Recently, I’ve started resharing some briefings by the late, great Jim Schatz. I originally shared this one in April 2017, right as the Army was taking its first steps toward what is now Next Generation Squad Weapons. As we head into SHOT Show, now is a great time to take a look at what both the Army and SOCOM have accomplished and consider the path that Jim proposed.
One thing he mentioned was the concept of “Frontliners” which has been institutionalized as the Close Combat Force. Other ideas have seen varying degrees of interest.
He was always on top of past missteps in the opportunities we’ve had to modernize our small arms. His last briefing to NDIA’s Armament Systems Forum, on 27 April, 2016 was entitled, “A Path To Overmatch” and made the case for an immediate transition to an intermediate caliber, preferably with a telescoping cased cartridge, along with a new weapon individual weapon. His reasoning was simple; overmatch. Our troops remain outranged by threat weapons firing the 7.62x54R cartridge. While not every enemy is equipped with a weapon in this caliber, they’ve learned to use their PKM MMGs and SVD Sniper Rifles to keep our troops at arm’s length. In the briefing, Jim does a great job of laying out Russian and ISIS capabilities vis-a-vis our US M4A1 and M249.
Jim named five things that could immediately be leveraged to provide overmatch: Lightweight Intermediate Caliber Cartridge (LICC) Ammo, Disturbed Reticle Carbine Sight, Blind-to-Barrier Bullets, Lightweight Modular Weapons and Advanced Training.
He also wanted the most bang for the buck and identified 140,000 “Frontliners” in the US military, aka trigger pullers, who would be the immediate focus of small arms modernization efforts.
Jim urged a transition to two calibers, a 6.5-family intermediate cartridge for the individual weapon and a .338 cartridge for crew served weapons. I have discussed the General Dynamics Lightweight Medium Machine Gun in .338 Norma Magnum. Jim used this example to make the initial case for the transition to LICC ammo for the individual weapon.
In 2017, all of the cartridges being seriously looked at were in the 6.5mm family; .260, .264 USA, and .277 USA. While .260 is currently commercially available, .264 USA and .277 USA were developed by the US Army Marskmanship Unit, which has been conducting in-house evaluations.
Ultimately, the US Army conducted a formal caliber study called the Small Arms Ammunition Configuration study which resulted in a new common caliber for Squad weapons, 6.8mm. After a competitive process, the Army selected the SIG SAUER 6.8 x 51mm common case architecture cartridge for fielding as part of NGSW.
USSOCOM looked at .260 Remington and 6.5 Creedmoor and chose 6.5 CM. It’s all a bit of back to the future. Use of a 6.5mm cartridge isn’t new. 6.5×55 Swedish saw service in Europe for a very long time. Initially developed in the 1890s, it was still in service up to a century later.
This image came from The Firearm Blog’s article on the .264 USA cartridge by Nathaniel F. It depicts (L-R) 7.62 NATO, .264 USA, 5.56 NATO.
Jim was very passionate about this concept and did the homework. For example, he knew the costs to not only pay for the transition to a new caliber, but new weapons as well. The figures are there, for you to see.
Jim’s attention to detail was always keen. He even considered spare parts, manuals, training and ranges in his calculations.
Naturally, transition to a larger caliber, means heavier ammo and a smaller basic load. Here, Jim shows the tradeoffs for the amount of amm a rifleman would carry in his basic load, based in different calibers.
There is a difference, and this is why the transition to Polymer cased/telescoping ammo is so important.
To summarize, these are the takeaways. All of this, is available from industry, right now.
While I cherry picked several slides from this briefing to make certain points, you really need to read the whole thing. I’ve only scratched the surface here. It’s filled with gems like the examples I’ve given.
Jim’s confidence in polymer cased ammo nor his interest in case telescoped cartridges have borne fruit so far, but there’s plenty to see.
You can download it here www.dtic.mil/ndia/2016/armament/18260_Schatz.
