Pentagon Confirms Move to 6.8mm

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Not trying to start anything, but as a progressive, my take on gun issues has less than zero affect on what the military needs to do their job.
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I needed to be a little more clear than I was. I'm more concerned about the program being sacrificed from a governmental financial and optics perspective, in order to fit a narrative that isn't conducive to our defense department. I'm right there with you man.
 
The next fight isn't going to be against dirt farmers. Being able to punch through level 3-4 armor is going to be a consideration. As is noise signature and the inevitable logistical support to the weapon itself.

Not a problem I would want to have to solve, but I'm excited to see what comes of it, mostly because I have spent 18 years beating up M16s and M4s in various configurations and they have always done what I've needed from them. I do think that maybe a focus on the next infantry rifle may not be what we need to be looking at with today's problem set, but I also just sat in an 8 hour class that pretty much said if we don't learn to think differently and soon we are going to lose the next war (with some pretty convincing arguments).

Any way we go with this, if we put a better product in the hands of the LCpl walking point, its not a bad thing.
 
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I would like to see the M203 equivalent already mounted on it. I wouldn't mind getting rid of the M249, but the 203 is a must have. And I'm so glad they are worried about the weight... now that I'm retired. lol
 
For all the talk about the rifle, it seems to me the two big problems are:

1) We don’t detect enemies past 300m
2) With iron sights, even our best shooters do poorly past 300m.

It would be interesting to see combat statistics of early OIF/OEF Marines (Muskets, ACOGs, and trained to shoot 600m) vs. same period Army (M4s, Aimpoints, 300m ranges). If we’ve made some advances in better hit percentages, that comparison should show it.

In any case, it seems to me that optics are going to be more important than the rifle in helping this fulfill its stated role. I noticed though that every picture we’ve seen shows pretty plain vanilla sights mounted.
 
Gosh if an ELCAN Specter DR 1-4x is "pretty plain vanilla" I gotta ask what you think qualifies as "high speed, low drag"? Certainly my wallet would disagree with you.
 
Eh, it’s a 1-4x variable. It might boost identification and hits past historical examples; but it isn’t going to create a 200% improvement and that’s what this rifle’s being built around.
 
Probably not located at the pentagon per se, but yes, the project is still in the trial/prototype phase.
The rifles have yet to be approved, produced or issued at this point.
 
Does anyone seriously think that a 6.8 bullet is magic, and it will penetrate level 4 armor that a 7.62X51 armor piercing bullet will not penetrate.

This whole thing is a joke.
 
Operating at 80kpsi has got to burn out barells faster than a 6.5-300wby. In a belt fed weapon id imagine you would have to change barells every time you loaded another belt.
 
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