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4 septembre 2019 | International, Terrestre

Textron Preps For Mass Production Of New Army Rifle

By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.

WASHINGTON: Textron has partnered with global gun-maker Heckler & Koch to mass-produce new rifles for the Army and with ammunition giant Olin Winchester to churn out the high-powered yet lightweight 6.8 millimeter rounds.

Textron still has to beat both General Dynamics and Sig Sauer for the right to build the Next Generation Squad Weapons (NSGW). All three companies won awards last Thursday to build prototypes for troops to test, starting this coming spring and continuing through late 2021. No follow-on production contract is guaranteed. But Textron is watching the Army's urgent push to modernize across the force, from assault rifles to hypersonic missiles and wants to be ready to sprint to mass production if it wins.

Textron could do everything in house, senior VP Wayne Prender said. But, he told reporters this morning, by working with Olin Winchester and H&K, which are experienced with largescale manufacture of ammo and weapons respectively, “we are preparing ourselves for a high rate of production.”

The Army wants to start fielding two variants of NGSW to tens of thousands of close combat troops — infantry, scouts, special operators, and so on — in 2022. Support troops and vehicle crews will stick with the current M4 carbine for the indefinite future. But frontline ground combatants will get more than just a gun.

Linked wirelessly with electronics all over the soldier's body, including Microsoft HoloLens-derived targeting goggles called IVAS, the Next Generation Squad Weapon is meant to be just one lethal component of a larger, high-tech system. It's like the Hellfire missiles on an Apache helicopter or the 120 mm Rheinmetall smoothbore cannon on an M1 tank, except this “weapons platform” moves on foot. This approach is part of a wider push, begun by former Defense Secretary (and Marine Corps rifleman) Jim Mattis, to improve the Close Combat Lethality of the military's most exposed members.

The American grunt has accumulated more and more high tech over the last two decades. Designing a new weapon from scratch is a chance to streamline the scopes, cables, batteries, and other impedimenta festooning modern foot troops.

“All of those are now part of an integrated weapon system, versus a rifle that then has something else strapped onto it with wires hanging off,” Prender told reporters. “We can make some smart decisions early in the design process that enable it to be cleaner.” That should make the new weapon easier to use, lighter, and even better balanced, since the center of gravity is now calculated with installing add-ons in mind.

Three Contenders, 27 Months

While troops will test the first prototypes this spring, each contender has 27 months to deliver a total of 53 NGSW assault rifles — potential replacements for the M16/M4 family in service since Vietnam — and 43 automatic rifles — replacing the M249 SAW — along with 850,000 rounds of 6.8 mm ammunition.

Like the M16, M4, and M249 with the 5.56 mm cartridge, the new NGSW family will all share a common 6.8 mm round, which is supposed to deliver longer range and greater body-armor-penetrating power without increasing weight much. Each competitor has their own spin on how to deliver the new rifle bullet.

  • Sig Sauer, which already builds the Army's standard 9mm pistol and a host of other limited-issue weapons, has taken what seems to be the most conservative approach. It offers what the company calls a “hybrid” cartridge, which is still made of metal like traditional brass casings, but significantly lighter.
  • General Dynamics's Ordnance & Tactical Systems (OTS) division has partnered with a Texan firm, True Velocity, to build “composite” rounds out of polymers. In layman's words, the bullet is packaged, not in brass, but rugged plastic. Again, the goal is to save weight.
  • Textron's approach is arguably the most radical, to the point it doesn't even look like a bullet, just a cylinder that's equally blunt on both ends. That's because it's a cased telescoped round, sheathing the entire bullet in a polymer shell, surrounded by its propellant instead of sitting on top of it. (The resulting case looks like a folded-up telescope, hence the name). Textron says this method cuts weight per shot by 40 percent, a potential boon for overburdened foot troops.

The Army's new modernization strategy — after decades of cancelled programs and incremental changes to aging weapons — is to try such great leaps forward but then test prototypes ASAP with real troops in the field.

The service has been “opening the doors of the Army to the contractors to get that feedback early and often,” Prender said approvingly. Each round of user feedback is meant to help the contractors improve their product, and the military to refine their specifications, until the service can confidently choose a refined design.

Now, the Army isn't locking itself in. Whoever does best in testing, the Army hasn't promised the winner a production contract. But Textron is betting they can convince an eagerly modernizing Army that their product is not only superior but ready to field without further R&D.

“Whether [to] move right into an initial Low-Rate Initial Production, followed by fielding and first unit equipped, or [to do] additional prototyping and maturation of the weapon system... all that will be determined by the Army,” Prender told reporters. “We have high confidence that our weapon system will meet all of the requirements that the Army has laid out... so we're looking forward to at the end of those 27 months to move into production.”

https://breakingdefense.com/2019/09/textron-readies-for-mass-production-of-new-army-rifle

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  • To develop hypersonic missile launcher, Pentagon seeks funding transfer

    10 juillet 2019 | International, Aérospatial, Autre défense

    To develop hypersonic missile launcher, Pentagon seeks funding transfer

    By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is looking to transfer $50 million within its fiscal 2019 budget to cover the cost of the design and development of a prototype mobile launcher for its Long Range Hypersonic Weapon, or LRHW. The Defense Department submitted an omnibus reprogramming requestto Capitol Hill on June 25, which congressional defense committees must approve. The department wants the additional funding for the mobile launch capability in order to reach “residual” operational capability by FY23. Developing hypersonic weapons, capable of flying five times the speed of sound, is a part of the Army's top modernization priority — Long-Range Precision Fires —because of the added capability it would bring in eliminating enemy systems in contested battlespace. There is also a need in the U.S> to develop an offensive hypersonic capability to stay ahead of similar weapon development underway by Russia and China. The mobile LRHW will bring online “a new class of ultra-fast, maneuverable, long-range missiles to neutralize enemy defensive weapons with rockets launched from trucks with Transporter Erector Launchers (TELs),” the reprogramming document states. Follow-on efforts will be funded through the Army's research, development, test and evaluation account in future budget years, the document adds. The Army is leading the Pentagon's effort — Conventional Prompt Strike — but is teamed with the Navy to develop a booster for the hypersonic missile and is building a common glide body internally with both the Navy and Air Force. The service is finishing design work for the prototypes and plans to conduct flight tests focused on range, environmental factors and contested environments. The plan is to field a battery-sized hypersonic weapon to soldiers by 2023. The service will use the Advanced Field Artillery Tactical Data System and M870 trailers to make the system road-mobile. The Army still needs to build a transporter-erector-launcher to simultaneously accommodate two hypersonic missiles, which is where the extra $50 million comes in. The service plans to spend $1.2 billion over the next five years beginning in FY20 on its hypersonic effort. In FY20 alone, the Army has budgeted $228 million. A total of $181 million is requested in FY21 to move through the preliminary design review, which will end in the first quarter of FY22. In FY22, the Army will conduct a critical design review and then begin testing all-up rounds at the end of the fiscal year into FY23. The service has budgeted $137 million in FY22 to accomplish those tasks. The Army will then move into full-system flight tests in FY23 using a $359 million budget. The service plans to outfit the Multi-Domain Operations Task Force's strategic fires battalion with the battery to field early combat capability to the force, but to also learn how to use the equipment; to develop possible tactics, techniques and procedures that might be used in combat; and to learn how to train to use the weapons. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2019/07/09/to-get-hypersonic-launcher-off-ground-dod-seeks-funding-transfer/

  • The next key to the Army network: air-ground integration

    18 juin 2019 | International, Aérospatial, Terrestre, C4ISR

    The next key to the Army network: air-ground integration

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However, for air platforms, such as radios, waveforms or mission command systems, the air community must pass airworthiness standards to fly in domestic or international airspaces. “If we have a SINCGARS waveform in the bird and we have a SINCGARS waveform on the ground in a manpack radio or a leader radio, there is no reason we shouldn't be able to interoperate perfectly between those two systems,” said Jim Evangelos, standards branch deputy director of the Joint Tactical Networking Center. “One way to guarantee this interoperability is to have software defined radios on the ground, software defined radios in the bird operating the same version of the same software. That's a lot easier said than done. 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The Army is currently soliciting white papers and will evaluate proposals to help solve these challenges. https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/2019/06/15/the-next-key-to-the-army-network-air-ground-integration/

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