SOCOM To Receive Rifles Chambered in 6.5 Creedmoor

Why not just stick with the fury?

unicratt said:

Why not just stick with the fury?

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4-8 MOA plus $13/rd is a non-starter for any unit in SOCOM for this type of weapon. The M7 trash has been looked at already and the stank couldn’t be washed off fast enough. They want no part of it.

I see it finally being recognized for an abject failure in program vision and management. We just have to wait and see how long it takes Big Army pickle machine to accept reality and divest itself of the abortion before it metastasizes throughout the force per their stated goals.

If you were to look globally at ammo mfre by caliber, that would tell you what capacity exists in a historic time when another global fry-up seems likely. Banking on having items needed to make the Fury vs the Creedmoor, what does global capacity seem like for the Fury?

As an outsider it looks like DoD recently has been caught up in "cool and weird" rather than functional, and the Fury seems like a great example. If I'm even half-correct here, the 6.5 C seems wise from a readiness perspective.

The difference in round count cost per shooter per day with $13/rd EPR, $2.61/ training round, vs $0.99/rd for 5.56 M855A1 is unsupportable.

That’s $6500 or $1305 vs $495 for 500rds. Now imagine an ODA, Ranger Platoon, or MARSOC element x however many shooters in just that basic sub-element doing half a day’s work on the range. Training budget killer, on top of not being able to hit the broad side of a barn for DMs and Snipers. That’s an easy “No thanks."

Great way to crush training in the Infantry though, while introducing the BCG and piston as a new sensitive item that has to be tracked when it’s pulled out and replaced with the BFA BCG components required to run blanks.

Doesn’t help that the M7s are having all kinds of reliability and durability issues, with a weight penalty that can’t be fixed due to cartridge configuration and op rod requirements. It’s a dead-end.

Units simply can’t afford to shoot 6.8x51.

flogxal said:

If you were to look globally at ammo mfre by caliber, that would tell you what capacity exists in a historic time when another global fry-up seems likely. Banking on having items needed to make the Fury vs the Creedmoor, what does global capacity seem like for the Fury?

As an outsider it looks like DoD recently has been caught up in "cool and weird" rather than functional, and the Fury seems like a great example. If I'm even half-correct here, the 6.5 C seems wise from a readiness perspective.

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The Army internally has been made aware of how every time they tried to replace the AR-15 family, that effort has failed miserably. This dates back to the 1960s with SPIW, followed by ACR in the 1980s, then the XM8 from Hk in the early 2000s, then ICSR 7.62 NATO abortion in 2017, and now NGSW. They were so used to losing that someone finally said they’re going to make their mark and NGSW WILL be an Army program of record no matter what.

They are fully committed to failing for reasons that have little to do with the merits, other than wanting to satisfy some type of pride at the General Officer level from all we’re seeing.

We’ve reached the point where the Army should be restricted from soliciting and managing small arms programs anymore, since they’ve proven to foul it up at every opportunity. The last successful solicitation and program management they handled was the M-1 Carbine.

USAF, JSOC, and the AMU have really set the pace for successful small arms and ammunition requests and development, working closely with the private sector. Big Army has been on the wrong side of history in pretty much every individual small arms program since the M-1 Carbine. This makes sense in a way since the Army has much larger fish to fry than small arms, though you would think they should get it right.

Again as outsider -- seems to me that if a new rifle is considered, you would ask first the riflemen who will be asked to use it, and then the armorers who will have to fix it, and the trainers who have to train the users on marksmanship. Then, somewhere much later, the paper-pushing officers who talk to the mfr reps and get schmoozed, they should receive maybe 15-25% of the weight based on their schmoozing. Maybe. But that would be too logical I guess.

LRRPF52 said:

The difference in round count cost per shooter per day with $13/rd EPR, $2.61/ training round, vs $0.99/rd for 5.56 M855A1.

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Your numbers are wack. $2.60 is the cost of the GP combat load, the RRA training is $2.52. The SP round is $23, but that's not really relavant for common use.


Obviously more expensive than 5.56, but that's also without Lake City coming online yet.

flogxal said:

Again as outsider -- seems to me that if a new rifle is considered, you would ask first the riflemen who will be asked to use it, and then the armorers who will have to fix it, and the trainers who have to train the users on marksmanship. Then, somewhere much later, the paper-pushing officers who talk to the mfr reps and get schmoozed, they should receive maybe 15-25% of the weight based on their schmoozing. Maybe. But that would be too logical I guess.

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Also an outsider and while I agree that the end user should have a say I don't think you could break it down into giving everyone a fraction of the decision making power. If the person in charge of actually requisition the items can not source them due to lacl of funds or availability it doesn't really matter what everyone else down the line would like. Everyone has to be in agreement which may lead to some compromise but at least, hopefully, end up with a workable solution.

Oh I didn't mean literally fractions, I just used that to show what weight I would give a paper pusher's bean counting / future job securing influence in the process. It doesn't have to be a fraction or percent. And if I knew more about govt contracts I would say more. But I only know white collar world contracts, some of which cover the same sorts of grounds (complex machine making, sometimes with many sub contractors) and I have seen the results of poorly bid, poorly written, poorly executed contracts.

You can draw some good analogies to custom house build work, because I've worked a few of those too and the similarities are there. The people who know the subject should have the loudest voice, the managers above them can reframe it or whatever, but that's the general rule I have seen for things that work vs those that don't.

Especially in long-standing insular entities/institutions, it's good to take an outsider's view of things into account. I always kicked around ideas I had on cases I worked, with friends or other attys who didn't work in the same area. Eventually, if it has to be tried to a jury, you want to know what the uninformed or casual observer thinks. That's who is on your jury. But it also helps in business troubleshooting, or any dispute -- to get an outsider's view.

flogxal said:

Again as outsider -- seems to me that if a new rifle is considered, you would ask first the riflemen who will be asked to use it, and then the armorers who will have to fix it, and the trainers who have to train the users on marksmanship. Then, somewhere much later, the paper-pushing officers who talk to the mfr reps and get schmoozed, they should receive maybe 15-25% of the weight based on their schmoozing. Maybe. But that would be too logical I guess.

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The absolute last soldiers the US Army senior leadership are interested in listening to are Skill Level 1 Riflemen in the Infantry. They not only couldn’t care less about them, but take sadistic pleasure in bending them over and screwing them over as a form of pleasure. I present to you the MILES gear as exhibit #1. Also keep in mind that General Officers are generally incompetent when it comes to small arms, marksmanship, dismounted Infantry tasks, and things they see as far beneath them in the massive list of things they have to worry about.

We had a string of exceptions to this rule in the 1970s-1990s, with several GOs who had significant experience in Vietnam as junior leaders, to include a few that were in SOG and SF as enlisted or junior officers, who later went into senior levels in JSOC and SOCOM, back and forth between Ranger Regiment and some of the JRDF Combat Divisions like 82nd, 101st, 10th MTN, 25th ID, and 7th ID.

Guys like General Shelton, General Bowra, General Bargewell, and General Downing come to mind. Totally different type of leaders than what were cultivated during the Clinton years-forward. These guys commanded genuine respect from enlisted soldiers no matter where they went. Their reputations proceeded them and they mentored and trained a lot of good officers along their long paths.

They wouldn’t allow something like NGSW to materialize from the bad idea fairy that concocted it, since they know what it’s like to have to hump and employ small arms, as well as manage the logistics for them.

Macht said:

Your numbers are wack. $2.60 is the cost of the GP combat load, the RRA training is $2.52. The SP round is $23, but that's not really relavant for common use.

https://www.asafm.army.mil/Portals/72/Documents/BudgetMaterial/2025/Base%20Budget/Procurement/Procurement-of-Ammunition-Army.pdf

Obviously more expensive than 5.56, but that's also without Lake City coming online yet.

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I thought they had reduced the SP round from $23 to $13, but $23 is a lot worse.