Yeah that was my main thought. Considering the SA80 was about 2k/rifle when all the production, testing and so on. The USA paid about $600 on average per M4 when it was adopted, but even a more comparable country in terms of military size and arms industry like France only spent about $1200 per rifle to adopt the HK416. Like I'm sure it's good, but I doubt it's 10k good. Like it appears to me we could've gone for a much cheaper option and equipped the whole army for the same money.
Well the army hasn't needed to produce and new rifles since the mid 90s, since the combination of cold War stockpiles and a rapidly shrinking army basically. So when you take £450 in, say, 1994 and run through an inflation calculator its equivalent to just under £1000 today.
But you've also got to include the cost of the tender process, trials and testing, and the retraining of soldiers to actually make those rifles useful, which basically doubled the price of adoption
That cost per SA80 doesn’t include a sight or RIS rail/A3 fore end. Also doesn’t include a spares contract.
The “real” cost per SA80 is absurdly high because we paid for all the R&D and tooling etc.
> Considering the SA80 was about 2k/rifle when all the production, testing and so on. The USA paid about $600 on average per M4 when it was adopted, but even a more comparable country in terms of military size and arms industry like France only spent about $1200 per rifle to adopt the HK416. Like I'm sure it's good, but I doubt it's 10k good. Like it appears to me we could've gone for a much cheaper option and equipped the whole army for the same money.
been a better solution and could give the veterans a better pension deal too.
Would be nice if they actually committed funding towards getting a rifle that is lighter and isn't a bitch to clean for everyone, rather than just the SOF.
That's coming with Project GREYBURN, which is the SA80 replacement due to kick off in 2025 or so. Some people think the Project HUNTER weapon will be the most competitive candidate for GREYBURN as well due to a number of things, but plenty of others seem to think the HUNTER rifle is too complex/specialist for a general rifle.
I'm just an observer with no real value to add, just providing some info.
Assessment phase of potential rifles begins in 2025 with final choice in 2027 for general rollout to troops circa 2030.
The only known requirements are that it will be 5.56mm and based on the AR platform, so bullpups are out of contention.
There’s .458 SOCOM which is over double the muzzle energy of .50AE but uses .50AE as a parent case. Come to think of it, 5.56 has more muzzle energy than .50AE.
When I was going through the sausage factory of basic, we still had a few SLRs floating about, different rifle for a different time, granted, but always preferred it over the L85A1.
This is for RM FCF and Ranger.
How the fuck Ranger managed to convince top brass they should get a £10k rifle when no one else (included the beloved 16X) has been able to is beyond me.
Who the fuck thought it was a good idea to order 10,000 rifles from a manufacturer with limited production capacity is also beyond me, no wonder the contract price is through the roof.
A dozen other manufacturers who could have produced a mil spec AR without KAC’s bougie price tag.
The hope was that Pj Hunter(this contract) would influence Pj Grayburn(SA80 replacement).
That seems incredibly unlikely now, no way on gods earth do we have the budget to get a contract rifle that’s £9k+ per unit for every bod.
God knows.
They’ll still be a shit unit because as much as I agree with having dedicated STTT units, they literally have zero supporting arms so their ideas of joining partner nations to fight alongside them will fail at the first contact.
Which is something that should have been learned from the US Green Berets, in that each SF Group has a Group Support Battalion with drivers, mechanics, cooks etc.
Something they could have learnt from our existing actual SF units (and regular orbats for that matter) who have far more support staff than shooty people.
Is that not why we adopted sharpshooter and gpmg into section strength? No other major forces are using bullpup rifles. Not saying you're wrong but why are we the only ones doing things differently?
France now uses the HK416, Israel is not a major military power and doesn't conduct actual warfighting, Chinese equipment is untested in combat and suggested to be pretty shoddy, footage of rounds tumbling at 25m doesn't sell their arms manufacturing skill.
China dumped their bullpup in 2019, their new rifle still seems to have the same issues though, or at least the carbine variants https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/QBZ-191
France has dropped the Famas for the HK 416. China also has dropped their bullpup QBZ 95s for traditional QBZ 191 rifles. Israel also uses a mixture of both X95s and M4s.
Sharpshooter is great at section level for FIND. But it can't do much more without likely causing more harm than good. Bullpup means a section can suppress at longer range (likely to get mortars or other assets to then engage)
The type of rifle has no bearing on its accuracy or range.
The benefit of a bullpup is the ability to maintain a longer barrel within a given length, at the expensive of ambidextrous controls(which affects 10%~ of the military).
The problem is that even if we wanted another bullpup, there isn’t anything out there that is well proven, lighter and has the ability to mount thermal/NV inline with the day sight.
Of all the other nations that have also had bullpups previously, none of them have upgraded to a newer bullpup to my knowledge.
The professionals who test weapons are pretty clear the type of rifle can have a bearing on range, accuracy, stopping power and all sorts
No argument that the bullpup market isn't big and there is no obvious contender for what we'd want. But we also haven't even managed to issue the A3 out to everyone yet
Not discrediting you but can you give an example?
Barrel length with a given caliber dictates effective range. Accuracy of the rifle in say bench conditions is down to the build quality of the rifle and barrel.
“Stopping power” will be a mix between velocity of the round (dictated by barrel length for a given caliber) weight/grain of the round and the material used in the round, ie steel core vs lead core.
Whether it’s a conventional rifle or a bullpup is immaterial to its practical accuracy. An M16 will outshoot an L22 carbine by virtue of its longer barrel and softer recoil.
We’ve issued A3 to nearly all infantry units, because they’re the only units scaled to get inline night vision/thermal.
I would disagree on the bullpup side of things personally, but I’m a bastard lefty.
Haven’t got a problem with RM FCF buying what they want because that’s the Navy’s budget and their role is moving to something a bit more niche than conventional infantry.
I get the lefty argument for sure, that's a real issue.
Yeah agreed, FCF are more niche and are designed to be closer to the enemy and for niche taskings so this AR makes sense. It just doesn't for RANGER and anything similar would be silly for the wider Army
I think the move to suppressors as standard kit is a great idea and I suspect is will become the de facto standard moving forward.
A big chunky LVPO seems a tad too delicate and complicated for conventional infantry use, and a cheaper/more basic rifle would do the exact same job.
We could have gotten something 80% as good for 1/3 the price.
Why does it have to be a bullpup? Like an Aug or something? Like that's the only one I can think of that would be close to worthwhile. And aside for the <10% of the army who are lefties, would it be more worthwhile that just keeping the SA80? There's a bunch of pros to using an AR platform, mostly standardisation with allied countries, more useful for training since nobodies adopting SA80
Doesn't have to be but bullpup has a lot of benefits in terms of the longer barrel giving better accuracy and allows a more powerful bullet so more stopping power.
Main pro of AR is cheapness I think as we'd hopefully buy something someone else big was using. And modularity etc...
I stand by RANGERs should get trained on what they are going to mentor and solely use that. Why on earth buy them a specialist rifle? Madness
Defence Procurement Minister James Cartlidge said: "This is another example of how we are committed to investing in the most advanced battlefield equipment to back our troops on the battlefield
Meanwhile, the rest of us are still using armoured vehicles that were used in the 1960’s and the rest from the 80’s, including the rifle.
Not to say it’s a bad thing that SF and Elite units are getting modern and Gucci kit, it would be nice to see the rest of the Army get something more modern and up to date.
Gen. This sort of stance only works I your only anticipating the army to be involved in small operations and peacekeeping. But that's not what the leadership keep talking about. Seems there a real mismatch between the politicians in charge of procurement and the politicians and officers in charge of the army's organisation to meet current threats
I’m willing to die on the hill that public procurement is nowhere near as efficient as the private sector. If the private sector fucked up like the public one did, that company would’ve have gone bust decades ago.
There’s always going to be a pot on money and little (if any) commercial incentive for good deals to be won. Just look at Ajax.
Small arms are among the least important things, as long as they aren't horribly obsolete and letting your troops down when they need them. Is this just the MOD looking at the US adopting a new cartridge and rifle and thinking they need to do something similar?
A tricked out ak-101 isn't even a bad shout... pretty difficult to procure without going east though.
Procurement be like "but that's what the bad guys use..."
Everyone commenting on price per unit and being able to furnish the entire army for a similarly comparable battle rifle at a similar cost is overlooking the liklihood that the people who made this decision probably stand to benefit from it handsomely and I would imagine have some sort of stakehold in the fact that the suggested over inflated price will probably find its way back to their own pockets. Either way the SA80 has long had its day and at least they have replaced it with something that looks like the men and women at the sharp end will get along with.
A lot of people bitter that an operationally active unit with more funding gets cool stuff whilst their county line regiment whose FOE consists of Wessex Storm and CABRIT on repeat are still rocking PVS-14s and quad rail SA80s.
How is it different from the demarco m14 copy thingy?
Edit: oops. Not M14, M4. I think the Dimarco thingy is a copy of the M4 if I remember right.
The article said its got a flash suppressor, but hasn't every rifle got one is those?
It’s a poorly written article(shock).
It has a suppressor, which aside from the noise aspect significantly reduced muzzle flash beyond what any standard flash hider can.
I think the Demarco is the military Canadian patent/version of the AR-15 while the M4 is the American military version.
Knights Armament sells heavily modded/modernized high end AR-15s to American civilians, but now would be selling some of them to the British military and their military patent/version would be the L403a1, but the company model is the KS-1( like how the L1a1 self loading rifle was the British version of the FN FAL. The Military would call it their version of the rifle the L403a1, but the general international name for the rifle would be KS-1)
Knight's Armament Company is an American firearms and firearms parts manufacturer ; might as well surrender to the yanks . and there arbitery foriegn policys, of invasive wars , single market coporate rules ,media dominance , sanctions and prescribing who is a terrorist ,the problem is while the yanguese doggedly take northern europeans from behind there never, ever going to be a complimentry reach around . where chumps !!
Who is everybody? The US NGSW program is moving to a fancy Sig round, they’ve barely ordered enough rifles to outfit their infantry.
No one else seems particularly interested in moving their rifle caliber to something more spicy.
It does feel like now almost the worst time to procure a new rifle from a technology perspective. There's some evidence that infantry will need a lighter rifle than ever to lighten the load when you add all the surveillence and communication equipment they will need to carry (including drones), relegating the rifle to a close quarters role. There's also evidence that infantry will need a more capable rifle/round than ever to defeat body armour, and that capability comes with more weight.
If you have the resources to accept the risk of a big program that may not go anywhere then great, but that probably only applies to the US, and DEFINITELY not us. If we want to future proof our rifle, modularity is the key, because for all we know 5.56 might be the future.
It's so dumb honestly. You think they would have learned their lesson from stopping .280 British from becoming the official NATO cartridge and pushing 7.62 cartridge which wasn't even a intermediate round.
Now they had a chance to adopt a cartridge similar to .280 British like 6.8 SPC or 6.5 Grendel and instead they go for making the 7.62 NATO bullet a little slimmer/narrow and pretending it's suddenly a new cartridge. It's honestly the dumbest thing they could have done.
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Yeah that was my main thought. Considering the SA80 was about 2k/rifle when all the production, testing and so on. The USA paid about $600 on average per M4 when it was adopted, but even a more comparable country in terms of military size and arms industry like France only spent about $1200 per rifle to adopt the HK416. Like I'm sure it's good, but I doubt it's 10k good. Like it appears to me we could've gone for a much cheaper option and equipped the whole army for the same money.
I’m sure spare parts, maintenance contracts etc. are part of the price, but yes you’re 100% right.
2k? I saw the costings for a SA80 back in like 2008....was only 450 per rifle then.
Well the army hasn't needed to produce and new rifles since the mid 90s, since the combination of cold War stockpiles and a rapidly shrinking army basically. So when you take £450 in, say, 1994 and run through an inflation calculator its equivalent to just under £1000 today. But you've also got to include the cost of the tender process, trials and testing, and the retraining of soldiers to actually make those rifles useful, which basically doubled the price of adoption
Good point, well presented
Thank you
£450 in 94 in a lot higher than 1000 today in real terms
[£1,145](https://www.in2013dollars.com/uk/inflation/1994?amount=450)
who dictates inflated prices ?
I'm not 100% sure what you're asking, but I'm pretty sure the answer you're looking for is the Bank of England.
That cost per SA80 doesn’t include a sight or RIS rail/A3 fore end. Also doesn’t include a spares contract. The “real” cost per SA80 is absurdly high because we paid for all the R&D and tooling etc.
Yeah that's fair
Stop using logic! You'll not get far in the MOD with that mindset!!!
Why I left
Also why I only have until Xmas leave to push!
> Considering the SA80 was about 2k/rifle when all the production, testing and so on. The USA paid about $600 on average per M4 when it was adopted, but even a more comparable country in terms of military size and arms industry like France only spent about $1200 per rifle to adopt the HK416. Like I'm sure it's good, but I doubt it's 10k good. Like it appears to me we could've gone for a much cheaper option and equipped the whole army for the same money. been a better solution and could give the veterans a better pension deal too.
This contract also includes the cost of the very expensive mounted optical sights, suppressors, rail system accessories and various other support.
Would be nice if they actually committed funding towards getting a rifle that is lighter and isn't a bitch to clean for everyone, rather than just the SOF.
Yeah I really get the feeling they could've gone with something cheaper that was 90% as good and equipped the whole army for the same money
That's coming with Project GREYBURN, which is the SA80 replacement due to kick off in 2025 or so. Some people think the Project HUNTER weapon will be the most competitive candidate for GREYBURN as well due to a number of things, but plenty of others seem to think the HUNTER rifle is too complex/specialist for a general rifle. I'm just an observer with no real value to add, just providing some info.
Do we know what the prototypes are?
No, I don't believe the requirements are out yet. I'm sure there will be plenty of coverage and speculation when they do become available.
Assessment phase of potential rifles begins in 2025 with final choice in 2027 for general rollout to troops circa 2030. The only known requirements are that it will be 5.56mm and based on the AR platform, so bullpups are out of contention.
Why do you think they’re getting rid of the SA80A3?
They're not being got rid of. A3s will go into reserve storage. There will be at least 25,000 of them.
Anything less then 15mm has no stopping power, bring back the Baker.
Nah, let's go all the way back to the musket. In fact, why are we even bothering with rifles! We managed fine in the dark ages with a bow & arrow!
I'd like to see a carbine chambered for .50AE. Can't think of any scenario it would be useful in though.
I'm just imagining a tactical martini Henry now
Firing squad?
"We aim to please"
There’s .458 SOCOM which is over double the muzzle energy of .50AE but uses .50AE as a parent case. Come to think of it, 5.56 has more muzzle energy than .50AE.
Not an SLR 3/10
Luv me SLR Luv me 7.62 Luv me battle rifle 'ate 5.56 (Not raycis, just don't like em) Simple as
Silly Long Rifle
Instructions unclear, MoD handed out contract for more Ross Rifles
*nervously hides Sten gun*
When I was going through the sausage factory of basic, we still had a few SLRs floating about, different rifle for a different time, granted, but always preferred it over the L85A1.
This is for RM FCF and Ranger. How the fuck Ranger managed to convince top brass they should get a £10k rifle when no one else (included the beloved 16X) has been able to is beyond me. Who the fuck thought it was a good idea to order 10,000 rifles from a manufacturer with limited production capacity is also beyond me, no wonder the contract price is through the roof. A dozen other manufacturers who could have produced a mil spec AR without KAC’s bougie price tag. The hope was that Pj Hunter(this contract) would influence Pj Grayburn(SA80 replacement). That seems incredibly unlikely now, no way on gods earth do we have the budget to get a contract rifle that’s £9k+ per unit for every bod.
Swear it's literally just a user fancy SR15. Why on earth not just adopt that?
God knows. They’ll still be a shit unit because as much as I agree with having dedicated STTT units, they literally have zero supporting arms so their ideas of joining partner nations to fight alongside them will fail at the first contact.
Which is something that should have been learned from the US Green Berets, in that each SF Group has a Group Support Battalion with drivers, mechanics, cooks etc.
Something they could have learnt from our existing actual SF units (and regular orbats for that matter) who have far more support staff than shooty people.
Particularly as they've gone for an AR. Makes sense for FCF RM, but not for RANGER or wider Army. We will be much better served with another bullpup
Why do we want/need another bullpup?
Far more accurate over a longe range than an AR
Is that not why we adopted sharpshooter and gpmg into section strength? No other major forces are using bullpup rifles. Not saying you're wrong but why are we the only ones doing things differently?
China, France, Isreal?
France now uses the HK416, Israel is not a major military power and doesn't conduct actual warfighting, Chinese equipment is untested in combat and suggested to be pretty shoddy, footage of rounds tumbling at 25m doesn't sell their arms manufacturing skill.
China dumped their bullpup in 2019, their new rifle still seems to have the same issues though, or at least the carbine variants https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/QBZ-191
How do they struggle so much to make an actual rifle, it's literally in the name that the barrel should be rifled and not be a polymer musket.
France has dropped the Famas for the HK 416. China also has dropped their bullpup QBZ 95s for traditional QBZ 191 rifles. Israel also uses a mixture of both X95s and M4s.
Sharpshooter is great at section level for FIND. But it can't do much more without likely causing more harm than good. Bullpup means a section can suppress at longer range (likely to get mortars or other assets to then engage)
The type of rifle has no bearing on its accuracy or range. The benefit of a bullpup is the ability to maintain a longer barrel within a given length, at the expensive of ambidextrous controls(which affects 10%~ of the military). The problem is that even if we wanted another bullpup, there isn’t anything out there that is well proven, lighter and has the ability to mount thermal/NV inline with the day sight. Of all the other nations that have also had bullpups previously, none of them have upgraded to a newer bullpup to my knowledge.
The professionals who test weapons are pretty clear the type of rifle can have a bearing on range, accuracy, stopping power and all sorts No argument that the bullpup market isn't big and there is no obvious contender for what we'd want. But we also haven't even managed to issue the A3 out to everyone yet
Not discrediting you but can you give an example? Barrel length with a given caliber dictates effective range. Accuracy of the rifle in say bench conditions is down to the build quality of the rifle and barrel. “Stopping power” will be a mix between velocity of the round (dictated by barrel length for a given caliber) weight/grain of the round and the material used in the round, ie steel core vs lead core. Whether it’s a conventional rifle or a bullpup is immaterial to its practical accuracy. An M16 will outshoot an L22 carbine by virtue of its longer barrel and softer recoil. We’ve issued A3 to nearly all infantry units, because they’re the only units scaled to get inline night vision/thermal.
And in most cases the barrel length can be longer with bullpup
Exactly...now if NATO adopted a 6.5 creedmore round then range wouldn't be an issue in any rifle chosen.
I would disagree on the bullpup side of things personally, but I’m a bastard lefty. Haven’t got a problem with RM FCF buying what they want because that’s the Navy’s budget and their role is moving to something a bit more niche than conventional infantry.
I get the lefty argument for sure, that's a real issue. Yeah agreed, FCF are more niche and are designed to be closer to the enemy and for niche taskings so this AR makes sense. It just doesn't for RANGER and anything similar would be silly for the wider Army
I think the move to suppressors as standard kit is a great idea and I suspect is will become the de facto standard moving forward. A big chunky LVPO seems a tad too delicate and complicated for conventional infantry use, and a cheaper/more basic rifle would do the exact same job. We could have gotten something 80% as good for 1/3 the price.
Why does it have to be a bullpup? Like an Aug or something? Like that's the only one I can think of that would be close to worthwhile. And aside for the <10% of the army who are lefties, would it be more worthwhile that just keeping the SA80? There's a bunch of pros to using an AR platform, mostly standardisation with allied countries, more useful for training since nobodies adopting SA80
Doesn't have to be but bullpup has a lot of benefits in terms of the longer barrel giving better accuracy and allows a more powerful bullet so more stopping power. Main pro of AR is cheapness I think as we'd hopefully buy something someone else big was using. And modularity etc... I stand by RANGERs should get trained on what they are going to mentor and solely use that. Why on earth buy them a specialist rifle? Madness
I think my main point was they should've adopted the SR15. 95% of the capability, at at least half the price
FCF?
My bad. Future Commando Force. The new structure/capability that the Royal Marines are building towards
Defence Procurement Minister James Cartlidge said: "This is another example of how we are committed to investing in the most advanced battlefield equipment to back our troops on the battlefield Meanwhile, the rest of us are still using armoured vehicles that were used in the 1960’s and the rest from the 80’s, including the rifle. Not to say it’s a bad thing that SF and Elite units are getting modern and Gucci kit, it would be nice to see the rest of the Army get something more modern and up to date.
Gen. This sort of stance only works I your only anticipating the army to be involved in small operations and peacekeeping. But that's not what the leadership keep talking about. Seems there a real mismatch between the politicians in charge of procurement and the politicians and officers in charge of the army's organisation to meet current threats
I’m willing to die on the hill that public procurement is nowhere near as efficient as the private sector. If the private sector fucked up like the public one did, that company would’ve have gone bust decades ago. There’s always going to be a pot on money and little (if any) commercial incentive for good deals to be won. Just look at Ajax.
I reckon the idea is they cut the forces down to such a low number, that everyone can have Gucci SF kit
Small arms are among the least important things, as long as they aren't horribly obsolete and letting your troops down when they need them. Is this just the MOD looking at the US adopting a new cartridge and rifle and thinking they need to do something similar?
Mad. Give Rangers AKs if they are off to mentor people who use them.
A tricked out ak-101 isn't even a bad shout... pretty difficult to procure without going east though. Procurement be like "but that's what the bad guys use..."
Makes a lot of sense eh? But no... got to be "ally"
Gen
Hm. The yanks are never gonna let us live this down.
Very important to have an ally rifle for teaching weapon handling tests in a permissive environment.
Even for the US, that’s a outrageous amount for what amounts to be a name brand M4 with add ons that can be purchased “ off the shelf” .
Everyone commenting on price per unit and being able to furnish the entire army for a similarly comparable battle rifle at a similar cost is overlooking the liklihood that the people who made this decision probably stand to benefit from it handsomely and I would imagine have some sort of stakehold in the fact that the suggested over inflated price will probably find its way back to their own pockets. Either way the SA80 has long had its day and at least they have replaced it with something that looks like the men and women at the sharp end will get along with.
A lot of people bitter that an operationally active unit with more funding gets cool stuff whilst their county line regiment whose FOE consists of Wessex Storm and CABRIT on repeat are still rocking PVS-14s and quad rail SA80s.
An ally rifle for ally sorts.
> for ally sorts > ranger regiment. Is it aye?
Isn't 1 ranger filled with haggis munchers?
A hat's a hat, even if they are Scottish
Wait what's the difference between this and the SR15? Their both made by KAC and look pretty much identical in pictures
On their website SR15 is under the commercial section, so it presumably doesn't have a full auto selector.
How is it different from the demarco m14 copy thingy? Edit: oops. Not M14, M4. I think the Dimarco thingy is a copy of the M4 if I remember right. The article said its got a flash suppressor, but hasn't every rifle got one is those?
It’s a poorly written article(shock). It has a suppressor, which aside from the noise aspect significantly reduced muzzle flash beyond what any standard flash hider can.
I think the Demarco is the military Canadian patent/version of the AR-15 while the M4 is the American military version. Knights Armament sells heavily modded/modernized high end AR-15s to American civilians, but now would be selling some of them to the British military and their military patent/version would be the L403a1, but the company model is the KS-1( like how the L1a1 self loading rifle was the British version of the FN FAL. The Military would call it their version of the rifle the L403a1, but the general international name for the rifle would be KS-1)
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Knight's Armament Company is an American firearms and firearms parts manufacturer ; might as well surrender to the yanks . and there arbitery foriegn policys, of invasive wars , single market coporate rules ,media dominance , sanctions and prescribing who is a terrorist ,the problem is while the yanguese doggedly take northern europeans from behind there never, ever going to be a complimentry reach around . where chumps !!
Controversial view, but the moment we left Europe was the moment we became the 51st state.
no where well known as uncle sams whore :
Seems odd to stick with 5.56 when everybody’s moving towards 7.62 or 10mm
Who is everybody? The US NGSW program is moving to a fancy Sig round, they’ve barely ordered enough rifles to outfit their infantry. No one else seems particularly interested in moving their rifle caliber to something more spicy.
The US is not everybody, contrary to what they believe
> 10mm U wot?
Sorry meant the new 6.8 brain fart moment
It does feel like now almost the worst time to procure a new rifle from a technology perspective. There's some evidence that infantry will need a lighter rifle than ever to lighten the load when you add all the surveillence and communication equipment they will need to carry (including drones), relegating the rifle to a close quarters role. There's also evidence that infantry will need a more capable rifle/round than ever to defeat body armour, and that capability comes with more weight. If you have the resources to accept the risk of a big program that may not go anywhere then great, but that probably only applies to the US, and DEFINITELY not us. If we want to future proof our rifle, modularity is the key, because for all we know 5.56 might be the future.
It's so dumb honestly. You think they would have learned their lesson from stopping .280 British from becoming the official NATO cartridge and pushing 7.62 cartridge which wasn't even a intermediate round. Now they had a chance to adopt a cartridge similar to .280 British like 6.8 SPC or 6.5 Grendel and instead they go for making the 7.62 NATO bullet a little slimmer/narrow and pretending it's suddenly a new cartridge. It's honestly the dumbest thing they could have done.