Army's plan to ditch the M4 and 5.56 part I

[mgchrono]

....No need to reinvent the wheel.....

Yes there certainly is...........it's............$$$$$$$

 

[C_Hallbert]

When shooting, the .300 BLK seems to have more "punch" than the .223/5.56 but looking up some ballistics, the .223 bests the .300 by about 100 ft./lb. for muzzle energy, so yeah.. it seems like that could very well be true.

We now have .224 in small-case AR platform mix...

I have been shooting a .224 Valkyrie since early summer and I like it.


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[gshayd]

Some of us will probably be dead and buried when the military has a new individual operating platform military-wide.

 

[ed308]

When Ole Cowboy posted the article for this thread, it was already 15 months old.

The Army has already picked the bullet. Its a 6.8. Not a 6.8 SPCII cartridge. A 6.8 or .277 bullet fired from a much more powerful cartridge. That much is known. The Army has stated this new cartridge must be capable of capable of defeating body armor out to 600 meters or defeating any currently known body armor our troop may encounter. For a 6.8 round to penetrate known body armor at 600m, many have speculated it will need to pack a lot of energy, over 3,000 ft/lbs. A new weapons capable of firing this new cartridge will likely be AR10 size or slightly smaller with similar recoil. It will also need to meet the weight reductions the Army is seeking. Probably won't be brass cased but could be aluminum, titanium or plastic. And if the bugs can be worked out, it could be a telescoped 6.8 cartridge.

Will we see a new cartridge in our lifetime? Who knows. But the time table set by the Army for 2022 and 2025. I believe field trials are scheduled for either later this year or next year.