"If our magazine was in front of the trigger group, this weapon would be 12 to 13 inches longer than it is right now," Stouffer said. Without speaking to specifics, Stouffer said, "one of the advantages of this style of weapon is that you can have a much longer barrel in a weapon that is generally shorter." Fully extended, the 33-inch M4A1 has a 14.5-inch barrel, and the M249's 36-inch para version has a barrel length of just over 16 inches. GD's rifle variant features a 20-inch barrel, while the AR version has a 22-inch barrel, said Kevin Sims, senior director of business development at GD-OTS, adding that the rifle variant is shorter than the M4A1 and the AR is shorter than the M249. "One of the benefits of a bullpup-style weapon is that you can run much lower pressures and still achieve the desired velocities because you have a longer barrel," Stouffer said. The GD team chose a bullpup design - which puts the magazine and bolt-carrier group behind the pistol grip and trigger group - to avoid the problem and still meet the Army's requirements, Stouffer said. "Higher pressures in the weapon drive all sorts of unsavory things - barrel wear … the stresses that go back on the bolt face, extraction, premature part wear - there's all sorts of unfavorable things higher pressure drives," he said. The team was fully aware of the dangers of higher pressures when it designed its automatic rifle and rifle prototypes, said Dave Stouffer, director of business development for the GD-OTS team. Army's M9 pistol for decades before the Sig Sauer Modular Handgun System was chosen in 2017 to replace it. For gun-making expertise, GD joined with Beretta USA, which made the U.S. teamed up with True Velocity to produce a composite-cased 6.8mm cartridge.
General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems Inc. The three gunmakers selected by the Army for the final phase of the NGSW effort are approaching the problem in different ways. "The more velocity you've got, the better armor penetration you are going to have." in overcoming the body armor," said Trevor Shaw, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who has worked in the firearms industry for more than 15 years.
"If you have a terminal performance objective that includes body armor, there is no doubt you are going to have to raise the pressure to increase velocity because that is a key factor. Higher velocities often come with higher chamber pressures, which can cause premature parts wear and reliability problems over time. So, we have to understand the targets that we are going after, we have to understand how much energy it takes to defeat that target at that distance, and we have to build a system that delivers that."įrom the start, this ambitious performance goal created concerns in the firearms community - particularly penetrating body armor would require much higher velocities than the M855A1 EPR's 2,970 feet per second. there is no secret, it's all about energy on target. "If you want to build a new innovative weapon, you start with the ammunition you don't start with the weapon and try to back into the ammunition - that is not the most effective means to do it," Potts said. Program officials have said that the NGSW effort is different from past Army small arms programs because it began with the ammunition, and not the design of the weapons. To date, the unclassified version of the study has not been released to the public. David Hodne, director of the Soldier Lethality Cross Functional Team and chief of infantry at the Army's Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Benning, Georgia.
"It was the precursor of the Next Generation Squad Weapon program," said Brig. That report convinced Army leaders that infantrymen need a round that would penetrate enemy body armor much more effectively than the current M855A1 EPR round. The choice for 6.8mm emerged out of a 2017 research initiative: the Small Arms Ammunition Configuration Study. This is Sig Sauer’s design for the Next Generation Squad Weapon’s 6.8mm cartridge that features a stainless steel base to save weight.
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