The Future of Military Firearms
Donald Sensing and Kim du Toit weigh in on the pending military adoption of something new. The adoption of a military arm consists of two primary issues: Caliber and Operating System.
The standard military handgun and rifle rounds (9MM and 5.56 Nato, respectively) leave a lot to be desired. The problem with both rounds is that they are underpowered as currently configured. The military is limited to ball ammo and cannot employ hollow point rounds, which would aid both rounds in terms of stopping power. The solution is to up the calibers to something with more oompf!
For pistols, the return of the 45ACP has been kicked around as this round does have proven stopping power. It’s weakness is that it is less effective at penetrating light armored targets. The 45 is a bigger, slower bullet than the 9MM. While 9MM offers penetration, its lightweight and high speed make it an ineffective people stopper compared to the 45ACP. A bigger bullet with more power behind it may be in order. As such, some folks suggest the 10MM, which, IIRC, is basically a long 40S&W (what most police departments use). A friend of mine even brought up the return of the 45 Long Colt.
For rifles, some folks long for the return of the 308 Winchester. While a more than adequate round, it is not suited to assault rifles as it is powerful and heavy. It’s safe to say that the US won’t adopt the 7.62X39 because it’s a commie round. The new 6.8MM SPC was designed to fill the void. The 6.8MM will fit in AR15 lower receivers and has essentially the same ballistics as a 308 out to about 500 or 600 yards. The 6.8MM would be, in my opinion, the logical choice if the military chose to keep its current operating system, the AR15 family of rifles.
For both rifles and pistols, the issue would be re-training soldiers to acclimate them to the new rounds. The 9MM and 5.56MM both have minimal recoil compared to, say, a 10MM and a 308 Winchester. Troops would essentially have to re-familiarize themselves with shooting. I do not know what the recoil on the 6.8MM round is like.
As for the operating system of the rifle, the schools of thought seem to be 1) change the AR caliber and address a few issues it has; 2) scrap the AR for something new, like the XM8; or 3) go back to an older gun. The military will not go back to an older gun and I don’t understand why some people advocate this (or why they advocate going back to older 1911s for handguns) as the newer designs are better. The new designs (like the XM8) are lighter, mostly plastic and cheaper to make new. Configuring existing ARs for a new round would be cheaper as you only need to swap out bolts, barrels and magazine followers in the case of the 6.8MM. While they’re at it, they should move to a gas piston system as opposed to a gas tube system (Armstech already makes one!) because the AR eats where it shits. This isn’t a problem if you keep it clean but, in combat, cleaning may not be an option.
My opinion is that the military should change caliber first, weapon later.
No one, it seems, likes the current pistol or its caliber. I personally think that hands down the military should adopt the Glock 20 or 21 (10MM and 45ACP, respectively). The Glock is easy to operate, durable, long-lasting, and reliable. Some folks have a real love of the 1911. I think it’s a fine gun but there’s so much on the market that is better (Sigs, H&Ks, and Glocks). 1911s are not user friendly for cleaning, they’re clunky, and their controls are hard to operate.
There, that ought to annoy some readers.
March 18th, 2005 at 3:32 am
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March 17th, 2005 at 9:10 am
There are three significant problems with adopting a Glock.
First, the recoil on their 40S&W (and I assume 10mm) is simply unacceptably strong and makes accurate follow up shots very difficult. Sure, that can be addressed somewhat through training, but it can’t be eliminated without adding significant weight to the gun itself.
Second, while a quick field strip and cleaning of the Glock is very easy to do do, actually performing any work on the gun beyond that becomes quite complicated – it can be done by a trained armorer but not by a soldier in the field.
Finally, in order to field strip the Glock you need to depress the trigger. This has been a significant safety issue for police departments, who as much as they try, can’t seem to avoid at least a fewcops every year shooting themselves in the thigh while trying to clean their weapon. Its not really the guns fault – and something anyone following safe handling procedures shouldn’t encoutner – but the problem seems significant enough for cops that I imagine if you expand the Glocks use across a million addition users (most in the 18-22 year range) your just asking for real problems.
March 17th, 2005 at 9:19 am
“1911s are not user friendly for cleaning”
Ain’t that the truth. I cut my teeth on semi-automatics with a WWI military issue 1911. For YEARS I shied away from semi-autos (except for my beloved Makarov) because of the PITA factor of cleaning the damn 1911…
Fast forward to last year, when I bought my SW99 .40S&W… I never in a million years imagined that I’d enjoy cleaning a semi-auto…
Countertop has a good point about field-stripping vs. more detailed work; however, let’s remember that these are, as Unc says, 18 – 22 year olds using these weapons – they’re not likely to NEED to do anything more than take the guns apart and clean them.
And the Glock makes that EXTREMELY easy to do. Easy to do = will get done. Hard to do = will get put off if at all possible.
All MHO, of course.
March 17th, 2005 at 10:49 am
The 10mm, when loaded to or near full power, does indeed have some hefty recoil. I think the .40, with rounds in the 155-165 gr range, would probably be an acceptable compromise. Yeah, the recoil is more than the 9mm. Deal with it. As far as which pistol to use? I’d go with the Sig (is the full size the 226 or 228?) or the HK USP.
For rifles, I think I’d go with the FN SCAR platform, with a collapsable stock. For cost reasons, I’d probalby stick with the 6.8, rather than go with something new (or even soemthing old-return of the .280/30, or the 7.62×45, anyone?) That would allow the continued use (with modifications) of the current inventory of rifles, along with the M249 SAW. Sorry, but I just really like the belt fed LMG as opposed to a mag fed one.
March 17th, 2005 at 11:13 am
As I recall, a huge part of the decision to get rid of the 1911 was the number of ND’s that it occasioned.
The Glock would be far, far worse. Should it be? Of course not. But for all the military’s strength, there will always be some human weaknesses, and (IMO), in the case of weapons, they overplan for them.
The .40 was developed after the 10mm. Recalling the FBI tests after the Miami Fiasco, the 10mm was the only caliber that passed all of the required tests. (The .45 was next in line, but it failed to penetrate 12 inches of ballistic gel after passing through an angled windshield. (It only made 8 inches)). So in the brilliance that only the government can exhibit… they adopted the .40, since the 10 was too much for some agents.
I’d say, go back to the M1 carbine idea – that pistols aren’t useful over 25 yards, chamber a little full auto like the MP5 in 10mm, and use that instead.
The 5.56 in the subgun round as above is apparently effective. I’m not totally against it in THAT role, but using it as the main battle rifle is insane. 6.8 would be a decent round, from the ballistics, and allow the carrying of more ammo than 7.62×51. (Side note… if you don’t know about the EM2, google for it, and notice the round.. and the ballistics for it are identical to the 6.8 now. Maybe we should have listened to the Brits (back then))
March 17th, 2005 at 11:17 am
I flat out love my Glock 20. Currently using 200 grain FMJ Blazer ammo just for something new. The Gold Dot hollow points positively scream out of the barrel…most 10 rounds have exceedingly high muzzle velocities.
March 17th, 2005 at 11:18 am
Glock would be my choice, too. Perfect for the military. .40 or .45. .40’s better for penetration, which is a bigger deal for the military. 10mm’s even better.
One thing I’ve heard (don’t know if it’s true) is that the military has been insisting on pistols with second-strike capability because some of the military ammo has hard primers. That’s why we wound up with the Beretta 92, and some of the other guns that have filled gaps (like the SIGs and Rugers) have been DA/SA guns.
March 17th, 2005 at 1:31 pm
New or Old Arms for the Military?
New technology has come up with some amazing materials and processes and I see very little reason why we shouldn’t employ some of the assets we posess as a nation to equip our sons with the finest arms on the planet. If we are a nation of ‘motivated …
March 17th, 2005 at 1:43 pm
One thing that’s never made sense to me is that we’re not supposed to use hollow points because they fragment and leave hard to remove pieces in the body, but 5.56 is fine even though it does the same thing as long as you get it going fast enough.
March 17th, 2005 at 2:16 pm
Re: Jesse…
Ahh Jesse, your making the beginners mistake! The ban on hollow points has NOTHING to do with how they actually perform. The Geneva Convention say “No Expanding Bullets”. We don’t break any of the convention because A) their are something we like in it and B) a bunch of people would whine, yell, and scream if we broke anything in it. As long as the bullet doesn’t expand, well, do what you want. Heck, the russians put a hollow cavity of in the front tip of their 5.45 round between the core and the jacket to DELIBERATELY induce tumbling. But as long as it doesn’t expand….
Personal View RE: new pistol round.
I understand all the complaints about stopping power, etc. The one worry I have is that with all the concern about this war, we’re losing site of the next one. Everything I’ve seen says that .45 cal is a poor performer against body armor. You can put money that our future adversaries are taking a very close look at this war and one of the major lessons is that body armor is really, really important. What ever round we go toward MUST have good penetration against body armor.
March 18th, 2005 at 5:36 am
War of the Battle Rifles
The discussions concerning the future adoption of new small arms by our military have been heating up recently (see this and this), especially now that the Army has officially announced
March 18th, 2005 at 6:34 am
The Right Weapon for the Job
We need to standarize on a sidearm capable of firing either .357SIG or .45 super (or something with similar performance). High pressure, hard penetrator loadings of either should defeat most soft body armor at 15-25 yards, but to my mind the .45 supe…
March 19th, 2005 at 4:43 am
Just a couple of comments:
A. The British .280/30 round is in no way compatible with an AR platform. It has the same base diameter as the .308/7.62×51 but is considerably shorter. A double stack magazine cannot fit within the AR mag well. That is the beauty of the 6.8×43 from an engineering perspective–it is the largest base diameter that can fit in a double stack magazine for an AR, yet it produces almost 50% more power than the 5.56×45 and has a bullet with 65% more weight and frontal area. The 6.8 was not designed arbitrarily, but was designed to make maximum use of the available platform. If anyone wants to go to a larger case, an entirely new platform should also be adopted–in which case, the .308 is viable. There really aren’t a lot of discrete size gradations between the 5.56×45 and 7.62×51. Tech advice: examine the available base diameters of current production cases to see which ones might be useful as parent cases for the new design. The 6.8×43 uses the .30 Remington as the parent case, with its base diameter of 0.422″–versus 0.393″ for the 5.56×45, 0.445″ for the 7.62×39 Soviet, and 0.473″ for the 7.62×51. If you increase either the base diameter or the Overall Length beyond that of the 6.8×43, the AR proves to bee too small as a platform, thus necessitating a complete changeover. Personally, I think that the AR should have been a tiny bit bigger from the outset, so that it could accommodate a bit of expansion, but that was not done, so we are now limited. As an example, the original Chevy small-block had a displacement of 283 cubic inches, which has now been increased to 427 cubic inches in the latest LS-7 engine without drastically changing the overall size and weight.
B. The argument that the .45 ACP cannot penetrate body armor is almost irrelevant. Most future wars are likely to be small-scale actions against non-nation-states, so the enemy is unlikely to have general issue armor, thus making caliber choice simple–pick the one with the most stopping power and the largest hole. On the other hand, if the U.S. gets into a fight with a technologically advanced enemy, they will probably have armor vests comparable to ours, in which case NO pistol round (including the prematurely vaunted new 5.7×28 or the old-reliable 7.62×25 Tokarev) will have much success in penetrating. Bottom line: armor penetration of pistol rounds is not decisive in a military context. If you think we should develop a true armor-penetrating pistol round, it will probably look somewhat like the 5.56×45 and have approximately the same performance. Very tough to package that size round in any “normal” pistol. Personally, I don’t think that it would be worth the effort to develop such a specialized pistol. Instead, if you know that you are facing a technologically advance, vest-wearing enemy, train with a reverse Mozambique Drill–one to the chest, two to the head. Or better yet, make sure you always have your rifle handy.
C. As for the supposed slow, difficult disassembly and cleaning of the 1911 pattern pistols, anyone who is actually familiar with them can field-strip them and clean them just as quickly as someone can field-strip and clean a Glock. It isn’t rocket science. Yes, the 1911 has a couple more separate parts when disassembled, but their proper re-assembly is obvious to anyone familiar with the pistol. Besides, I have seen less practiced people have trouble field-stripping and reassembling a Glock, too. Develop a modest level of competence, and neither design is very tricky–unlike, say, the Mauser C-96 and some others, which can actually be reassembled incorrectly so that they don’t work, or some other designs that are just so odd that their field-stripping procedures are very difficult or obscure (Seecamp, Baby Browning, CZ-27, Sokolovsky, CZ-52, etc). We could even make the argument that it is a bad design feature for the Glock to require one to pull the trigger before dissassembly, since it can lead to negligent discharges if the unloading procedures are not followed meticulously. A 1911 which is not properly unloaded can actually be disaassembled without firing, even if there is a round in the chamber. Not that I would recommend that procedure as a general practice. The key is to know your firearm thoroughly.
March 20th, 2005 at 3:41 pm
Good point regarding pistol rounds, randy. However, i was merely using the properties of each as a pro/con sort of thing. I realize a pistol isn’t designed to penetrate armor.
And there’s now way a 1911 is as easy to field strip as a glock.
December 19th, 2006 at 10:57 pm
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