![]() This caused the first casualties inflicted by the SAW as logisticians’ heads exploded: they had no desire to stock a third caliber alongside 5.56 and 7.62. The Army conduced an extensive computer study that determined the optimum caliber for a SAW was 6mm. Soon after the SAW tests described in this series, NATO chose the SS109. 30 concept as part of a question of the overall organization and equipment of the future rifle squad a follow-on study, the Army Small Arms Requirements Study (ASARS), made it clear that the caliber mattered less than having two auto weapons per squad to provide a base of fire, as the BAR had done in days of yore. ![]() The Army had just given up on the idea of a return to a. It was a little less than 2%, not of the RDT&E budget, but of 1% of the RDT&E budget (0.01708% if you do the math rounds up to 171 10/1000ths of a percent). Considering that it would produce a weapon still in the field today, this program’s budget request was almost invisible: $500,000. The Squad Automatic Weapon program was well along the service needed to complete a developmental and operational test of four prototypes and evaluate the test data. The principal small arms program was the SAW (the long-running Air Force/Joint pistol trials, the M231 Firing Port weapon, and a 30mm repeater grenade launcher which never saw type-classification, were some of the others). Nobody remembers the US Roland AA missile, or the Stand Off Target Acquisition System, a helicopter with a Rube Goldberg targeting radar that needed a Heath Robinson raising and lowering mechanism.īut all in all, for all that the suits would like to zero out Army R&D, and for all that some projects would be dead ends, the need for these systems was so great, and/or the contractors had promised to manufacture them in so many Congressional districts, that the Army had an RDT&E budget request for $2.927 Billion for FY 80 (which began 1 Oct 79). Some would blow their budgets and get put out of their misery by the Carter administration or the Congress. To the delight of the opponents, some development projects would turn out to be turkeys, like the DIVAD gun (later named Sergeant York its fate was sealed when a high-stakes live demo saw it lock on to a latrine fan instead of a hovering, easy-pickin’s drone helicopter). (Some of these opponents were concerned patriots, like John Boyd’s famous reform mafia others might not have been, like the CDI, a group that toed Ivan’s line so thoroughly that it was rumored to be financed by the USSR, and that did indeed fade from prominence after the USSR went belly up, although no one ever found any proof of anything as far as we know). Those are the ones that turned into successful fieldings, but every one was opposed by vocal lobbies, which argued that the weapons cost too much, and would never work. US production of the superior British 81mm mortar.Improved missiles: I-HAWK, TOW, and Pershing II.The still unnamed MLRS rocket system was in early phases of tests, and precision guided rockets for it were barely on the engineers’ whiteboards.The YAH-64 helicopter (“Y” means prototype the Army was testing 5 prototypes, but they hadn’t selected the night vision and fire control systems yet everyone remembered the AH-56 Cheyenne, which had gotten to this stage and beyond before its ignominious cancellation).The Copperhead laser-guided precision artillery shell.The Infantry Fighting Vehicle and its cav variant (not yet named Bradley).This was principally setting up American manufacture of an already-successful German gun. The 120mm smoothbore follow-on for the M1.The XM1 Tank (with 105mm gun not yet named Abrams).While we’re most concerned about small arms here, the Army’s RDT&E guys had to develop it all, and they had their hands full trying to field or develop, at that time: In 1979, the Army was concerned about the vintage of its small arms and other systems. It’s a bit amazing that a SAW program got any traction at all. ![]() The principal objective of this article is to set the stage, and introduce an unfamiliar cousin of a familiar old friend: the XM106 Automatic Rifle, an M16A1 redesigned by Army engineers for the tactical role once filled by the Browning Automatic Rifle in the American rifle squad. ![]() But how did we get to that point, and what other weapons were considered along the way? This series will look at each of the four contenders in turn. The M249 Squad Automatic Weapon is widely distributed in the US Army and Marine Corps (even after the Marines replaced many SAWs with M27 Infantry Automatic Rifles). ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |