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Monday, March 13, 2023

Is The M-5 ... Er M-7 ... A Failed Project?

An interest op-ed from the Army Times entitled "The not-really Next Generation Weapons Program" by Allan Orr. He asserts that the "[o]n all key technical measures, the Next Generation Squad Weapons program is imploding before Army’s very eyes." Even the name, M-5, had to be abandoned (it is now the XM-7). Orr explains:

    Civilian testing problems have, or should have, sunk the program already. The XM-5/7 as it turns out fails a single round into a mud test. Given the platform is a piston-driven rifle it now lacks gas, as the M-16 was originally designed, to blow away debris from the eject port. Possibly aiming to avoid long-term health and safety issues associated with rifle gas, Army has selected an operating system less hardy in battlefield environments. [Ed: the piston operating system was selected because it supposedly is more reliable in sustained fire, something the M4 had problems with in the Battle of Wanat in AfghanistanA choice understandable in certain respects, however, in the larger scheme the decision presents potentially war-losing cost/benefit analysis.

    Civilian testing, testing Army either never did or is hiding, also only recently demonstrated that the rifle seemingly fails, at point-blank ranges, to meet its base criteria of penetrating Level 4 body armor (unassisted). True, the Army never explicitly set this goal, but it has nonetheless insinuated at every level, from media to Congress, that the rifle will penetrate said armor unassisted. Indeed, that was the entire point of the program. Of course, the rounds can penetrate body armor with Armor Piercing rounds, but so can 7.62x51mm NATO, even 5.56x45mm NATO.

    The fundamental problem with the program is there remains not enough tungsten available from China, as Army knows, to make the goal of making every round armor piercing even remotely feasible. The plan also assumes that the world’s by far largest supplier will have zero problems selling tungsten to America only for it to be shot back at its troops during World War III. Even making steel core penetrators would be exceedingly difficult when the time came, adding layers of complexity and time to the most time-contingent of human endeavors. In any case, most large bullet manufacturers and even Army pre-program have moved to tungsten penetrators for a reason, despite the fact it increases the cost by an order of magnitude and supply seems troubled. Perhaps Army has a solution, perhaps.

    The slight increase in ballistic coefficiency between the 6.8x51mm and 7.62x51mm cartridges neither justified the money pumped into the program nor does the slight increase in kinetic energy dumped on target. Itself a simple function of case pressurization within the bastardized 7.62mm case. Thus the net mechanical results of the program design-wise is a rifle still chambered in a 7.62x51 mm NATO base case (as the M-14), enjoying now two ways to charge the weapon and a folding stock. This is the limit of the touted generational design ‘leap’ under the program. And while the increased case pressure technology is very welcome the problem is, in terms of ballistics, the round is in no way a leap ahead compared to existing off-the-shelf options as those Army nearly went with under the now disavowed Interim Combat Service Rifle program, or it in fact did purchase schizophrenically just before the NGSW program began with the HK M110A1.

I guess the question is what does the soldier value more: a rifle that will still fire if it is dumped in the mud or covered with dirt or sand, or a rifle that can lay down sustained fire like a light machine gun? 

4 comments:

  1. As Lt. Col. John George said in "Shots Fired in Anger" let the soldier on the ground decide how heavy the weapon is.
    Reliability is the key desire. The 77 gr. SMK (Mk. 262?) does good work at extended distance. Human targets at extended ranges are not easily discernable. Optics certainly improve the ability to spot the target. Still the marksmanship necessary to put rounds on target at extended distances is challenging. Hence area fire weapons.
    I think this program is a boondoggle.

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    1. I had my doubts as well, which I expressed in a May 2022 post: https://practicaleschatology.blogspot.com/2022/05/forward-to-past-new-m5-carbine.html

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  2. If it won't work it doesn't matter what it's capabilities are.
    Also, true sustained fire requires cooling and/or the ability to change barrels, as with even light machine guns like the M249.
    Higher pressure will probably lead to faster barrel heating, although I haven't seen instrumented testing showing this.
    A rifle is a rifle, a machine gun is a machine gun. I've seen M4 barrels glowing bright orange after a bunch of mags dumped. That weapon was done for until depot level repair, a piston would not have made a difference.
    Fire discipline is nice in theory, but tell that to the kid being bum rushed.
    That's why we have machine guns and crew served weapons.
    Funny all this to get essentially a 7.62 AR with a fancy optic and ammo no one else uses.
    I'd have preferred seeing the money spent on training outside of just basic qualification.
    The part about the army being concerned about "exposure to rifle gas" had me rolling on the floor in light of all the much, much worse stuff I've been exposed to that the army could have cared less about.
    This seems like a giant boondoggle that the taxpayers once again foot the bill for, and soldiers are left to make the best with.

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    1. You raise a good point about no one else using the ammo. The ammo compatibility is an issue since one of the objectives of NATO was to have standardized ammunition, and there obviously have been no NATO trials of the ammo. I presume that Washington was planning on simply forcing our NATO allies to adopt the ammunition down the road.

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