For two weeks now we’ve been told by multiple sources that the US Army’s effort to field a 7.62mm NATO Service Rifle has been placed on hold (that’s how the Army kills a program without actually cancelling it). This, after industry jumped through hoops to provide the Army with samples of a fully automatic rifle, based on US Army Chief of Staff, General Mark MIlley’s testimony on May 25th. In front of the Senate Armed Services Committee, he stated that the there is a proliferation of inexpensive threat body armor and that they have a 7.62mm projectile to deal with it.
He said, “We recognize the 5.56mm round, there is a type of body armor it doesn’t penetrate. We have it as well. Adversarial states are selling it for $250.” He went on to say, “There’s a need, an operational need. We think we can do it relatively quickly,” and went on to say, “The key is not the rifle, it’s the bullet.” GEN Milley sated that they’ve done some experimentation at Ft Benning and they have a solution. When asked by Sen King if it would require a new rifle, GEN Milley responded, “It might, but probably not.” GEN Milley went on to explain that the “bullet can be chambered in various calibers, it can be modified to 5.56, 7.62.”
The Army’s answer to that was an RFI and then solicitation for a full auto 7.62mm Intermediate Combat Service Rifle which closed just weeks ago. Now, it’s dead on the vine. No word on how the Army will deal with the vendors and the weapons they submitted, or more importantly, the threat it identified before Congress.
There has been an internal struggle within the Army between the leadership and the Acquisition community over this and other directed requirements from the Army Staff at the Pentagon. The CSA and other senior leaders have issued orders to purchase specific capabilities and the Acquisition community has resisted. Another example of this phenomenon is the Directed Requirement for the USSOCOM Plate Carrier and Level IV armor plate from late last year which, despite full testing and fielding by SOCOM, is caught in a bureaucratic cycle of new testing and effort to copy the armor carrier.
However, in this case, the Acquisition community moved relatively quickly, but GEN Milley allegedly had a “squirrel!” moment during a recent visit to Fort Benning, where he was introduced to the Lightweight Small Arms Technology and its associated Telescoping Case technology. LSAT has been a science project since the 1980s. His fixation of this new shiny toy should stall out Army Service Rifle modernization for years, if not decades, giving Picatinny plenty of breathing room to work on their own agenda.
Sources say that the new path forward is to write a new requirement for a Next Generation Carbine, something that has long been a mid-term goal. However, GEN Milley says that he has a threat the Army must deal with in the now. How will the Army mitigate that threat if it doesn’t get the capability he told the SASC and the Army solicited industry to fulfill?
