The Army Wants A New 7.62mm Infantry Rifle
BY Herschel Smith
7 years, 3 months ago
The US Army has released a solicitation for a new 7.62mm infantry rifle to replace the M4. The Interim Combat Service Rifle program, known to be in the works since April of this year, would replace M4 Carbines in use with combat units with a new weapon in the 7.62x51mm caliber. The new solicitation requires companies to submit 7 weapons plus ancillaries for testing, and includes the promise of up to 8 Other Transaction Agreements (OTAs, non-contract transactions), leading to the eventual selection of 1 weapon for a contract of 50,000 units.
The primary justification for the ICSR program are improved ceramic body armors that are resistant to existing forms of small arms ammunition. The logic goes that the Army’s new 5.56mm M855A1 roundcannot penetrate these new armors, and therefore the service must switch to a new round. However, this is misleading, as current 7.62mm M80A1 is incapable of penetrating these body armors either – and specialty tungsten cored ammunition in both 5.56mm and 7.62mm calibers are capable of penetrating armor of this type. The US Army seems to be banking on its yet-undescribed XM1158 ADVAP round to bridge this gap – however Chief Milley himself admitted in testimony to Congress that the ADVAP’s design could be applied to either 7.62mm or 5.56mm ammunition.
So the bolt action sniper rifles aren’t good enough. They want a semi-automatic in 7.62mm (presumably the NATO round). And also presumably so that the standard soldier can be as incompetent shooting 7.62mm as she is shooting 5.56mm, while she also has to carry more weight. Sounds like a plan to me.
Or the Army could actually teach their soldiers to shoot 5.56mm with proper fire control and using fire and maneuver small unit combat tactics, techniques and procedures, sort of like they’re supposed to. That way, they could let the designated marksmen shoot the long range shots while they conserve their ammunition for a protracted engagement. Oh, that’s right. I forgot. The Army doesn’t have designated marksmen – the Corps does.
A new cartridge and/or a new gun can’t do what poor doctrine doesn’t do.
On August 12, 2017 at 12:36 pm, hightecrebel said:
It’s been standard policy for a long time to just throw gear at a problem until it’s sufficiently muffled as opposed to the extra work of doing more training.
Besides, until you get the idiots who THINK they know how everyone should train/teach out of the way even training won’t do any good.