By Jay Bell

Sometimes what appears to be a good idea is not as good as it seems. That appears to be the case in the 40mm training ammunition world. The U.S. Army’s 40mm Day/Night/Thermal (DNT) effort has stalled and then restarted on the high velocity (M918E1) and on low velocity (M781E1) but has not successfully completed the First Article Acceptance Test (FAAT or FAT). These rounds were supposed to be a major leap in technology. They achieved several key requirements of the U.S. government. The Army got rid of a troublesome fuze in high velocity and added night training capability in low velocity in order to train like soldiers fight, at night. The magic material that made all this happen is called “pyrophoric iron.” Pyrophoric iron spontaneously combusts when exposed to air. It turns out that the pyrophoric iron may not be all it was cracked up to be. It has some serious downsides: It causes range fires, and allegedly, at least one round has gone off prematurely, flashing at 3,000 degrees with the gunner inches away.

Going Back

Now, the U.S. Army appears to be going back to decades-old technology to address the training requirements for the 40mm MK19 machine gun and M320/M203 weapons. The training ammunition for these platforms goes back to the later 1960s. The Army recently made an award to go back to the M918:M385 2:1 Mixed Belt configuration in December 2019. There was also a “Sources Sought” notice that came out in November 2019 to re-ramp for the projectiles, which were shelved a few years ago. The main producer had an auction in July 2019, since the DNT rounds appeared to be the path forward.

The Sources Sought announcement officially kicks off the procurement process for a 5-year “Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity” contract to buy these 1960s technology, high-velocity projectiles. The high-velocity and low-velocity images are the old school rounds—a cutaway of the M918 Flash Band smoke and the M781. These images are courtesy of the U.S. government, and the comments are from one of the early Industry meetings highlighting the deficiencies circa 2014. Images of the M918E1 and M781E1 show only the outside of the new rounds. The insides are not available for public consumption. I attempted to get pictures from the Army, however, due to all the issues with the 40mm E1s, they were not letting any more pictures out. However, all of the market intelligence seems to point back to the 2004 Ted Haeselich patent, with chemical glow stick material in the middle of the round contained in a glass ampule (numbered 21/22). This ampule breaks and mixes upon setback to give a “lava” spurt downrange at night upon impact. The #13 item would be the standard orange powder or “signal dye.” This is to signal the impact area of the round.

Original U.S. government program timeline for the DNT program (see 2013).

A Little History

Since the 1990s, the 40mm high-velocity training ammunition option has been less than desired by the U.S. military. The 40mm M918 “flash, bang and smoke” round had multiple issues:

1) It had an expensive fuze that did not always function as desired and especially had problems in soft range conditions—sand, mud, wet, etc.

2) The fuzes did not have a self-destruct feature.

3) Projectiles that did not function are “unexploded ordnance” UXO and could cause injury if kicked or picked up.

4) The M918 was known to cause range fires that would shut down the training activities in some environments.

5) The M918 had a higher hazard storage and transportation class for the round.

The USMC became so fed up with the M918 situation that in the 1990s it stopped buying the Army’s M918 and started buying the MK281 from a small German company called NICO. The MOD 0 version had an orange signal dye like the Army’s low-velocity M781. Ted Haeselich worked at NICO in the 1990s and into the early 2000s. After an extensive adventure to fully type-classify the round, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, the USMC made large purchases of the MK281. Later when NICO was purchased by German Military giant Rheinmetall, Rheinmetall started a U.S. manufacturing facility, and the orders skyrocketed. The original contracts to Germany were around $30M, and once they had the U.S. final assembly included, the contracts shot up to the $300M range. The story is a legend in the defense community.

Ted Haeselich’s patent with chemical glow stick material in the middle of the round contained in a glass ampule (numbered 21/22).

The MK281

The MK281 was perfectly simple. Basically, it is a high-velocity M781. It had a proprietary propulsion design that threads the projectile to the cartridge. The round must shear metal to fire, which is much more consistent than crimps and adhesives. The results are greater accuracy downrange. Later versions of the round added chemical luminescence aka glow sticks, to give a nighttime impact signature. It did not have a fuze, so there was ZERO chance of a dud. An additional plus is that the chemical luminescence materials are totally safe, ala Halloween glow sticks for kids. It can be eaten by kids on Halloween, and they can still eat all the candy they can handle. To meet the requirement of the DNT, the chemical properties were adjusted to add more heat to the process to be picked up with thermal imaging. The chemicals can be tweaked for colors, brightness, duration of glow and heat output.

The German cartridge design is favored by a lot of military forces around the world. Due to some old conflict over patents, the desire for 100% American-made products and a few other reasons, the MK281 has never seen full acceptance in the U.S. It does have one drawback, the chemical luminescence glows a rather long time. When you are training at night and shoot a large number of rounds, say 50 to 100, the target area will end up glowing so much that it is hard to tell when the last round hit. This phenomenon was coined as washout.

The Army Plan

The U.S. Army’s Project Manager Maneuver Ammunition Systems (PM MAS) started the planning for this next wave of development a long time ago. The 40mm DNT Industry Days date back to the early 2010s. The U.S. Army’s competition to solve its need for an improved M918 would be the M918E1 and in low-velocity M781E1. The M918/M781E1s had several key requirements:

1) No or minimal range fires (M918 only);

2) No fuze to fail and reduce costs (M918 only); and

3) Day, Night and Thermal visibility and/or signal (both rounds–new for M781).

PM MAS would have companies compete for the prize of making the rounds. The winning design would get the initial multi-year development contract and be in the leading position to make the rounds for the next 50 years. The M430 effects are the visual effects from an M430A1 HEDP round at 500m. The Army wanted a similar nighttime effect as seen in night vision.

On to the Competition

Nine companies submitted bid samples for evaluation in both 40mm high-velocity and low-velocity versions. These companies spent millions of combined dollars to get their designs mature enough to withstand the rigors of DOD testing. This field included American Ordnance (AO), Amtec, Chemring Ordnance, Cyalume Technologies, General Dynamics (GD), Rheinmetall, ST Kinetics (Singapore) and Universal Defense. Some did not even make it to the testing phase; some failed out early in testing.

These nine were down-selected to two competitors for high velocity—Amtec and AO Ordnance—and two for low velocity—Amtec and GD. Would the 40mm powerhouse Amtec, continue to dominate the 40mm world? Or would the large businesses with their success in ordnance in AO and general small/medium caliber ammunition expertise allow GD a win? Ultimately, it was AO as the high-velocity winner and GD as the low-velocity winner. The MK281 was in the mix along with several other varieties; however, it did not make the cut.

The competition had several deciding elements. The most important was pyrophoric or chemical luminescence. The best attributes of pyrophoric material were: a high heat output for thermal, bright visual light/explosion for the naked eye and lower hazard for storage and shipping. The best attributes of chemical luminescence were that it was totally inert and had zero risks of range fires. The negatives for pyrophoric was the “potential” for range fires. The downside of the chemical material was that it is difficult to see at 1,200m with the naked eye and the washout effect, as described above. The winning solution ended up being a pyrophoric solution for both rounds, which appears to be a key reason the programs have had so much difficulty.

Magic Material

Pyrophoric materials are processed iron particles that are contained in a glass ampule without air. When the ampule breaks and is exposed to air, it oxidizes quickly—actually, very quickly, which results in a lot of heat and a lot of light. It is technically a flash of light; some people might mistake it for a small explosion. The waste material is iron powder. It can be thrown away without concern about hazardous waste. It’s pretty awesome. The more interesting attribute is that if you break the top of an ampule off, the material will just simmer. You would just notice a color change and a slow process happening. If you turn the ampule over, you get a sparkler light show all the way down to the ground. If you smash it against the ground at 700m per second, you are back to the explosion-like effect.

The downside of pyrophoric material and what caused the program to be placed under a temporary Stop Work order is that the rounds were causing a lot of range fires—there was a safety incidence where the round in the chamber was broken and flashed in the weapon (potentially injuring the gunner)—and other performance issues. The M918E1 has a plastic ogive, and underneath it are some pretty powerful materials. The MK281 also has a plastic ogive; however, if this round breaks in the cycling of the MK19 machine gun, the glow stick material is not going to harm anyone.

Low-Velocity Status

The M781E1 delay issues are a little less well known. GD has not made it through first article testing, where AO is in production and has been awarded option quantities already. Is it the same pyrophoric range fire issues as M918E1, or is it something else? The drop test for pyrophoric could be to blame. The standard M781 could never pass a NATO standard 1M drop test. By the look of the design, I imagine that it would still be a problem. The pyrophoric material would make things interesting if it broke upon impact.

I have always been critical of the U.S. government’s typically painstakingly slow methods and processes. They test, test again and then test some more. Then repeat all those tests in multiple temperature phases. Once you are sure you have it nailed, they have someone else try to repeat the results exactly. It can be quite maddening at times, and you wonder how anything gets done. The 40mm DNT program seemed to be moving at light speed. It was extremely impressive. This current situation has given me a greater appreciation for taking it slow. The U.S. government goes slow when one item has been changed. In this case a little more so.

Pyrophoric materials have been successfully used in other military areas like aircraft countermeasure flares. However, it is still a newer process. The processes and applicant for 40mm had to be developed and built for these programs. Sometimes plans don’t work out at well as one would have hoped. This may be the case with pyrophoric—that it is just a little ahead of its time. There are a lot of people in the industry that think the M918E1 and M781E1 are doomed to failure. They believe the range fires might result in the M918E1 and M781E1 to be shelved, and we will go back to the 1960s designs, at least for a little while, and then either back to chemical luminescence or a newer material.

M918E1 the high-velocity round reducing the UXO hazard for the U.S. government.

The government’s original timeline from a 2013 Industry Day shows the program transitioning to full-rate production over / around 5 years. In reality, it took about 6 years. If they have to go back and re-invent the wheel, it will take another 5 years. These things just take time. This is one case where too new and not enough testing set things back, maybe a decade. Only time will tell.

The term Next Generation can mean a lot of things. I recently wrote an article on U.S. Army Next Generation 40mm Day/Night Thermal training ammunition technology. The results are still “to be determined.” I took a hard look at some Next Generation weapons and ammunition in this article. What happens when Next Generation weapons and ammo collide?

Maxim Defense continues to impress with its Next Generation focus and out-of-the-box thinking. Maxim Defense’s short-barreled rifle (SBR) designs are impressive and enthralling enough to be selected by SOCOM for further evaluations. Its success with the U.S. government has carried over to the commercial market with personal defense weapons (PDWs). Commercially, the weapons also have gained a following in the personal defensive arena and in the concealed weapon subcategory of untold possibilities.

I first got my hands on one of these weapons at the 2019 Special Operations Forces Industry Conference (SOFIC). Ammunition and guns are in surprisingly short supply at SOFIC, as the focus is much more on electronics. I was drawn like a moth to the flame.

The weapons are as visually impressive as they are physically stout and well-engineered. The construction is remarkable; some AR platform weapons feel flimsy. The Maxim rifles remind me of HK weapons. The 18.75-inch weapon overall length is impressive, and the punch packed by these weapons blows pistols out of the water. The 5.5-inch barrel length is also amazing. If you add in the massive increase in accuracy over a pistol and the potential magazine capacity, I imagine that many private security forces are in line to grab these SBRs and re-arm their teams.

What About the Ammo?

Defensive pistol ammunition is numerous and widespread. Defensive rifle ammunition, not so much. All the major ammunition producers have versions of defensive pistol ammunition, and the number of niche producers is also a mile long. Many designs go beyond the typical hollow-point designs. There have been more niche designs going back over the last 40-plus years than I can remember. Who remembers the big left-wing hysteria concerning the Black Talon bullets back in the early 1990s? More recently, G2 Research Ammunitions’ fragmenting solid bullets were a big item and huge YouTube sensation. Maxim Defense knew that the weapons needed special rifle ammunition to pair with these very special rifles. The company could have gone with one of the usual suspect bullets in rifle calibers. Instead, Maxim went a whole new direction. In retrospect, it seems only logical that a Next Generation defensive rifle would have its personalized Next Generation defensive ammunition.

Maxim has a truly innovative rifle ammunition product that works superbly in these SBRs. Specialized weapons need specialized ammunition to fully capitalize on the performance limitations of lower velocities with short barrels. The Maxim Defense team saw that if customers did not use the proper ammunition, the effectiveness of the weapons would be massively diminished. To complete Maxim’s total weapon system, the ammunition needed to be the Next Generation to maximize the performance needs exactly specified and to be available to the customers. There are some potential solutions in the marketplace; however, consistent access to the customer is always difficult with niche products. Just as high-performance engines will barely work on low-octane gas, these SBRs need high octane ammo, and Maxim took charge of the situation.

TUI® Projectiles

Fort Scott Munitions™ (FSM®) and Maxim Defense worked together on a 6.5CM project for the U.S. government. Upon starting this relationship, Maxim Defense approached FSM to build and optimize a full-ammo solution for the SBR in critically short-barrel lengths for the PDX and MDX Weapon Lines. Six separate ammo variants were designed and optimized; FSM is Maxim Defense’s Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM).

It was not enough to just take one of the top defensive rifle bullets and load it. Maxim Defense knew that the FSM had developed something special with their Tumble Upon Impact™ (TUI®) projectiles. The TUI projectiles are patented Next Generation technology, just like the Maxim rifles. These TUI projectiles increase the effectiveness of Maxim’s weapon system and accomplish impressive terminal ballistic cavities without substantial fragmentation all the way down to minimal velocities and/or until they become unstable.

The impressive part of the TUI projectiles is that they have a solid tip without any flutes/grooves/slots or other special effects that might impede the successful feeding, firing and cycling out of the weapon. These will hold up and function in extreme environments. They surpass the criteria of both expanding and fragmenting projectiles in ballistic gel. These designs and features are only more critical in rifle calibers. Maxim has successfully achieved a winning combination of weapon and ammunition.

These solid copper projectiles appear to maintain extremely high percentages of their initial weight in the pistol ammunition. Many tests indicate 100% retention through ballistic gels. This ensures greater energy transfer, consistency in performance and devastating wound channels. Monolithic solids are great for not having a jacket to separate from the core, which is also very important in close-combat situations where the fragments can be a hazard to the shooter. The projectile stays together in one piece, causes significant damage and gives more knockdown power. The testing for the rifle ammunition appears to have very similar results to the pistol ammunition.

The short barrel ammunition comes in three calibers and six total varieties:

The projectiles being made out of 100% copper also add a nice element of being lead-free. This is ideal for the close-combat training scenarios in which this product will be used. This also opens up use in lead-restricted ranges and states around the country. All the ammo is Match Grade.

After some R&D, FSM recalled the old 5.56mm M855 round that sometimes accidentally tumbled or keyholed. This failure was a huge problem for the M855. However, a tumbling defensive bullet could offer some impressive performance if done right. What if they could make this happen on purpose and with 100% consistency? This would make for some very effective defensive ammunition. They started working on the concept and came up with two patents.

Considerations

Some elements must be considered: First, it is not a traditional FMJ, and it only tumbles on water-based solutions (i.e., water jugs, ballistic gelatin). If it is fired into a wood 2×4, metal, drywall or vehicle windshield, it will not tumble—period. However, for their key customer and the defensive ammo market, these were acceptable parameters.

The energy released because of the tumble is impressive. This is because of multiple elements. First, the bullets have 100% weight retention. With no loss of mass from fragments shedding, the energy is retained. Second, in ballistic gelatin, the projectile will tumble and then briefly stabilize and stay on its trajectory. Then, it will start to tumble for a bit and then track straight again. FSM noted, “Typically, the projectile will get two to three ‘tumble then brief stabilization’ cycles in a 6x6x16-inch-long ballistic gelatin block.” Impressive.

TUI comes in two different materials. The first is solid brass, and the second is copper. The brass version is called “solid brass spun” or SBS. The copper version is similarly “solid copper spun” or SCS. FSM also has a full line of brass projectiles in pistol calibers (.45, 9mm, .40 S&W, 10mm, .380, .357 SIG) that are only LE/military.

The product is well-designed and versatile. It is not a one-trick pony. Ultimate versatility is an objective FSM strived to achieve with the TUI ammunition. They believe the TUI ammo is a great military or law enforcement round. It checks all the boxes: it goes through the barrier, has great accuracy and has an excellent performance in ballistic gel. However, with the same ammunition, you can also go hunting for coyote and even buffalo. Better yet, it has great long-range utility. An FSM employee recently used his 6.5 Creedmoor, 123-grain, TUI factory-boxed ammunition to take a deer at 100 yards (and dropped him cold), and the same round is capable of a distance of 1.39 miles (2,446.4 yards) to hit a 30-inch target twice on a string of 10 with a factory Ruger Precision Rifle (see YouTube video at Longshot Video). Yes, the TUI projectile is still stable out at that distance, despite tumbling in ballistic gelatin. TUI is the complete package—self-defense, hunting and long-range performance.

A key aspect of the ammunition is that there is no mechanical feature to rely on, nothing to fail. So many of the other high-performance bullets are counting on the consistency of the tooling and keeping a close eye on tooling wear and performance. Of course, this means that the bullets made on fresh tooling are going to perform slightly differently than the last rounds before a tool change. I am aware that some of these performance bullets could require tool change in as little as 5,000 to 10,000 rounds manufactured. This all happens on a multi-station transfer press that is running at 60 parts per minute—no small task.

I queried on what feature of the bullet and the bullet design is critical. The answer is not just one thing. It is everything—the tip, the ogive and the boat tail. It can take strenuous testing and a lot of time to develop a single round. It took 1 year to develop the .300 Blackout 190 subsonic. It is one of the few truly subsonic rounds at +/- 950 to 960 fps. It will also function without a suppressor on the Maxim Defense SBR weapons.

Superior Weapon System

Maxim Defense produces high-quality firearms that enhance their ammo and make it perform well. The quality of FSM’s ammo and the weapons mesh so well, they result in an overall superior weapon system. I suspect that both Maxim Defense and Fort Scott Munitions are going to be long-term players in the market.

So, what happens when Next Generation weapons and ammo collide? Nothing short of awesome.

It’s just not right. Someone should do something to stop the bullying. The U.S. government fat-shaming ammunition has got to stop. The messages are loud and clear:

• S. Navy used to cube out ships, now they weigh out ships. Lighten the load fatso.
• 20%-30% lighter ammunition could increase a helicopter strike team by one soldier. One more could mean success or failure on a critical mission. Get lean!
• We need to lighten the load of the soldier, so he can carry other stuff like batteries and electronics!

Ammo is too fat, and it needs to go on a diet!

The ammunition diet fad—aka lightweight ammunition initiatives—has been a key focus for over 20 years within the U.S. government. The recent award of the 6.8 caliber Next Generation Squad Weapon (NGSW) program is down-selected to three players with lightweight ammo in mind. To spice things up the government is pushing 6.8 caliber to also add in a little “overmatch” against the 7.62×39 in engagement distance.

The new kid on the block is True Velocity, Inc., with a composite polymer hybrid cartridge. Its weapon partner is General Dynamics (GD). The oldest dog in the game is Textron, with its polymer-cased telescoped cartridge and Winchester as its ammunition load, assemble and pack partner. Textron has been working the Lightweight Small Arms Technology (LSAT) in 5.56 for nearly 2 decades and has been designing ammo for the government for over 50 years. SIG SAUER rounds out the group with a bi-metal cartridge design and will go the battle alone for ammo/weapon design and assembly. These awards are the culmination of decades of work and hundreds of millions of dollars of public/private development funding in ammunition to shave off those unwanted pounds.

Two of the three awardees have a polymer/plastic design. Will they win the competition? Is the future finally here to depart from the solid brass cartridge design as used since Sharps rifles of the 1860s? Can ammo get skinny and still meet the rugged demands of the government? Does the commercial consumer care about fat ammo? Will the 6.8 replace 5.56 as the high-volume caliber of the U.S. Army?

History

Plastic injection molding was invented in 1872. Plastic ammunition goes back to at least WWII; however, there is not a lot of easy-access information about all the experiments that the government did in this area. There were multiple patents in the early 1950s. One of the first commercial/government endeavors was the Dardick Tround. Dardick Corp. (1954–1962) created multiple calibers in a revolver-like device from .38 to 30mm that was rather short-lived. My father remembers testing rounds in the 1960’s time frame. They worked well; however, they never took off. Plastic shotshell ammunition has been around since the 1960s.

Technical Challenges

I will credit my father with an accurate prediction from the early 1990s when we consulted with some of the early polymer designs. In his opinion, when you are trying to make plastic act like brass, you are going to have problems. A redesign of the weapon chamber with significantly thicker neck walls would allow plastic to function with less technical issues. The three winners have held to this principle with both polymer designs not having a traditional neck and the SIG SAUER design sticking with a brass neck.

The initial technical challenge with most of the early plastic ammunition was the splitting of the case neck wall. Plastic is not as strong as brass or steel when only .008-inch thick. The latest generation of polymer materials has performed much `better; however, they still can be an issue. All three of the NGSWs seem to have a handle on this issue, with kudos to True Velocity for the design departure from having a neck at all, while still looking close to a traditional cartridge case.

The challenge of the last decade is how the ammunition handled the extreme temperature ranges of Department of Defense (DOD) testing. MAC, LLC, and its polymer body and brass head have been very successful in this area with the USMC. MAC has not been able to meet 100% of the U.S. Army’s requirements, therefore it has not been able to make the jump outside of the .50 caliber for adoption. I’m not 100% convinced that interagency politics are not a significant factor in MAC not being fully fielded. The future will tell how the three players fair in the temperature battle.

The government’s success record on these experimental programs in small/medium caliber is very good but not 100% successful. The Objective Individual Combat Weapon (OICW) from the early 2000s was not successful with over $772M in funding. The departure from traditional cartridge case manufacturing technology and equipment has been of questionable success on the Setpoint case cells at the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant. Setpoint is basically out of the business and appears to not be in consideration for any future equipment.  Insider scuttlebutt is that if the government had to do it over again it would not have chosen Setpoint. The 40mm day/night thermal impact/marking improvement program is pushing $500M in funding and was recently placed under a “stop-work” order due to increased occurrence of range fires. Range fire prevention was one of the key performance criteria, and chemiluminescence with ZERO potential of range fires lost out to pyrophoricity, which had a high probability of causing range fires and other round/weapon safety issues. Therefore, the probability of the NGSW beginning successfully is not a lock. All of the three efforts could fail, or the government could run out of funding (it happens) before a final solution.

Funding Challenges

The funding for these programs has been enormous; however, not enough to get the items into full fielding. The cost to get to a Total Readiness Level 9 is beyond expensive. The NGSW had nearly a dozen bidders to be down-selected to three. It is estimated that each of the original bidders spent at least $1M to $30M of their own money to get to the place where they could bid. This does not include prior U.S. government funding they might have received.

The weapons will also be a funding challenge for the government. Funding will limit the speed at which it can purchase the two different proposed weapons once selected. The cost of the accessories on the weapons will cost money. The cost of the ammo will be more expensive than 5.56, which it will replace. This will also limit the rate at which the government can field the weapons and ammo.

Per the Army’s Program Manager–Maneuver Ammunition Systems (PM-MAS), the NGSW ammunition will be built at Lake City Army Ammunition Plant. This is going to require multiple pools of funding to make this happen. There will need to be facilities funding to build a new building complex, which I estimate at $200M–$500M depending on the size of the effort and falls outside of the PM-MAS funding pool. [Jay’s edit:] There will need to be new production equipment at Lake City to manufacture any of the current three possible winners. The U.S. government will need to scrap/decommission some to all of the existing equipment since they will not be used to manufacture these rounds.  This will cost an estimated $50M–$500M depending on the initial ramp-up time frame, type of equipment, number of lines, final design and long-term requirements. There will need to be testing equipment that might require some facility money to modify buildings, test weapon money and probably a few areas I am forgetting.

All of these areas need to be funded in conjunction with one another to have this program proceed at a reasonable pace. If you have the ammo manufacturing equipment funding without the weapon funding, the program will drag on without success. In short, we have a long way to go, even if all the designs passed all the gates.

Pro and Cons of Each Team

Each of the cartridge designs has its own niche. The tough questions are: What does the Army want for the ammo and the weapons? What is a key criterion right now that may be waived or reduced later? Is the Squad Automatic Weapon version more important than the carbine? Is weight more important than function? Here are this author’s opinions:

SIG SAUER—SIG is the least experimental and least deviated from traditional brass cases. SIG has the best chance of meeting all the cartridge functional criteria since there is no plastic. The cartridge should be easier to manufacture. It seems to offer the least weight savings. SIG has been on a roll with the win in the Army Pistol competition. It has decades of know-how to make outstanding weapons, and it seems to know what the customer wants and can get close enough to win a competition. SIG is large enough to support dumping a bunch more of its $228M in annual revenue into the program. It is the small guy on the block in terms of revenue. Is there enough defense revenue to support a win if needed?

True Velocity—It has the most experimental design, as this iteration of their ammo only came out just in time for the competition. The lack of a thin neck wall problem is averted with the new design; however, does it create other problems? How easy is it to manufacture repeatedly? Right now, the cartridge wins the “cool factor;” however will the momentum last through the competition? Their claimed 30%-plus weight savings, heat reduction and tighter standard deviation are advantages. True Velocity claims GD is not known for wildly creative weapon designs, and it doesn’t make the volume of weapons that SIG does. True Velocity is individually the low man on revenue, estimated under $20M. Its partnership with GD Ordnance & Tactical Systems brings True Velocity into the $2B-plus range (GD total revenue is $36B); therefore, depending on the relationship, the private funding might be there to support the program, if needed.

Textron—Its ammunition design is not experimental, but it has never hit full-rate production. We (MAST Technology) did a run of around 300,000 units in 2012, and to the best of my knowledge, there has not been another run of this size. How easy will the round be to manufacture for Winchester? One functional issue could be that the cases could be mistaken for the top or bottom of the round in the dark with gloves on. Can Textron fight off Murphy ’s Law to win? On the weapon side, Textron does not have the small-caliber weapon experience of SIG or GD. The revolver-like design seems sound; however, can it stand up to the other rigors of U.S. government testing? Textron does have an extensive background in the design and development of experimental ammunition for the U.S. government going back to the 1960s. Textron is $13B in revenue, so it can contribute significantly more than the other players, if needed.

Below is my ranking system. It does not correlate with the government evaluation criteria. Common sense may or may not be a factor in the final decision. I will not declare a winner, because it only matters what the government wants in the end and what sacrifices it is willing to accept or not accept. Mere mortals may not fully understand all the evaluation factors.

Future Predictions

If the 6.8 program succeeds, the 5.56 usage would be reduced. There would need to be another major decision to replace the 5.56 with the 6.8. Several years ago, the Army was saying it needed to reduce the number of round types to reduce the inventory, and then a couple years later it wanted to add “training-only,” small-caliber ammunition. They seem to change their minds quite a bit. In addition, when 5.56 and 7.62 NATO rounds became the calibers of choice in the late 1950s/early 1960s, .30-06 was still in production until the mid-1970s at Lake City. So, we will probably have 5.56 for a long time even if it all goes perfectly.

Weighing in on all the factors discussed above, my gut says that SIG SAUER is in the best position to win the NGSW; however, it depends on what the Army wants. A sexy new design that can pass the entire evaluation-criteria lower threshold could easily win, too. If the design just passes the threshold criteria, it might not matter that the SIG passes at a much higher level. Overall I give the Army program a 91% chance of success. My main rationale is there are too many cooks in the kitchen to bring the program to a quick finish and get the ammo skinny. I don’t believe consumers’ care. They want cheap ammo and will not pay for expensive plastic ammo.

On the other hand, I am surprised that 100% steel or stainless-steel solid cases were not in the mix. They have been around nearly as long as brass. There have been trillions of rounds of steel ammo built and successfully fired in the 100 million-plus AK-47s that have been built since 1946. The cartridge manufacturing equipment could be converted to run steel rather than re-inventing the wheel in the manufacturing process. The raw material is cheaper. I believe the negative connotation that steel gets is largely not supported by fact, rather opinion. The average American gun enthusiast or U.S. soldier does not want to admit that Uncle Joe Stalin does ammo and guns better than Uncle Sam. Such heresy would be un-American.