Posted on 12/26/2008 3:55:08 PM PST by Jet Jaguar
ARLINGTON, VA. — The Marine Corps has moved one step closer to selecting a next-generation light automatic rifle.
On Friday, the Marine Corps Systems Command in Quantico, Va., announced contract awards for three competing weapons manufacturers to produce and deliver their final entries to the Corps by the middle of next year, in what signifies a final round of competition that began with ten candidates.
The lighter, magazine-fed Infantry Automatic Rifle — or IAR — is intended to replace the belt-fed M249 Squad Automatic Weapon — or SAW — in “the Marine Rifle Squad within infantry battalions and in the scout teams in Light Armored Reconnaissance battalions.”
But the rifle will not be for all Marines, according to a statement by MARSYSCOM spokesman Bill Johnson-Miles.
The Pentagon requested up to 10 samples of a 5.56 mm IAR prototype from FN Herstal, which would be made in Belgium; Heckler and Koch Defense, which is based in Ashburn, Va., but whose samples would be made in Germany, the home country of the parent company; and two entries from Colt Defense, made in West Hartford, Conn.
The rifles will then undergo limited testing by infantry Marines.
Under the five-year contracts, the Pentagon could tap the winning entrant for an acquisition of 4,476 rifles, with an option to purchase up to 6,500 copies at a possible value of $28 million for FN Herstal or Heckler & Koch, or $24 million for Colt.
The SAW, which is manufactured by FN Manufacturing, the US subsidiary of Belgium’s FN Herstal, weighs 16.5 pounds and fires 750 rounds per minute.
The lighter IAR candidate from FNH USA, for example, weighs in at 10.4 pounds and fires 650 rounds per minute.
Spokesmen from Heckler & Koch’s Ashburn, Va., office and FNH USA, in McLean, Va., did not return calls to Stars and Stripes.
The rifles are scheduled for deployable use in December 2010.
Close-quarter, forced entry, urban warfare makes that very difficult at times. The M4 carbine currently issued to Fire Team NCOs is highly manueverable and controllable with the 5.56, but not so rechambered for 6.5.
The flat-top M4 is also highly modular for a wide variety of sighting accessories. Hard to see it going away. SOF operators do generally prefer and trick-out the H&K.
The 5.56 will likely survive until caseless ammo is introduced.
In my opinion, weapons used by our military should be the best of the best, regardless of whether or not they’re foreign made. Sometimes, you have to swallow your pride and admit that someone else makes a better weapon.
And the new IAR looks sweet.
Nope, that was a BAR - Browning Automatic Rifle. It was full-auto only, in 30/06. IIRC, it had 2 rates of fire, but no single shot setting, though a well trained infantryman could fire off single shots.
Here's a photo of a Stoner system:
For more information on the Stoner systems, check out http://world.guns.ru/machine/mg41-e.htm
Mark
What a piece of crap.
Worst Gun EVER....
The Joker wd look good shooting up the Bat with that
That didn’t stop the War Department from buying a load of them anyway. In 30-06, no less. Only the 8mm ones actually worked, though.
In 7.61x51 NATO, no less.
Lighter weapon and lighter rounds = more rounds able to be carried.
This is a light weapon intended for infantry.
Ping!
How the heck can 6,500 automatic rifles cost $28,000,000. That is over $4,000 a copy.
I’m all for the “support the troops” deal, but this has boondoggle written all over it.
The 5.56 will also not over-penetrate in an urban/house setting which is critical when multiple teams are penetrating a building. The last thing you want is unseen cross-fire between teams, and if choosing between giving a bad guy a few layers of drywall for temporary protection (before he is flushed out and eliminated) and over-penetrating and killing a friendly, I’ll take the former any day.
In my experience, 5.56, 9mm, and pretty much anything else I have ever used will penetrate drywall. I prefer a good assualt plan for reducing FF incidents.
Here’s your answer (from the industry side) and I’m sorry but you aren’t going to like it...
There are a lot of things that led to where we are today but the biggest one happened during the Carter Administration. Carter signed into law a piece of legislation that relaxed some of the restrictions in the War Powers Act. The one we are concerned with is the mandate that the US military be armed by weapons made by American manufacturers in America. Carter relaxed the restriction to allow foreign companies to compete for contracts.
The first re-compete that was an issue was the Uniform Pistol Trials of 1987. Beretta won. The arrangement was that Beretta was to manufacture the handguns in America. Beretta opened up their current plant in Md.
At this point, other manufacturers in other countries began making submissions in every contract that came along.
Now, let’s throw the monkey wrench into the works. In 1986, President Reagan signed the Firearm Owners Protection Act into law. Senator Hughes (may he rot in hell) put a poison pill in the bill and got it through Congress. The “Hughes Amendment” effectively banned machine guns.
Since that time, there has been no incentive to produce new designs (which is why we are still using the M16 after 50 years). Without a way to recover R&D costs, no manufacturer is going to put serious effort into a selective fire weapon.
This is why when the Government now puts out a request for bids, they get junk from companies that hope to get a grant to pursue R&D. They aren’t going to front the money themselves. On top of this, the actions of the BATFE has further hindered the development of small arms technology that is desperately needed by our nation to defend our shores.
In 1996, this became painfully apparant when Russia introduced the AN-96 service rifle. Using a modified short recoil principal and a recoil retardation system that allows for very accurate fire on full auto (burst fire) over extended ranges, it leaves everything we have here in the dust.
As more and more anti-gun laws are put on the books, fewer and fewer companies/individuals are willing to deal with the BS from the Government and especially the BATFE to produce firearms that our military needs.
We are now in a position where FN makes about 85% of our military’s small arms. Should FN pull the plug on the contracts and refuse to deliver, the Government has little recourse since the weapons are produced in Belgium and assembled here in the US. (Thank you President Carter). The most troubling aspect of this is that we no longer have the manufacturing capability to make up the short fall across the board. This leaves our military and our nation in a very precarious situation.
With BATFE raiding companies like Cav Arms for no good reason and confiscating their inventory and equipment, they are makeing the problem worse. (also, no arrests or charges have been filed in the Cav Arms situation even though after 300 days, the BATFE still has their property).
With the panic buying that is currently going on, it becomes painfully clear just how unprepared our nation really is. DPMS is backlogged by 100,000 stripped lowers alone. During the height of our firearms industry base, that would be a mere month or two of work. Now, it’s a year or more.
Sadly, I believe it’s to late to fix the problem. BATFE has been so aggressive in assaulting the firearms industry, they have left us at the mercy of those who do NOT have our interests at heart.
We’d have to repeal the 86 ban, reform the BATFE, put protections in place to prevent a repeat and set industry oversight over the Government in this field. It frankly isn’t going to happen until it’s to late. FN is in a position to dictate policy through threat of withholding material to our military.
The worst part of the problem is that there are very few innovative designers that have the knowledge and background to create a really good design left. The John Garands, Sam Colts, John Brownings, have all gone into other fields or won’t come out of the basement for fear of the BATFE and our Government. All that is left is designs by committee that plain suck. Look at the OICW... I rest my case.
Pray for our nation for we be FUBAR’ed.
Mike
The gun grabbers have made designing and producing machine guns, which includes the light 5.56 automatic rifles such as the M-16, pretty difficult.
But still I'm sure Ruger, Remington and the others were allowed to compete if they had a design to enter into the competition. Whatever we get, will most likely be produced here. But then FN has a long relationship with Browning, and in fact *owns* Browning AND Winchester. Cerberus Capital Management owns Remington, Bushmaster, Marlin and H&R. (They also own big chunks of Chrysler and GM Fianancial) Doesn't leave much but pistol/handgun makers, Ruger (who has never made military firearms, AFAIK) and a bunch of folks who make clones of other people's guns. Even Colt is actually two companies, Colt Defense, and Colts Manufactuing. The later builds for the civilian market.Colt was purchased by Zilkha & Company, a financial outfit, in '94 with heavy contacts with the Democrat party. Even going so far as to donate to Senator (Smuckie) Schummer.
Browning shotguns have been made in Japan for decades. Mine is about 25 years old, a BPS, and I'm pretty sure it was made in Japan, even back then. Of course Browning, along with Winchester and others, is owned by FN of Belgim anyway. But their corporate relationship goes back to the days of John Moses Browning himself.
Name for me a product that does not have reliability stories. I’ve got an SU-16B with close to 10,000 rounds through it so far without a hitch. Is it a battle-ready rifle? No, it overheats too quickly - it is just a 4.4 pound firearm. But if you keep your cyclic rate down it just goes and goes and goes without a problem. With a bit of work it could be a serious front-line firearm.
So name me a firearm that does not have horror stories about it.
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