US Army Lightweight Small Arms Technologies program

[Ratamacue]

Here's a page with a PDF overviewing AAI's development of cased and caseless telescoped ammunition as well as a light machinegun design for the US Army:

http://www.aaicorp.com/New/Advancedprograms/html/lightweight_small_arms.html

To summarize, AAI has developed a polymer-cased telescoped round, as well as a functional LMG prototype. Caseless ammunition is in development and is intended to begin testing in Q3 of FY2006. As a system (weapon plus 600 rounds ammunition), the cased weapon provides a 40% weight reduction versus the M249, while the caseless weapon should provide a 50% weight reduction (and 40% smaller rounds than 5.56 NATO). If everything goes as planned, the weapon system(s) should transition to the Army Project Manager Soldier Weapons at the end of FY2010. Here are a couple older PDFs that have been posted around here before, going into more detail on the weapon and ammunition technologies involved:

http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2005smallarms/wednesday/spiegel.pdf
http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2005smallarms/tuesday/gagne.pdf
http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2005smallarms/wednesday/oreilly.pdf

[socom6]

Good find... thanks.

[goat89]

Hmmm... Interesting. Polymer encased ammo? It might cut down the weight I guess.

[Tony Williams]

The target is to achieve an overall 50% weight reduction (gun and ammo) over the 5.56mm M249.

For me, the most interesting bit is the fact that they are planning to take advantage of the weight saving to develop a gun and ammo which could replace the "company machine gun" as well as the LMG - which presumably means the M240 as well as the M249. That suggests an intermediate calibre weapon - which might make a very good rifle round...

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website (http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk) and discussion forum (http://forums.delphiforums.com/autogun/messages/)

[Hollis]

Hmmm... Interesting. Polymer encased ammo? It might cut down the weight I guess.


I have seen the polymer case, The one I say was like a shot gun hull, the primer/base was brass then maybe 3/8 of a inch high, then the polymer case. Weight would be the big advantage.

[vajt]

I wonder if they will use some of these ideas for the XM8 replacement? Maybe that's another reason why the project was put on hold...why accept a temporary fix when the next big jump is right around the corner. Maybe a caseless or polymer cased 6.8mm or 7.62mm round?

-----JT-----

[Ratamacue]

I wonder if they will use some of these ideas for the XM8 replacement? Maybe that's another reason why the project was put on hold...why accept a temporary fix when the next big jump is right around the corner. Maybe a caseless or polymer cased 6.8mm or 7.62mm round?It looks at the moment like they're testing with standard 5.56 M856 (tracer) NATO rounds. However, like Tony pointed out, the fact that they're looking at creating an overall general-purpose machine gun design rather than a separate LMG and MMG suggests that they might use (or design) an intermediate round like 6.8.

Regarding the XM8, it never made all that much sense as a replacement. True, it was more reliable than the M16/M4, but that's about all that it offered. The modularity system wasn't much more than you can achieve with an M16-series weapon, nor did it offer any kind of ballistic improvement. Even if this program weren't going on, I doubt that the XM8 would have been adopted.