The Marines have their eyes on a new rifle, but the Army says it's forging ahead with a totally new, next-generation weapon

The Army and Marine Corps have both been working on new small-arms programs for years.
The Marine Corps will distribute the M27 more widely, but the Army says it's moving ahead with plans for a new rifle.
The Army is also bringing its modernization programs under one roof to streamline development.

The Army and the Marine Corps have both been looking for new small arms, and while the Marines have decided to give the M27 to a wider portion of the force, the Army says it will forge ahead with the development of a totally new, next-generation rifle.

The Army ditched plans for a interim replacement for the M16/M4 platform in November, announcing that it would direct funds dedicated to that effort to the development of the Next Generation Squad Weapon, which will be the permanent replacement for the current rifle platform.

The program will now proceed in two phases, senior Army officers told a Senate Armed Services subcommittee this week. Lt. Gen. John Murray, Army deputy chief of staff, G-8, said the first step will be acquiring the 7.62 mm Squad Designated Marksmanship Rifle.

"That gives us the ability to penetrate the most advanced body armor in the world," Murray told the subcommittee, responding to questions about shortcomings in the Army's current rifles and ammunition.

"We are accelerating the Squad Designated Marksman Rifle to 2018," he said, according to Military.com. "We will start fielding that in 2018."

Murray said distribution of the advanced 7.62 mm armor-piercing round, which the Army hoped to see this year, won't happen until 2019. But the SDMR, he added, "will still penetrate that body armor, but you can't get that extended range that is possible with the next-generation round."

The second phase will be the adoption of the Army's Next Generation Squad Weapon. Murray said the Army would not follow the Marine Corps' lead with the M27.

Murray added that the new rifle likely won't fire 7.62 mm rounds either, but rather some caliber in between, potentially a "case-telescoping round, probably polymer cased to reduce the weight of it."

Murray said the Army has a demonstration version of the NGSW, which was made by Textron System. But, he added, it is "too big" and "too heavy," and the Army had opened the process to the commercial industry to offer new ideas or a prototype for the new weapon.

That is what we see as a replacement for the M4 in the future," Murray said.

The Army also began distributing its new sidearms, the M17 and M18, late last year. A Pentagon report issued in January detailed several problems that cropped up during testing in 2017, but the Army and the manufacturer downplayed the severity of those issues.

The Army has made several attempts to replace the M4 in recent years. Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy told Army Times this week that an M4 replacement was one of the top two priorities of the service's new Futures Command, which will bring the Army's modernization priorities together under the umbrella of a new organization.

"We've started conversations with Congress," McCarthy said of the command, which was announced in October. "If we were to move out this spring, we could even start by the end of this calendar year."

The development process for Army equipment, including rifles, is to be streamlined under Futures Command, overseen by cross-functional teams that correspond to the service's six modernization priorities, according to Defense News.

The Marines have their eyes on a new rifle, but the Army says it's forging ahead with a totally new, next-generation weapon

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