Army's new machine gun will blast like battle tanks

460Shooter said:

"...The new rifle for the US military has an unbelievable chamber pleasure..."

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(raised eyebrow) Better calm down there, tiger. Save it for the enemy ;-)(/raised eyebrow)

Caseless is back. Well at least they are going to try again, and again, and again. Oh wait, they already have.

jeepnik said:

Caseless is back. Well at least they are going to try again, and again, and again. Oh wait, they already have.

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yeah, it's kind of like the airplane, automobile, cruise missiles, rockets, uav, robot, computer, the internet, networking, castles,radio or the steam engine in that way ...

Hokie_PhD said:

In High School I was very into muscle cars. The import scene was just cTching on and those guys annoyed the &*$## our of me. They’d go on and on about horsepower figures on their high winding cars. What they didn’t get was torque was what gets a car moving. Torque and lots of it is what good old American muscle cars make. Horsepower numbers aren’t as impressive as V8 don’t have to be spun to the insane speeds that imports go to make the inflated horsepower numbers.

Needless to say there were (and still are) many import drivers who lost races because they didn’t understand the numbers.

This author seems to be like the import crowd. She found figures that sound impressive. They’re big and sound cool just like those horsepower numbers. She doesn’t understand what the numbers mean and how they’re used. Worse she doesn’t make any effort to address the other factors.

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Love the muscle car anology.
This torque monster would eat up those imports for breakfast.

And yes, newsflash: reporter gets it wrong.

460Shooter, your post number 23 wins the internet for today.

1911 guy said:

460Shooter, your post number 23 wins the internet for today.

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LOL! Thanks. Glad you got a chuckle out of it.

Consider the source.

Ugh, word salad.
Just less than 2% of all Americans have ever served (only about 0.5% in current service), so the misconceptions are multitudinous and myriad.

One of the more prevalent misconceptions is that "the Army" must clearly always carry the most powerful weapons there are to every situation. As far as they know, all "army guns" must be .600nitro express or something similar. Or 20x120mm. And, all automatics run like miniguns, at least to 6000rpm.

This is where claptrap like in one of the videos above "...[R]eplacing all [magazine fed] with belt-fed...meeting resistance..." comes from (and a share from first person shooter gaming).

The whole notion that you have to carry everything you need to complete your mission, and solely on your own feet does not occur to these people. Or, that state is unlikely to change (at least not until all combat arms people are mecha*).

So, you get foolishness like giving every troopie a beltfed. Let's take a functional maneuver unit, a platoon,** about 50 troopies. If you give them all beltfeds, who is humping the ammo?

So, just remember that, for most of those authors, "army" stuff is all just little green plastic army men to them, and about as real. The fact that there's 10 people needed to get the gear to the 1 guy actually in contact escapes them, too.

The thing that has always limited caseless ammo is obteration. The G11 "cheated" by using a rotary firing chamber that was functionally closed on the breech end (the ammo was loaded butt end first, and the chamber rotated into the line of the bore).

Telescoping cased ammunition is really just about changing the geometric form factor, to whatever end is desired.

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*Mecha refers to powered armored suits, first popularized in manga & similar fiction. But, very much based in current state-of-the-art technology. Exoskeletonal boost/assist technology is really close to being on-the-shelf.

**Ok, the "action" unit will remain the squad (6-13), what the Brits call a "section." This is functionally the most number of people who can be coordinated by shouting. The per-doctrine minimum maneuver unit in the Marines is /CompanyBattalion; for the Army it's Regiment/Brigade. MC Company is around 150-200, battalion 400-600, depending on attachments. Army Rgt/BDG is 700-1500, round numbers. "Major" Cocktail Party for the average journalist is around 30-40; they simply do not have a functioning point of reference. A heavy load for a journalist is a rolling suitcase and a courier bag with a 5# laptop, or maybe a 20kg backpack; understanding humping 50kg of pack and weapon is equally foreign to them. Telle est la vie d'un journaliste

Good. Make the enemy think that they only need a machine gun to fight our M1 Abrams.

Hokie_PhD said:

In High School I was very into muscle cars. The import scene was just cTching on and those guys annoyed the &*$## our of me. They’d go on and on about horsepower figures on their high winding cars. What they didn’t get was torque was what gets a car moving. Torque and lots of it is what good old American muscle cars make. Horsepower numbers aren’t as impressive as V8 don’t have to be spun to the insane speeds that imports go to make the inflated horsepower numbers.

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Yes, back in the day, one of the NASCAR sayings was "Horsepower sells cars, torque wins races."

So, in the ammunition world, I guess, chamber pressure sells ammunition, energy punches through armor.

I read this story and started wondering if there was something I did not understand about ballistics.

Eh, she's a journalist, probably paid by the word and had to punch up the story in order to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

CoalTrain49 said:

Fake news from Fox.

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Not fake.

Just written by someone with a 4 year liberal arts degree who thinks that piece of paper makes them subject matter experts on everything.

A bit old, but the Abrams operates at 80-85,000 psi. That's how they get 5000fps. Brass can't handle it, but steel can. Quickload has some large caliber military rounds in its database that operate at 75,000 psi. I, too, want a phaser--they hit where you want, not where you aim, and they do just what you want, not too much or too little.

Well, if it "blasts like a battle tank". why not just use it, instead of a tank? Think of the potential, no crew, highly mobile, inexpensive...

OK, I'm not understanding what a KSI (kilopound per square inch) is. I get PSI and CUP (sort of), but KSI is new to me. I've never heard that term and have no frame of reference. Is she making something up or is she misunderstanding and reporting something incorrectly or am I ignorant (or some combination thereof)?

She mentioned absolutely nothing about caliber of the round itself although 7.62 and 5.56 were mentioned generally. Basically, I'm hearing a lot of hype and no substance with a term included that I've never heard before.