The US Army has released a solicitation for a new 7.62X51mm infantry rifle to replace the M4. This can get very interesting!
Opinions?

BREAKING: 7.62mm Rifle to REPLACE M4 Carbine - Interim Combat Service Rifle Solicitation Released by US Army - The Firearm BlogThe Firearm Blog

Probably an RFP - request for proposals.
Just testing the waters.
Make work project for all those AMC staffers now that the M17 is done.

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-jwk-
US Army '72-'95

Yet another example of Government (and especially military) wasteful spending........

Gentlemen, start your engines.
Let the political backstabbing and passing of unsealed envelopes under tables begin.

https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=c3a0df63ed769522a0cdf3df867774e8&tab=core&_cview=1

A solicitation issued...

Rest of article didn't make much sense, and gave no further information
on the solicitation.

Hmmm, the entire idea to go to the 5.56 from the .308/30-06 was weight, and the ability for a soldier to carry more ammo. Do they plan to make the soldiers stronger or battles won't need as much ammo?

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H Richard
SWCA1967 SWHF244

It ain't going to happen.
They may put out solicitations for a new 30 cal to supplement the M4 in special situations but I'd bet the pension that it's not going to replace it entirely.

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Dave

Well, what the heck? We need a shot in the arm as far as some new rifles go. It was getting to be same-o-same-o after the M&P10 came out.
Competition is always a good thing for the market.

Check Military.com. Not planning to replace the 5.56 M-4. Apparently the plan is to add 7.62 to,the mix for rapid deployment forces. 50,000 weapons anticipated.

France is switching the the HK416 or whatever they call it. I thought that was interesting. Wonder if Famas parts kits are going to be a thing in the future.

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Smith..and Wesson..and myself.

Why not just start making M14s again?

Russian Vepr and Super Vepr: .30-06 and .308
Different barrel sizes, all with RPK choices inside and out.

I personally feel they want more power at longer ranges.

My choice.

In for results!

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Sounds like pretty solid proof that our leadership has learned absolutely nothing since the rejection of the .280 British and the compromise .280/30 as the NATO standard round in the early 1950s.

Like the more recent 6.5 Grendle and 6.8 SPC, the .280 Brit offered solid intermediate cartridge performance with a near optimum projectile diameter and weight.

Instead we forced the two large and too heavy 7.62x51 on NATO and then within a decade started introducing the too small and too light 5.56mm NATO.

Now we've got a chance to finally get the caliber right, and we are, once again, screwing it up by going back to the 7.62x51.

Don't get me wrong, I love that round in the M1A and in my Remington 700, but it's a very poor choice for an assault rifle cartridge to be used in combat.

At least they're getting away from that piddlin' varmint round and getting a real rifle cartridge.

And your avatar has a .30 carbine in it....

I'll admit that I was very biased against the M16A1 and it's varmint cartridge when I was first issued one. However, it grew on my over time. The M16A1 was light, very handy and plenty accurate out to 350 meters. And the original M193 cartridge was quite effective in term of wound ballistics out to its fragmentation range of about 200 meters and was still quite effective out to it's maximum tumbling range of about 250 meters.

The problem was that the US military decided that it needed the SS109 projectile in the M855 cartridge, to enable it to penetrate a steel pot at 500 yards - as simulated by a 10 gauge steel plate. M855 was successful in that it will do so out to nearly 600 yards compared to about 450 yards for M193, however the heavier 62 gr bullet reduced the muzzle velocity as well as the maximum fragmentation and tumbling distances with the round, compared to M193, which meant in an M16A2, the maximum fragmentation range was reduced to about 100 meters and the tumbling range was reduced to about 150 meters.

Worse, the military decided it needed the shorter 14.5" M4, which further reduced the velocity to the point that the M855 round will only fragment out to around 50 meters and tumble only out to around 95 meters.

And of course the US military complicated the issue by adopting a 1-7 twist barrel to accommodate the much longer M856 tracer round, when 1-9 twist was ideal for the M855 round, and 1-7 was too fast for accuracy with the 55 gr M193 round.

There ain't no .30 Carbine in my avatar pic, but I'm with Grayfox on this - I sure wish the U.S. military was using something a bit more potent than the 5.56x45. Something like the 6.5 Grendel could still use the M16 platform and be a much more potent round.
When I was humping ruck in the Army, I can guarantee you that carrying 400 rounds of .30-06 ammo instead of 5.56 would not have made my knees, back, and feet feel any worse.

Back to the 7.62mm for a rifle? Makes sense. Always best to use fight the next war with the weapons/calibers of the last war. JMHO. Sincerely. bruce.

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<><

When I was a kid, every boy had an air rifle and learnt shooting with it, eventually growing into a rimfire rifle and going on from there with family involved teaching. Those days are over and from my military experience as a rifle instructor I can tell you that recent recruits are getting much better scores with the 5.56 than with the 7.62 Nato. The M4 is an easy to shoot rilfe; equally suited for women and girly men.

I own one and love mine.

The Army is asking for prototypes. Given the past history of Army rifle procurement, they will get the prototypes, test them, then... nothing.

Keep the M4's and convert to 300 AAC. All is needed is to replace the barrel.

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Life Is A Gift. Defend it!

Posted by BB57:
Hey, don't knock it. Its a fine little rifle out to 150 yards or more. AND its 30 caliber. Not to mention that its shorter and lighter than an AR.

I'm quite familiar with the M-16. Uncle Sam put several of them in my hands between 1972 & 75. That's why I don't own one and likely never will.

Of course if things ever should go bad, I'll grab one of these.

Don't get me wrong, I like the .30 carbine just fine. I've own a couple of them since the mid 1980s.

I shot my first ever tactical rifle match with an M1A in the battle rifle caliber division and an M1 Carbine in the light rifle division. The light rifle division consisted of about 20 shooters with AR-15s, a and full of AKs and SKS and one gentleman shooting an HK-93 (who took 1st place). I took second, which meant I beat every AR-15 in the field, which was sweet given that they totally discounted me and my M1 Carbine.

The irony is that I'd showed up for service rifle match and noted the tactical match would fit in my schedule so I bought an M1 Carbine, three GI surplus 30 round magazines and 2 boxes of surplus M1 carbine ammo. I used 10 rounds to zero and a get a feel for the rifle and used the rest for the match.

With all that said, none of the targets in the match were more than 200 yards downrange, and while the .30 carbine is very light and handy, the .30 M1 Carbine round lacks both the range stopping power of the M193 round. I could shoot clean scores across military ranges as the M193 in the A1 provided minute of man accuracy out to the 350m ranges we shot back in the day. The .30 Carbine would not have scored well as all at ranges of 250m to 350m.

I agree with you on the caliber choice. The 65. Grendel and 6.8 SPC are near perfect - and are basically history reheating itself.

In the 1950 when NATO started looking for standardized round, the British proposed the .280 British, which launched a 140 gr bullet at 2,500 fps, allowing for less recoil, less muzzle blast and much better control in full auto fire than the 7.62mm NATO, while also providing near optimum wound ballistics in terms of tumbling of the round on impact.

The US wanted a .30-06 class round, despite it being nearly uncontrollable in full auto fire, and requiring a larger, heavier weapon. They US also rejected the compromise .280/30 which could have been made on existing tooling for the .30-06 case, and they also rejected the T-65 prototype of the 7.62mm NATO necked down to 7mm - a 7mm-08 so to speak. The 7mm-08 with a 140 gr bullet a 2800 fps would have still been a bit much for full auto, but it would have been and improvement over the 7.62mm NATO.

The 6.5 Grendel offers performance comparable to the old .280 British with a 130 gr bullet at 2,500 fps, or a 120 gr bullet at 2,700 fps.

So does the 6.8 SPC, with a 120 gr bullet at about 2,500 fps.

In essence, we are not only re-inventing the wheel, but we're also once again screwing up and adopting a rifle that is using a cartridge that is too large for the select fire, assault rifle role.

Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. The rest of us are doomed to have to sit back and watch.

I was involved in the early phases of the 6.8mm development, and in my opinion it is far superior to the 5.56mm and nearly the equal to the 7.62mm in performance. But it never got much traction with the military and never will. There is an enormous sum invested in 5.56mm and 7.62mm weapons and ammunition now in inventory, and it will be a near-miracle if the U. S. Military (most notably the Army) would ever abandon them for any other caliber. About 99.99% probability that they will never be replaced in our lifetimes, at least for general combat service. SpecOps may be a different story.

...and that's the truth, no matter how much more suitable 6.5 Grendel or 6.8 SPC might be as heavier assault rifle cartridges.

It's all about taking back that half kilometer that we lost with the 14.5" M4. The Brits decided to issue a 7.62 NATO DMR made by LMT. I assume that there are one or two per platoon. That surprises me as the modernized SA-80 (L85A2, don't bother going over the old reliability issues) has a 20" barrel than the M4 and should work well even with M885.

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Release the Kraken

Works quite well on large animals with the proper ammo. Just like you wouldn't use range ammo 308 for long range shooting so to you should use the proper bullet for the job.

And while we're at it when was the 308 a proper round. Seems like a poodle round when compared to the proper 45-70!

Imagine the soldiers back in the day having their proper 45-70 taken away and getting issued some wimpy 30 Cal 30-40 Krag.

60 years later the 30 Cal is all OOHH and AH! Seems the 30 and the 556 has killed just as many people. Any proof of someone surviving a 556 there's proof of someone else surviving a 30 Cal. If not then the word "wounded" would be only as old as the 556.


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You musta been one bay-ad motuh-scootuh, if you didn't notice an additional ten pounds in dee ruck.

Rough weights, 400 rounds:

M193: 10 lbs.
M2 Ball: 23 lbs.

That's not counting weight of aluminum thirty round mags (14) versus steel en blocs (FIFTY of em!).

You musta been one bay-ad motuh-scootuh, if you didn't notice an additional ten pounds in dee ruck.

Rough weights, 400 rounds*:

M193: 10 lbs.
M2 Ball: 23 lbs.

That's not counting weight of aluminum thirty round mags (14) versus steel en blocs (FIFTY of em!)...suspect the en blocs would outweigh the mags.


*weight data from here:
How Much Does Your Ammo Weigh? - The Firearm BlogThe Firearm Blog

There's some interesting history behind this as well.

Most people are familiar with the argument used that the 5.56's ability to tumble on impact gave it a great advantage over FMJ rounds that just poke a hole through the enemy soldier.

What many people do not realize is that this argument first got trotted out when the .45-70 was being replaced by the .30/40 Krag, and the British .577/450 was being replaced by the .303 British. Both of these .30's were originally designed as black powder cartridges but successfully transitioned to the smokeless era.

Neither the US nor the British were all that happy with there cartridges. The US developed the .30-03 and .30-06 cartridges after the Spanish American war, while the British started working on a new service cartridge.

The British took it one step further and experimented with the optimum bullet diameter for tumbling effects. They settled on .276, which was actually a 7mm bullet since they measured land diameter, rather than groove diameter. They developed the .276 Enfield wit a 165 gr bullet at 2,800 fps, and they planned to field it in the Pattern 13 Enfield rifle, replacing both the .303 and the SMLE. But then WWI happened, and the British did not want to complicate their logistics with a second service cartridge.

After WWI, the Brits had millions of rounds and tens of thousands of SMLEs in the inventory and replacing either of them was not economically feasible.

-----

In short, institutional inertia plays a large role in changing service rifles and service cartridges. You need:
- a perceived failure of a round or rifle;
- low inventory; and
- clear agreement from the folks in charge of what is needed.

I'd argue at the none of the above, and won't have them any time soon.

50K units, do they mean they are replacing the m14?

Thanks. Was not actually aware of that but I figured that if people who grew up on the 30 cals don't like the 556 then it must be true for those who grew up shooting 45 (or higher) calibers didn't like the little 30 Cal

I did know about the 276. It was the original FAL

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Venezuela purchased 5,000 FAL rifles in 1954, and was the only country to buy these guns in a caliber other than 7.62 NATO. They were instead ordered in 7x49mm “Second Optimum”, also known as 7mm Liviano. This round was a development of the cartridge debate that had been running between the US and UK, in which the UK wanted an intermediate caliber for controllability while the US insisted on a full-power round for maximum range. Several compromises were designed, and the 7×49 was one of these, firing a 140 grain bullet at about 2750fps.

The 7mm FAL rifles existed only briefly, from 1954 to 1961. Having shot the FN49 in 7mm Mauser, I can only imagine how eminently more useful the FAL offering the same ballistics in the 7x49 must have been.

Funny, It was the 7mm Mauser in the hands of a bunch of Boers that spurred the development of the P-13 rifle in .276 Enfield. President Teddy Roosevelt, exasperated by delays in the US rifle program, asked the Chief of Ordnance, "Why don't you just buy the Mauser?" He obviously remembered just how well 760 Spanish Army regular troops with 1893 Mausers held off General William Rufus Shafter's Fifth Army Corps, about 15,000 troops in three divisions, for most of they day, inflicting over 2500 casualties in the process.

What was it that fella Santayana said? "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

"He obviously remembered just how well 760 Spanish Army regular troops with 1893 Mausers held off General William Rufus Shafter's Fifth Army Corps, about 15,000 troops in three divisions, for most of the day, inflicting over 2500 casualties in the process."

But not because of any great deficiencies in the .30-40 cartridge's ballistic performance vs. the 7x57. It was mainly the difference in the rifles used. The Mauser could be reloaded much more quickly using chargers (stripper clips). The Krag couldn't use stripper clips, and the Krag's magazine was a clumsy pain to reload. Open it, load one cartridge at a time pulled from a bandolier, then close it. The Mauser was great force multiplier for the Spaniards. Plus they had the high ground. I think there were even some of the U. S. troops still using .45-70 trapdoors, which were even slower than the Krag. But the Americans did have some Colt 1895 MGs and Gatlings, and that helped even the odds a little.

The .276 Enfield was a full power battle rifle cartridge dating from 1912. The Brits developed the intermediate ".270" and ".276" rounds between 1945 and 1950. In both cases the number represents land diameter so they were .277 and .284 diameter rounds by the US convention of measuring groove diameter.

The ".276" was renamed the .280 British when it was selected to move forward as the British submission to the NATO competition. They also submitted the EM-2 chambered in .280 British as consideration for a NATO rifle. The Brits moved toward adopting the EM-2 but that also fell apart when the US rejected the .2780 Brit round as the EM-2 wasn't amenable to being re-designed to accommodate the larger round.

FN was advised to re-design the FAL for the 7.62 NATO round, on the premise that the US might adopt it in exchange for NATO adopting the 7.62 NATO, and FN supposedly agreed to royalty free production in the US as part of the deal. The US pushed for and got the 7.62 NATO, but refused to adopt the FAL and instead developed the M-14.

It all worked out for FN however as just about everyone els bought the FAL, despite it being larger, heavier and less controllable in 7.62 NATO than it would have been in .280 British.

Absolutely.

There were indeed many units still using the .45-70 Springfield rifle and it was no where near a match for the Spanish Mauser in either ballistics or rate of fire.

At the time, the 7x57 Mauser used a 173 gr bullet at around 2,300 fps. The .30-40 Krag compared well with a 200 gr bullet at 2,000 fps. In both cases, the bullets were round nosed, as the 7x57 Mauser was not updated to a Spitzer bullet until just prior to WWI. After the Spanish American war efforts were made to increase the velocity of the round to 2,200 fps, but the end result was cracked locking lugs in the Krag rifle.

As noted above, the primary advantage of the Mauser was the ability to rapidly reload it from a stripper clip. The Krag action was very smooth, but the side loading with loose rounds wasn't all that fast or positive compared to the Mauser rifles of the era.

The ability to load with stripper clips was added to the M1903 rifle - which suggested a lesson learned. However, there was still a great deal of reluctance to encourage rapid fire as the generals at the time in the US felt it just led to wasted ammunition. Thus the 1903 incorporated a magazine cut off feature. It was intended to be fired primarily as a single shot, with the 5 rounds in the magazine held in reserve. It was more or less the same idea promoted 70 years later by using the M16A1 in semi-auto and then switching to full auto only for "final protective fire" purposes.

"Gatling Gun" Parker certainly made the best of his orders, “Find the best place you can, and make the best use of your guns you can.” One of the few bright spots of innovative thinking by a junior officer whose superiors were still clinging to obsolete battlefield theories and calculating tactics from a yellowed Civil War playbook.

Beginning with a lopsided artillery duel that almost instantly developed into a rout, the Spanish easily adjusted smokeless-powder shells on the smoke of the black-powder American artillery. The US M1897 3.2 inch gun also lacked a recoil system and had to be levered back to its firing position like a 12 pound Napoleon additionally slowing its rate of fire.

That large numbers of the State militia units showed up poorly trained and with obsolete equipment, like the trapdoor Springfield, had an effect on Roosevelt. The creation of the National Board for the Promotion of Rifle Practice in 1901 and the "Dick Act" of 1903 establishing the National Guard are a direct result of the Spanish American war experience.

While on the subject of the Spanish armament, another gunwriter perpetuated myth appears again. The 1893 Mauser.
In fact, many (most?) of the Spanish forces were armed with 1891 Mausers chambered in 7.65x53.

Collin Webster reports that in October 1893, Spain purchased 5,000-10,000 long rifles from Argentina which (were) in storage at the Loewe factory in Berlin. At that, Spain needed to quickly arm troops deploying to Africa to put down a rebellion in the region of... the Spanish Protectorate of Morocco. After the crisis was over in March, 1894, all Argentine rifles were sent to Cuba in June, 1894. In 1898, a number were captured in the surrender of Santiago de Cuba and returned to Springfield Armory, Massachusetts where they were auctioned off to the public on January 5, 1899. At the conclusion of the auction, 2,047 Argentine pattern rifles were still unsold. These were later acquired by Bannerman.

The care and workmanship lavished on these early Mausers was truly exceptional.

Gratuitous eye candy:

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-jwk-
US Army '72-'95

I have one of the Spanish 1893 7mm Mausers. Unfortunately, it's in what could charitably be called "relic" condition. It's all there but I have never attempted to restore it, as its bore is the proverbial rusty sewer pipe. It's old enough to have been in Cuba in 1898, but I have no idea if it was or not.

Looks like this effort is now DOA....
BREAKING: Army 7.62mm Rifle Program CANCELLED - ICSR is No More - The Firearm BlogThe Firearm Blog

Well, you guys can argue all you want about poodle poppers, as for me, anything less than 105mm and 5000 meters is just hand-to-hand combat, Why not go back to swords and spears rather than debate 200 meters vs. 250 meters! Besides, I like to kill my enemy in groups rather than as individuals. As my Cannon-Cocker friends used to say ,"Artillery brings dignity to what would otherwise be merely a vulgar brawl".

In that case it's time to start a new rumour:-

Adoption of 6.5 Creedmore for DMR/light sniper work.

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Release the Kraken

That's more like it-too much money on the line to change from the ground hog gun. I'm with Sgt major Plummley on this one.

You're probably right, so it'll have to be 6.8 SPC to fit in the AR-15 receiver. Oh wait, a government agency spent a fortune developing that round and apart for some SF work it's gone nowhere since. Gotta wonder why.

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Release the Kraken

Piddling little varmint round? There are a scores of VC, NVA, and sons of Allah who've gone on to their reward courtesy of that varmint round.

News is that this project is now cancelled, so you can quit arguing about it...

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Pisgah