LSAT Program Defunded?

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Bartholomew Roberts

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Read a rumor on the web that the LSAT program developing cased-telescoped lightweight ammo for the military has been defunded.

Apparently the joint user community decided they had no use for a lightweight 5.56mm rifle and LMG and recommended that the LSAT program be recfocused on an improved caliber with better downrange potential AND lighter weight than existing 5.56mm.

I hope that is the case since an improved caliber seemed like such an obvious way to go with LSAT that it didn't even occur to me they would try to keep 5.56 when changing over to the new technology.

This recommendation comes on the heels of an ARDEC report that evaluated identically constructed bullets in calibers from .224 to .30 and determined that a caliber from .256 to .277 provided the best performance (although apparently in the test, .277 was the overall winner).

If the recommendation is followed, there is potential to develop a round that is even more potent than 6.8 SPC; but yet weighs less than 5.56mm. It may not be a magic bullet per se; but given the current technological limitations, it would be pretty close to one.
 
The LSAT program used polymers, alloys and a telescoped cartridge case to reduce the weight of cased ammunition by about 40%. The technology is scalable to other ammunition types, so you could carry approximately 400 rounds of 5.56mm cased-telescoped ammo for the same amount of weight as 210 rounds of traditional ammo.

OR you could go to a larger caliber - like the .277 caliber found to be most effective by ARDEC and carry around 300-325 rounds for the same amount of weight. So you get both more ammo and a more effective round for the same basic load.

The other interesting aspect of this is that LSAT ammo is pretty revolutionary and yet the main users of it basically said "We have no use for 5.56mm lightweight ammo. You should make the cartridge bigger." That seems to indicate that at least some of the joint user community that was supporting LSAT has decided that if you have to do the cost of reconfiguring for a totally new type of ammo, you might as well get rid of 5.56mm while you are at it.
 
I hope that is the case since an improved caliber seemed like such an obvious way to go with LSAT that it didn't even occur to me they would try to keep 5.56 when changing over to the new technology.
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If you're going to show the improvements of your technology, then you need to maintain a strong basis for comparison to current equipment. Rolling the new stuff out on 5.56 allowed them to use fewer independent variable and more controls in their analysis and demonstration projects.

In general, there is an increasing opinion that LSAT is going nowhere. I've seen them brief the same stuff at multiple places over the space of several years. The technology has it's benefits, but development seems to have stalled. People are starting to wonder what they're getting for their money.
 
If you're going to show the improvements of your technology, then you need to maintain a strong basis for comparison to current equipment. Rolling the new stuff out on 5.56 allowed them to use fewer independent variable and more controls in their analysis and demonstration projects.
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Yes, I can see that for development. It would just never occur to me, especially with the last ten years of research in this area to attempt to implement the production version as 5.56. It seems if you are going to incur the massive logisitical cost of an ammo switch, you might as well go ahead and adopt any one of the dozens of recommendations on caliber that have been made while you're at it.

In general, there is an increasing opinion that LSAT is going nowhere.
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Apparently not as a 5.56 caliber anyway... I would think a 40% reduction in ammo weight would be the kind of major innovation that would really push this forward.
 
Unless it is truly a "step up" in performance by allowing a teenager with inadequate adult supervision to make first round hits past 600 meters it does not offer enough benefit for either the Army or Marine Corps.

Simply allowing people to carry more ammunition does not equate to effectiveness in the field, so it isn't surprising that some of the more pie in the sky R&D efforts are getting defunded.

Jimro
 
I honestly beleive most senior level commanders and CSMs could not care less about small arms development or the expenses that goes with it. Most of them have never been in a gun fight and likely haven't fired a weapon in years, maybe decades. They care much more about their micro-management enablers like Predator feeds, Blue Force Trackers, and the Future Warrior program. They like real time videos and moving dots on their computer screens. This is where money will continue to be funneled until some powerful senator gets the LSAT plant in his district. I'm sure the M4 and 5.56 will be around for a long time to come.
 
Simply allowing people to carry more ammunition does not equate to effectiveness in the field,
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I would agree with that statement; but it does seem to run counter to the Army's direction of the past 50 years which seems to place heavy emphasis on generating a lot of projectiles with the assumption that this will result in more hits (Project SALVO being a prime example of this).
 
I would agree with that statement; but it does seem to run counter to the Army's direction of the past 50 years which seems to place heavy emphasis on generating a lot of projectiles with the assumption that this will result in more hits (Project SALVO being a prime example of this).
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The Army has done some stupid crap by following doctrine written in a office by officers without any way to field test the results. The "Pentatomic" Division was example...

Since the "War on Terror" started the Army set up the "Center for Army Lessons Learned" (CALL) and now doctrine is largely a bottom up instead of top down process. And from the bottom up we've been saying the same things for years, more marksmanship training and better small arms lethality at range.

Carrying 100 rounds with 90% effectiveness is better than carrying 210 rounds with 30% effectiveness. What I would really like to see is a fundamental shift in how the Army does R&D. None of the contractors who come up with some of this crap have to live with it in the field.

Jimro
 
Carrying 100 rounds with 90% effectiveness is better than carrying 210 rounds with 30% effectiveness.
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Except that the prime determinant in how effective a round is isn't the caliber; but where the round hits. If that is the case, then having the skill to make hits and having more ammo onboard to make follow-up hits if the first one doesn't do it are fairly critical to how effective the weapon system is.

Not that caliber can't help this - a light-recoiling, flat-shooting cartridge will help make hits and a round that penetrates 12-18" of ballistics gel through intermediate barriers out to 300m will help make sure that the round gets where it needs to be if the soldier places it on target. Just saying that at the end of the day, the caliber is a comparatively small part of the overall effectiveness.
 
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