Claiming Army will adopt a 6.5 for rifles, “…this new round is 30% more lethal than 7.62mm NATO.”
I have my doubts on that claim but:
Claiming Army adopting 6.8 for SAW:
https://www.tactical-life.com/news/us-army-6-8mm-weapon-systems/
That 30% claim comes with the qualifier of “downrange” performance that they defined as 1200 yards. At that distance, then yes, it is an accurate statement. Bring the distance to 800 yards, then it’s inaccurate statement. 7.62 holds the near/middle range energy advantage. That crossover point is of course dependent upon the actual projectile and load being used as well as environmental conditions. All that said, in the areas that .308 holds that advantage, I don’t think that the difference is going to cause anyone to look at the hole in their chest and say “I’m sure glad it wasn’t a .308!”. However, the 6.5 round discussed isn’t going to do anything beyond 1200 in reality. 6.5 CM in most high BC loadings will start to go subsonic somewhere after 1400 yards. Not that the average GI can use it, but at least it’s there.
IMHO, I don’t think it is a big game changer either way, but it is nice to see progress.
It seems evolutionary vs revolutionary improvements.
Always fighting the last war…
Yeah, ain’t that the truth!
I don’t see the telescoping ammo, in its current stage of technology, getting picked up. It seems to be trading a bit of weight loss for quite a bit of bulkiness. I think its a step in the right direction, but I don’t know if it’s ready for the real world yet.
It seems pretty certain that the SAW is on its way out, and it seems like every other year, they’re talking about replacing the M4, so it’s going to happen eventually. The thing I wonder is if the next gen rifle will be an AR variant like the HK416, or will they go for a whole new system built around the 6.8?
What? Functioning polycased or polymer case telescopic ammo is pretty revolutionary. IF they can get it work.
But until is actually proven to work, we’ll be stuck with 5.56 and 7.62 NATO.
IMHO the caseless/poly/telescoping/etc. ammo isn’t ready for primetime yet. That’s what a lot of these proposals seem to revolve around.
At least in their animated video, showing how it works, probably ok in a belt fed, but my guess is for precision work its a disaster. The bullet jump into the barrel is crazy…
I was speaking in terms of the calibers and such, but fair points. I don’t know much about that tech.
But they are one in the same, you arent getting one without the other.
What the 6.8mm round will end up looking like
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I’m a materials guy. A plastic that is stable and won’t degrade and at the same time will ignite and burn and won’t foul the gun…
maybe I am over estimating the size of these rounds, but it seems they are twice as big as a conventional brass cased round…
So they are being designed to save weight, yet they are, again without measurements, twice as large.
So instead of 1 ammo can, you need to carry 2. Or instead of 1 pallet you need 2.
I dont know if weight vs. volume is a good trade off.
That end looks like it would collect crap and muddlike crazy. They need to circumcise that thing.
Textron’s promo sheet:
Lol nobody is saving any weight. The only result of reducing the weight of something joe has to carry only means joe will now carry something additional. Big green never goes backwards in this regard.
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This whole thing seems like it’s just another OICW: A technology concept that, after millions of dollars spent, is going to get cancelled as they find that the end product is going to be too expensive and creates more issues than it solves.
Engineering…only thing I can think of is a fixed ejector at the 8:00 and a long extractor at the 5:00 to pull out the case and facilitate removal from the chamber.
They have been working on this since the HK G11 back in the 80’s; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heckler_&_Koch_G11 They’ve had 30 years to get the Technology perfected.