setsneedtofeed

That's the worst points challenge I ever heard.

I want to emphasize my above comment was made specifically to avoid the "conventional vs bullpup" debate, because it is a separate one from the "intermediate caliber vs full size". I can not stress this enough.

The benefit of having a full length barrel in a shorter package looks amazing on paper, but in practice isn't as big a deal for most purposes.

Bullpups introduce issues like an upper limit on how good the trigger can be because of a needed linkage, and I think more pressing is making something as simple as brass ejection a bit of a head scratcher to make work for both left and right handed people. There are solutions but they aren't necessary if you just don't deal with bullpups.

Since AR-15 derived designs are the most popular military rifles worldwide, I'll mention that the straightline recoil and beefy buffer assembly are appreciated and that impulse can't really be replicated in a bullpup design.

Now, I feel it in my bones that you want to argue for the merits of bullpups. Maybe I'm wrong but I just get that sense. I genuinely have been a part of so many bullpup conversations and I honestly don't care about it. Bullpup vs conventional is a boring argument. If you're still wanting to continue a discussion/debate/internet argument please direct an angry correspondence to the French military about their dropping of the FAMAS for HK416s.

well I honestly don’t know what to say other than ‘holy shit, how do you know all this, off the top of your head?’

Traveling and absorbing from people who knew a lot more.

The Dave Grossman aside wasn't a shot at you, it was more for those who know. He wrote a book where his conclusion was that soldiers in war intentionally miss. His methods for gathering data were sketchy to say the least. His name or book seemingly inevitably appears on comments any time the number of rounds fired vs kills in war comes up. It's a very reductionist idea that appeals to the sensibilities of what I might imperfectly call "mainstream Reddit culture".

I would perhaps recommend chamomile tea?

Thanks but that isn't the direction I'm heading.

I pay $35 USD per day at the main local field. Other fields are in the ballpark, up or down $10.

I think if you're playing on most weekends, $500/year works out pretty good.

As long as you aren't British, they aren't that hard to make. But, the "conventional vs. bullpup" debate is a separate one from the "intermediate rifle vs. full power rifle" debate for the most part. I know people are going to talk about overall length, but really that's an argument point that applies no matter the caliber.

Intermediate caliber vs. full power is really a fundamental difference in thinking.

We’re gonna need to start a NonCredible War College, lol, if you keep dropping write ups like that!

I am in an unusually altered state. I normally don't essaypost like this.

what I’m proposing is that you’d just have different kinds of battalions.

This is somewhat similar to India which uses a lot of 7.62x39mm AK-203s and 7.62x51mm SiG-716, distributing them to different units. However, India is primarily concerned with protecting its borders rather than preparing for hypothetical military force projections so they have a more stable idea of what weapons will be used where.

For the US I still do not think making battle rifle specific units is a good idea. It presumes a fully battle rifle equipped unit is ideal in a given situation. I don't think that's right. While 5.56mm can struggle at 600-800m (depending on the weapon specifics, ammo specifics, and who you ask), the presumption that even in the mountains of Afghanistan that this was a debilitating problem is overblown. Full power MGs and DMRs can work on the longer ranges, and inside of the extreme ranges intermediate caliber just gets better and better compared to full power for a service rifle. It is not as if every firefight in Afghanistan was at 800m.

Now, something that makes sense and has been done in the past is creating accurized 5.56mm rifles for units specializing in longer ranges. The USMC made the SAM-R and the US Army's 3rd ID made the SDM-R. Both of them were 20 inch barrel, M16A4 derived weapons that were modified, assembled with care, and given appropriate optics. If you want a "Mountaineer" outfitted unit, such a rifle makes a lot of sense as the service rifle as it prioritizes range without sacrificing ammo and parts compatibility with everyone else, and those rifles are a lot more usable inside of longer distances than a battle rifle would be. And still assuming this hypothetical unit still has all the full power DMRs and MGs backing up the smaller rifles.

Like, if you’re not mounted, or not mounted as often, maybe you can make an argument that cutting out a SAW gunner, and instead just having enough ammo, in general, to do collective suppressive fire… this is worth it as you are overall less equipment heavy in an unmounted, on foot situation, because you gain mobility and endurance/stamina, as a unit.

This was literally the TO&E in Vietnam. In WW2, there was a squad automatic rifle (usually the BAR) organic to squads. After WW2, the US first tried the idea of M14 equipped troops supported by an M15/M14E2 squad automatic rifle taking the place of the BAR. When the M14 was replaced by the M16, the squad automatic rifle role was removed because hey every soldier could do that job in a pinch with their controllable, full auto service rifle. This looked good on paper, but eventually resulted in the M249 SAW and that role coming back because a weapon that could be the base of fire organic in the squads was important. (This is partially btw why I am convinced the USMC is going to pull their M249s out of storage the second they deploy for force-on-force in the future)

If you are dismounted a lot, there's also a half decent chance you are on the strained end of the supply chain. You want to be able to carry more ammo per pound, not less. Suppressing fire is how firefights go. It is how people are trained. It is how they will fight. Dave Grossman is a fraud. The idea sometimes floated that soldiers with less ammo (because they are carrying bigger full power rounds) will compensate by firing more accurately and using fewer rounds is the opposite of pretty much every study I know of and of doctrine developed from studies and experience. More ammo is good, and a soldier can carry more intermediate ammo than full power ammo.

And yeah… yeah having a guided 40mm would be pretty neat, in a lot of situations.

Guided 40mm exists...somewhere. The Raytheon Pike was hyped for a while. What I mean by these rounds not materializing is, that they are essentially cryptids. People have photos of them, and maybe even they'll drunkenly tell you a story of how they touched one once, but they aren't just out and about. If a US infantry unit deployed tomorrow, none of the grenadiers would have any.

Increased body armor penetration has been a consideration since at least 2017(page 10), however it was less the driving force back then compared to pushing for longer range, which given that Afghanistan was ongoing makes sense. Increased range and increased armor penetration were both justifications from the start, but it has been interesting to watch which of them was the publicly pushed focus and when. As heated combat in Afghanistan became less pressing, there was more of a spotlight on armor penetration.

But did they say Chinese body armor

No, I haven't found an official DOD document specifically calling out Chinese body armor. Publicly the DOD is going to mostly avoid naming names of a nation it isn't at war with. "Emerging threats" "Peer adversary" "Global situation". But about the time the US was getting serious about the NGSW they were also gung ho about the M10 Booker, a vehicle that really only makes sense for the US to create if it is planning on island hopping combat, and the US was getting super serious back into jungle training for conventional troops. Meanwhile China was showing off it's capabilities. So, yeah. Chyna.

The solution comes first from thinking bigger than the squad level. Think at the platoon level at a minimum, since as a baseline that's going to be the smallest independent element for conventional purposes. A platoon already includes 7.62mm MGs in the weapons squad. Adding onto that a limited amount of DMRs in the platoon level, as was done in Afghanistan solves the supposed "overmatch" issue. A select amount of the platoon has the full powered ballistics, while all the standard service weapons remain in intermediate caliber, which is the best all around caliber for infantry service. Optics are much easier to modify to match the theater. Want to add some M110A1s or something to the platoon for a few dedicated guys? Sure. Want to make a floating TO&E where every normal guy might get one of two calibers of weapon? Nah, nah. Want to give the standard guys a bunch of extra weight? Give them some extra belts of 7.62mm that they can feed the weapons squad.

An example of some of the early not-quite-honest MIC pushing of the NGSW idea was they would list the consistent terminal ballistic range of 5.56mm and then compare it to something like 7.62x54r that was being used by insurgents in Afghanistan. Obviously the full power round has a longer reach. Everyone already knows that, that is part of the trade off. The presentations however scare mongered as if this was a newly discovered and terrifying fact. "Oh no our brave boys are being outranged in combat, they're sitting ducks!"- as long as you ignore that platoon already has DMRs and M240s that is. As well as the fact that US military optics are allowing standard Joes to accurately reach out to basically the edge of the effective ballistic range of their calibers, whereas an iron sighted Mosin with a clapped out barrel is not doing the same. In extended advances by remote US units, a platoon may even carry it's own mortars to make it's own organic base of fire, which is a heavy ask, but is both effective and doesn't completely disrupt the TO&E.

I want to re-emphasize that ever since the Afghan drawdown the primary push of why the NGSW is supposedly so important has shifted. Nowadays it is all about punching through body armor and playing up the trouble 5.56mm has. You know ignoring that M995 has existed for decades and that it would be a lot simpler to mass issue it or an improved 5.56mm armor piercing round than it would be to completely switch calibers.

If the US is so worried about keeping ahead, there are a lot of things that would be a lot more effective like actually making some headway on issuing the guided, extended warhead 40mm rounds that were part of the justification for moving to the M320, which have not materialized at all.

It is driving me crazy that in the 2nd and 3rd panel the setting perfectly aligns, but on the first panel the trees align but not the water. So close to a perfect panorama set of panels.

OPR rules, scaled to 15mm, using Fallout figures. OPR battle lists with Legion using Orc Maurder rules, and NCR using Human Defense Force.

You're trying to compromise and meet in the middle by creating a horrendously complicated TO&E to appease people wanting to make money by overhauling US small arms, which is all solving a "problem" that existed and got solved without the NGSW. The NGSW was pushed by gun industry people looking to sell a lucrative solution by cherry picking and distorting data. You can tell this because the justification for the NGSW has shifted from "we need long range overmatch overmatch overmatch buzzword" when they could scare monger about Afghanistan, to "we need to punch through Chinese body armor" once that particular scare wasn't pressing anymore. People who make money by selling new guns will always find a reason for you to ditch what you currently have in favor of their new gun.