New primary military round will be 6.8 and it will have a plastic case, not brass

JCooperfan1911 said:

The Glock haters who hate plastic guns must be about to gag.

Plastic ammo??

If it can cut back on the cost of raws, and can be applied to civy rounds, I am hoping to see it on the shelf?

Imagine a plastic cased 22 LR that does away with brass. It could be super cheap for plinking.

Click to expand...

22lr (or some new equivalent) would be the ideal place to go to a caseless system. No major heat issues and a small round would allow for a slightly larger mechanism without making the gun unwieldy. Or maybe cellulose and resin cases.

Don't inderstan "telescoping" round.
I have 6 astro telescopes. Does the round somehow "telescope" like a radio antenna? The way it ejects by pulling down the spent case, doesn't allow the front of the cart to enter the bbl.

I like the animation, it xplains a lot.

Elkins45 said:

22lr (or some new equivalent) would be the ideal place to go to a caseless system. No major heat issues and a small round would allow for a slightly larger mechanism without making the gun unwieldy. Or maybe cellulose and resin cases.

Click to expand...

How did we get on caseless? HK tried it back in the 1960-80's and failed. The caseless ammo ultimately was not grunt proof and was never robust enough for soldier user, along with a few other technical issues they never resolved.

The closest to caseless we have currently fielded is the he Rheinmetall Rh-120 (Main gun for the Abrams and Leopard). The case body is consume during firing and only the case head and booster are ejected form the gun.



Video of the loading and firing a training version of the M831 HEAT round (in the US military that turquoise/blue color projectile almost always indicates a training/inert round independent of gun/cartridge). Watch what gets loaded into the gun and how little comes out when it auto-ejects after firing

Great! now we have useless plastic littering the ground, it wont rot or degrade.
Brass is recycliable, steel rusts away.
Plastic is one the globes prominant pollutants.

mcb said:

How did we get on caseless? HK tried it back in the 1960-80's and failed. The caseless ammo ultimately was not grunt proof and was never robust enough for soldier user, along with a few other technical issues they never resolved.

The closest to caseless we have currently fielded is the he Rheinmetall Rh-120 (Main gun for the Abrams and Leopard). The case body is consume during firing and only the case head and booster are ejected form the gun.



Video of the loading and firing a training version of the M831 HEAT round (in the US military that turquoise/blue color projectile almost always indicates a training/inert round independent of gun/cartridge). Watch what gets loaded into the gun and how little comes out when it auto-ejects after firing

Click to expand...

Actually, caseless ammunition is currently fielded and has been around for ages . . . and the US military uses an awful lot of it.





Caseless ammunition in WW2

herrwalther said:

The military has been experimenting with plastic cases for awhile. I will believe it when I see it. Prototypes are one thing. Mass production of an entirely new concept is something else.

Click to expand...

The military has recently awakened to the fact that our near-peer rivals -- China and Russia -- use beefy body armor that provides protection against our current military rounds. Hence, there will be a new military round in short order. I agree that it might not be plastic, but we are going to see something new.

lysanderxiii said:

Actually, caseless ammunition is currently fielded and has been around for ages . . . and the US military uses an awful lot of it.

View attachment 1011800

View attachment 1011801

Caseless ammunition in WW2

Click to expand...

Yes I guess that is technically "caseless" but ammunition like that does not quite fix the definition of caseless ammunition's when we think about it in the context of a small arms or self loading weapon systems. We want a fixed-ammuntion caseless. That is a much hard nut to crack than breach load with separate projectile and propellant.

Rex in OTZ said:

Great! now we have useless plastic littering the ground, it wont rot or degrade.
Brass is recycliable, steel rusts away.
Plastic is one the globes prominant pollutants.

Click to expand...

1. Plastic does degrade. It just doesn't degrade as fast as some other materials. The rate of degradation depends on the plastic.

2. If it is reloadable, it won't litter any more than brass does now. No one ever finds ALL their brass. The GE rounds looked like they would be reloadable.

3. Maybe they can make the plastic cases in a cammo color scheme so you won't notice them littering the ground.

George P said:

Maybe the view should be how can we get our soldiers to be better shooters? The number of rounds needed to kill an enemy in WWi vs WWII vs Korea, Vietnam, and now the ME has grown exponentially with a lot of spray and pray

Click to expand...

The ability to shoot is not the issue - it's the desire to kill the enemy and perform under pressure. There have been a lot of studies done evidencing a hesitancy to directly inflict injury or death. It's usually only a small fraction of soldiers who are reliable enthusiast killers and generally those people are viewed as sociopathic by their peers and society. Regardless what people say about their desire to fight/win, training can only go so far in overcoming this natural aversion. So improved sighting systems, volume of fire, and greater armor piercing or lethality likely won't change those percentages.

That said, keeping personal weapons viable on the modern battlefield is important. There are multitudes of disproportionate outcomes seen over the past centuries when one side had vastly superior weaponry and armor.

mcb said:

How did we get on caseless? HK tried it back in the 1960-80's and failed. The caseless ammo ultimately was not grunt proof and was never robust enough for soldier user, along with a few other technical issues they never resolved.

Click to expand...

Caseless is the next evolution from non-metallic cases, and I wasn’t suggesting 22LR for combatants. I was suggesting it would be the least taxing application where someone might get it to work acceptably, thereby providing a development path to a more robust application. I can easily see some sort of dual magazine mechanism that feeds a projectile and a powder pellet separately into the chamber like a battleship gun but with springs instead of people and hydraulic rams. Unloading a loaded gun would probably be a pain, but since it would probably be an electronically ignited system you could just pull the battery until you got it home.

I know of two commercial caseless rifles, the Daisy VL and the Voere. Neither caught on.

There was some work done with liquid propellant artillery. The advantage being that you could tuck tanks of juice into irregular nooks and crannies of a tank or SP gun, dimensional stowage only for projectiles. Load shell only into the tube; fuel and oxidizer injected rather like a diesel.

My outfit got a glance at that, somebody said that excess or off spec liquid propellant could be diluted into fertilizer, which was our area of expertise. But the idea did not progress and we never got any cannon juice to run through process and agronomic tests.

upptick said:

The military has recently awakened to the fact that our near-peer rivals -- China and Russia -- use beefy body armor that provides protection against our current military rounds. Hence, there will be a new military round in short order. I agree that it might not be plastic, but we are going to see something new.

Click to expand...

A new round I have no doubt. I was just pitching in on the caseless aspect. Maybe I will be pleasantly surprised, and some company will figure it out to make the concept work on a mass scale. But I doubt it. Our current rounds were never really designed with real armor penetration in mind. Light barrier penetration was more the goal: thin steels, plaster, wood, mud walls etc. A new round will solve that, even if it doesn't meet the caseless design.

Instead of using plastic as a case, I would be really impressed if they used a nitrocellulose base, like they do in 120mm Abrams rounds. The "case" of those is part of the propellant. When the main gun fires, the case is burnt up as the projectile is launched. There is no case to eject when loading a fresh round. The real problem with this is the main gun creates a lot more heat than an individual service weapon. So getting the same concept to work on a small round without frying the shooter isn't going to be easy.

I had a thought regarding this thread start to grow while reading this earlier. While incopacitating the enemy is the primary goal (hopefully), I began to wonder if there was another motive - that is the availability of brass or steel for cases and the cost of metals. I wonder if someone has crunched some figures and realized how little it would take for the US to face a shortage if a trading partner decided to shut off the supply. I really don't think "being green" or not has much to do with this decision.

lysanderxiii said:

Actually, caseless ammunition is currently fielded and has been around for ages . . . and the US military uses an awful lot of it.

View attachment 1011800

View attachment 1011801

Caseless ammunition in WW2

Click to expand...

Not sure it's apples to apples referring-to that four-deuce stuff as "caseless" per se.

Biggest debate here is about small arms man carried lightweight etc., etc., etc. Plus there are some fighter jet and support helicopter and fixed wing advantages to caseless ammo.

I'm personally waiting on pulse cannons .... that's when things will change.

"Pulse cannons" carried by Imperial Walkers....soft top tanks won't be safe then.

upptick said:

The military has recently awakened to the fact that our near-peer rivals -- China and Russia -- use beefy body armor that provides protection against our current military rounds. Hence, there will be a new military round in short order. I agree that it might not be plastic, but we are going to see something new.

Click to expand...

Good. I don't like 556. Now, I hope it's a reloadable case, but other than that, I'd love to see the 6.8spc or something come about. I've shot a few pigs with 223, and it's not impressive. Do t really need a 270 wssm either though.....

greyling22 said:

Good. I don't like 556. Now, I hope it's a reloadable case, but other than that, I'd love to see the 6.8spc or something come about. I've shot a few pigs with 223, and it's not impressive. Dont really need a 270 wssm either though.....

Click to expand...

It's interesting the world's major militaries settled on using very similar ammunition -- basically 22 caliber steel core bullets around 3000 fps or so (5.56x45, 5.45x39, 5.8x42). If by chance we actually changed our service cartridge, I wonder how long before everyone else copies the idea?

illinoisburt said:

It's interesting the world's major militaries settled on using very similar ammunition -- basically 22 caliber steel core bullets around 3000 fps or so (5.56x45, 5.45x39, 5.8x42). If by chance we actually changed our service cartridge, I wonder how long before everyone else copies the idea?

Click to expand...

If it is effective, I can see others doing the same. For sure there are others letting us spend the money on development.

One of the videos mentioned that polymer case allows them to customize the internal dimensions of the case which can allow more pressure to be gained with less powder. Maybe improve combustion and reduce unburned powder I imagine. Sounded interesting.

I am also curious about the economics of polymer cases. What sort of infrastructure is needed to produce the millions of rounds a year and how does that cost compare to brass.

MechAg94 said:

If it is effective, I can see others doing the same. For sure there are others letting us spend the money on development.

One of the videos mentioned that polymer case allows them to customize the internal dimensions of the case which can allow more pressure to be gained with less powder. Maybe improve combustion and reduce unburned powder I imagine. Sounded interesting.

I am also curious about the economics of polymer cases. What sort of infrastructure is needed to produce the millions of rounds a year and how does that cost compare to brass.

Click to expand...

Injection molding is fast and one mold can have many MANY cartridges created in one injection. Brass cases required sequential striking to draw brass blanks out into the case shape. It is likely to require multiple annealing steps along the way especially for large/long cases. Then after drawing the brass they still required machining of the extractor groove/rim, flash hole, and trimmed to length. Polymer cases should be much faster and cheaper to produce once development is done and they are ramped up to full production. Not to mention how much cheaper steel and plastic is than brass.

I noticed something today.
The AAI "Neckless" plastic case was molded to the bullet, the powder loaded from the rear, and plugged with the metal head/rim/primer pocket.
Pictures on the TV site show them loading 7.62 conventionally, the plastic case body is made up with its metal head and the bullet seated over the powder just like brass. I wonder if their 6.8 is the same.

And for those who worry about plastic pollution, the head is steel so the empties are "magnetically retrievable." Easy to police up the range.

mnrivrat said:

How are the polymers when it comes to expansion and contraction ? Brass expands to seal the chamber then contracts to be extracted. I also see no extraction rim. Seems like some interesting tech will have to be developed. Then again I am old school, so perhaps that has already been taken care of. Then the 30 percent lighter weapon system, . I can see the use of polymers to accomplish that. The whole thing sounds interesting. A modern day Red Rider. I hope they work out the bugs before it goes afield . The first M16 system got people killed.

Click to expand...

True Velocity has been making polymer cases for some time now. On the battlefield we do not need to leave brass which the enemy will recycle and use against us. Plus polymer weighs less.

The NGSW (next generation squad weapon) trial is about complete. Typically we do not get a new rifle until we get a new caliber. One exception is the M1 Garand.

The winner will be announced in October. By November 2022 most combat units will have the new rifle and MG. M4 will be used for support troops.

N9NWO said:

The winner will be announced in October. By November 2022 most combat units will have the new rifle and MG. M4 will be used for support troops.

Click to expand...

Don't count on it.
There are billions tied up in current rifles & carbines (and all the ammo). It would take a truly amazing amount of significant difference for riles and carbines to be ditched.

Now, changing to a lighter-weight ammo for helo and aircraft use would be significant. And is exactly the sort of thing that could be adopted quickly. Grunts will still soldier on with what we have.

DoD has a long history of ginning up these demonstrations once every decade or so, tossing a few millions at each of them, and they just walking away.

Only the U.S. gubbermint would think of crap like this to spend our tax dollars on. Remember when they wanted a light rifle similar to the AR-15 that shot .223, they got a M-16 that shot 5.56. Couldn't be satisfied to use the oh so very similar 2.23. Bunch of wasters of tax payers money at every corner!!!

CapnMac said:

Don't count on it.
There are billions tied up in current rifles & carbines (and all the ammo). It would take a truly amazing amount of significant difference for riles and carbines to be ditched.

Now, changing to a lighter-weight ammo for helo and aircraft use would be significant. And is exactly the sort of thing that could be adopted quickly. Grunts will still soldier on with what we have.

DoD has a long history of ginning up these demonstrations once every decade or so, tossing a few millions at each of them, and they just walking away.

Click to expand...

It was noticed during that during the XM-8 trial that the Army had no intention of doing anything but see what technology was out there.

However the Army has been planning for the Army after Next. We are seeing all sorts of next generation systems. There is a whole fleet of wheeled vehicles that will be electric drive (engine runs a generator). The new replacement for the Hummer is such. The NGSW is the squad weapon of the next generation. Basically everything is going to be replaced with new tech.