Just an update to a comment I made in the AMA about the military's new hotness as of two months ago, in response to this question:
https://www.themotte.org/post/296/im-a-gun-guy-ama
what's your take on the NGSW? I'd be interested in knowing your thoughts on the LMG and service rifle aspects of it, as well as your thoughts on the entire program.
To which I replied:
All these "new infantry arms" are a boondoggle for arms manufacturers. Billions of dollars to not replace the M16, or to marginally improve some esoteric aspect of the platform. The M5 is not going to be the standard infantry arm of the US military.
Today's update: https://www.armytimes.com/opinion/commentary/2023/02/28/the-not-really-next-generation-weapons-program/
Pull quotes:
the Next Generation Squad Weapons program is imploding before Army’s very eyes. The program is on mechanical life support, with its progenitors at the Joint Chiefs obstinately now ramming the program through despite spectacularly failing multiple civilian-sector peer reviews almost immediately upon commercial release.
Starting from a highly dubious intellectual, strategic and tactical baseline, the NGSW program is now failing mechanically and ballistically at once. Army came out hard with the program’s aims and expectations, unreasonably so, practically declaring a War on Physics from the outset. Unfortunately, like so many other antecedent programs Army has lost the war again, badly. In terms of weight, recoil, durability and ballistics, expectations vs reality are crashing down on Army right now, hard.
Consider this my victory lap.
And next year, when the Army announces another hundreds of millions of dollars for some new secret-squirrel marketing program, give it six months. They'll be exposed as frauds before too long.
Edit: I should say that my extreme skepticism at the time was a bit uncomfortable. People who know more than me (and thus should know better) were saying the system worked. I didn't have access to any good data, but the math just didn't add up to me. I'm not a weapon designer, but I have a pretty good idea of what the normal ranges for technical specs are. Turns out, it really was all just marketing. Every time I think I'm too cynical, it turns out I wasn't quite cynical enough.
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Notes -
Remember that the original .50 Browning cartridge was an armor peircing incendiary round intended for anti-vehicular work, it was only after the US being the US started slapping M2s on everything that someone suggested that making a simple FMJ "ball" variant of the cartridge might be a wise economical choice.
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