U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Adam Hoyle, 321st Special Tactics Squadron combat controller, prepares to fire a SCAR-H assault rifle Nov. 18, 2013, at a shooting range.. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Kyla Gifford/Released)
Military.com: Army Launches Competition for More Powerful Combat Rifle
U.S. Army weapon officials just opened a competition for a new 7.62mm Interim Service Combat Rifle to arm infantry units with a weapon potent enough to penetrate enemy body armor.
"The Army has identified a potential gap in the capability of ground forces and infantry to penetrate body armor using existing ammunition. To address this operational need, the Army is looking for an Interim Combat Service Rifle (ICSR) that is capable of defeating emerging threats," according to an Aug. 4 solicitation posted on FedBizOpps.gov.
The service plans to initially award up to eight contracts, procuring seven types of weapons from each gunmaker for test and evaluation purposes. Once the review is concluded, the service "may award a single follow-on Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) based contract for the production of up to 50,000 weapons," the solicitation states.
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WNU Editor: More evidence that advances in body-armor is going to force the development and adoption of more powerful combat rifles.
4 comments:
Isn't this the third or fourth such competition in the last 20 years? Maybe they can make a decision from some good choices this time.
They aren't looking for a new catridge based rifle. Just looking for a rifle to shoot some 7.62x51, mainly the new M80A1 ammo. And this is suppose to be an interim solution. So why not just go with one of the AR-10 based rifles. Can meet the weight requirement and ergonomics are exactly the same as the ar-15 based wepons used now. So learning curve will be almost non existent. Plus many of the parts are interchangeable between the two (buttstocks, grips, some small parts.)
Right now body armour can be defeated with rounds going faster 3200 FPS, the 55 Gr 5.56 can defeat an A500 plate under 100 yards. The goal is to get a round that will penetrate body armour out to at least 300 meters, if you go with a smaller bullet you get the velocity but you lose that velocity very quickly because of the light bullet, if you go bigger then it's a matter of not being able to carry enough ammo, 7.62x51 is stopped by A500 as is 30-06, 303Brit, .270 Win will penetrate under 60 meters, .338 Lapua will penetrate, as will 50 BMG but you cant carry a lot of it I know. It's a real problem, in the short term accuracy training, forget center of mass, go for the face and extremities, the groin, and if the have their back to you the ass, but the level of marksmen ship will really have to be upped. Another solution is to go to a smaller round with a medium velocity and higher rate of fire so that you hose them down causing a number of hits,a .177 caliber at about 2400 fps. It's an interesting problem there is a lot of people in the military and the shooting community working on it and have been working in it for sometime now, I don't know if there is a solution Physics is a bitch.
The above is true with ball (plain lead) ammo. You can penetrate a plate going slower than 3200FPS. Just look at videos of the M80A1 round (~2900FPS). And that's with a steel penetrator. You go to a tungsten penetrator, you have denser and harder penetrator. I hope eventually they look at some different cartridges though.
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