 30-round magazine in the first place.


Regards
Pioneer
 
They were looking at multi-column/coffin mags for IAR initially, but nobody that I know of has ever made one of those that was reliable enough for a service like the Marine Corps.
 
They were looking at multi-column/coffin mags for IAR initially, but nobody that I know of has ever made one of those that was reliable enough for a service like the Marine Corps.

PMAG 40s seem like the best compromise option, akin to the 42 rounders for the Steyr AUG HBs. They're double-stacks so still reliable but longer than 30s, which complicates putting them on LBE.
 
Maybe they're expecting what is simply an unrealistic degree of reliability? If Surefire can manage to make a mostly-reliable 60 round quad-stack magazine surely other companies can make something comparable with 50-60 rounds. The Magpul 60 round drum still seems like it would be a lot better than just 30 round mags for the fireteam automatic rifleman.

Since the USMC wants to replace every M4 and M16 with the M27 now, they should probably shave off some weight by using a lighter barrel for the other squad roles. Maybe switch to MLOK too for accessories.

Though it seems they are more interested in giving everyone an 8x capable scope and suppressor to make the M27 as heavy as possible for everyone. They seem intent on defeating the purpose of specialization within the squad.
 

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