Thales provides the EF88 bullpup rifle in 5.56 NATO to the Australian Defence Force. In preparation for LAND 159 Tranche 2 which will look for a new rifle and machine gun capability, Thales has developed a new cartridge in 6.8x51mm along with weapon prototypes to perform similarly to the US Army’s Next Generation Squad Weapons program.
Although they didn’t have an example of the cartridge on hand, I’m told it’s a conventional case design, producing high chamber pressures in order to achieve similar terminal effects to NGSW’s goals.
They produced two different rifle designs, a Bullpup and a Stoner pattern weapon. It also appears that they’ve developed a common magazine between the two variants.
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