They should have waited for Textron's all-plastic casings.
That was my thought as well. Prior to the XM-5 announcement I expected the competition to come down to either the Textron or General dynamics options. My assesment was that while Textron's design was clearly the most innovative, GD's plastic cased ammo basically delivering 7.62 NATO performance at a fraction of the weight while being backwards compatible with existing platforms (after a barrel swap) might get chosen as the "safe bet".
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Notes -
That was my thought as well. Prior to the XM-5 announcement I expected the competition to come down to either the Textron or General dynamics options. My assesment was that while Textron's design was clearly the most innovative, GD's plastic cased ammo basically delivering 7.62 NATO performance at a fraction of the weight while being backwards compatible with existing platforms (after a barrel swap) might get chosen as the "safe bet".
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