Grendel as a Universal Infantry Cartridge

[Jaywalker]

I come to this discussion with a slightly different view of it, given my background in DOD contracts and program management. One of the requirements in the RFP, besides the 234,000 rounds of ammunition (easy, if expensive), is the need to produce 2,000 - 4,200 carbines per month, something difficult for anyone but a Colt or an FN to do easily, and difficult for a small shop to even consider. It would likely require a joint venture with a big company for someone like Alexander Arms even to compete.

Speculatively, the company most at risk in the competition is Colt with their possibility of losing a real cash cow in the M4. Should Colt team with Alexander, for example, Colt alone could bid an M4/5.56 variant, while submitting a Grendel-based design with Alexander, again for example, without falling afoul of the "one carbine per company" rule.

It would all depend upon Colt's view of Tony's opinion that doing nothing is the most likely result. If so, they have no need to hedge their bets with a joint venture.

[stanc]

Speculatively, the company most at risk in the competition is Colt with their possibility of losing a real cash cow in the M4. Should Colt team with Alexander, for example, Colt alone could bid an M4/5.56 variant, while submitting a Grendel-based design with Alexander...

It would all depend upon Colt's view of Tony's opinion that doing nothing is the most likely result.

A logical analysis, Jay. But, IMO it would also depend on whether or not Colt perceived 6.5 Grendel as an alternative to 5.56 NATO that's worth backing. Were I the head of Colt, and considering this course of action, I'd want to see documentation that 6.5 Grendel carbines offer the requisite durability (in regard to bolts) and reliability (with available magazines).

Also, the matter of ammunition may not be quite so easy. It seems likely to me that it'd require an M855A1/M80A1-type bullet, which AFAIK does not yet exist, and would need a possibly long and costly development effort. That means Colt would have to fork out a quarter of a million bucks, if not more, in order to hedge their bet by teaming up with AA.

[Tony Williams]

I really don't see the US Army approving anything in other than 5.56mm, given the huge amount of effort and publicity behind the M855A1 and the fact that their own in-house study of carbine calibres (which came down in favour of the 6.5-7mm range) has been withdrawn from further discussion after the initial presentation. Those in charge are not interested in rocking the boat.

[Jaywalker]

Can't deny either of the two concerns - they both have merit. A joint venture would be a possible pathway, not a guarantee, and please note I did indicate Colt would have to believe an alternative was practicable. I'm less concerned that the end-state ammunition would have to be in place, however; this is a carbine competition, not an ammunition one. There is no military standard 6.5mm load, and the RFP invited alternative calibers.

Intense durability testing would not be difficult, given a few model examples and enough ammunition. It certainly wouldn't take the billions of dollars and years of production planning that aircraft and artillery require - initial testing with Colt could be brief, though not necessarily successful.

Still, I agree with the conclusions - it's not likely to happen. A long-time DOD contractor would already have emplaced their congressional delegation backing the move, negotiated teaming agreements, sought development grants, issued PR releases, and the whole gamut of what today passes for a development cycle.

[JASmith]

...A long-time DOD contractor would already have emplaced their congressional delegation backing the move, negotiated teaming agreements, sought development grants, issued PR releases, and the whole gamut of what today passes for a development cycle.

...and that "whole gamut" is designed to address all of the foreseeable technical issues, starting with the ballistics questions we have been grappling with in this and other threads.

It would be easy to think of the problem as being overly complicated, overly long, and just "plain too hard" to do.

It is one of the reasons we so few new systems being fielded today.

The challenge, however, is indeed surmountable, provided that both the technical case and the political approach are up to the challenge.

[LRRPF52]

The mentality of the DOD procurement system has changed a lot from what it was at the height of the Cold War. I always refer back to the legacy of the Grumman F-14 Tomcat, which went from a concept to the sky in 14 months. That was the Golden Era of US technological capacity and achievement, when schools still taught science, hard math, real English, and multiple foreign languages.

Now, we have a combination of Pentagon Corporate Welfare dependents with eternal pet projects who have monopolized many of the former competitors into mega-companies like Lockheed-Martin, and Northrop-Grumman. We've allowed a Belgian-based small arms company to dominate most of that market for our military manufacturing several of our home-grown designs, combined with other 1950's designs repackaged as "State-of-the-art". The "new" submissions are even more obsolete operating systems disguised in space-age polymer packaging to woo the imbeciles holding the purse strings. It's rather entertaining to watch, really...

[JASmith]

LRRPF52, I assure you living and working through that change was painful for us folks who were trying to do new things!

The average time from concept to IOC was about 15 years in the late '70s - Cold war was still alive and well. The F-14 went into IOC well prior to this time.

Our improvement management practices, coupled with aggressive minimization of fraud, waste, and abuse have resulted in adding ten years to that and significant increases in development costs. Look at B2, F22, and F35 for examples.

The real culprit is not so much micromanagement as it is our national perception that we don't need new improved systems just now. This creates an environment where the pressure to actually field a new system is so low that folks can play with them.

[LRRPF52]

Agreed. The threat of the Soviet Union was the mother of invention back then, and drove the development of a plethora of cutting-edge systems and platforms, many of which are still unknown to the public and even industry and military professionals. Some examples:

A5 Vigilante: first fly-by-wire military aircraft, Mach 2 capable, was largely copied by the Soviets when they "developed" the MIG-25.

The F-106A's radar ground-controlled intercept, & AIR-2A Genie nuclear air-to-air rocket intercept concept.

Despite its publicity in the raid on Libya in 1986, the capabilities of the F-111A-F series and FB-111A were never appreciated by the general public or most military planners, but the Soviets often brought them up in international arms talks, insisting on limitations to the number of airframes manufactured and its forward deployment.

The 70's under Carter were a horrible time for the military, and we actually had more military loss of life in 1979 than any year since, including the GWOT. The supersonic B-1A was cancelled by Carter, after the Soviets demanded it. The F-14B was cancelled, even though that engine was exactly what the F-14 needed. These programs had to be revived during the Reagan years, but their delay made them close to obsolescence by the time they had reached Initial Operating Capability.

Meanwhile, the Soviets went to work frantically on the Blackjack copy of the B-1, Su-22, MIG-29, MIG-31 with F-14 avionics & copies of the Phoenix missiles, and their missile programs after acquiring the TDP's from traitors within our own military and government, to refer to when reverse-engineering the F-14A components received from Iran after the Iranian Revolution/major foreign policy fiasco that was.

As a kid growing up in that industry in those days, I heard a lot of cussing, moaning, and disdain for Carter and the Congress. Things changed drastically with Reagan. Anyway, I'd like to see a decentralization of the military procurement process that is doomed in the vortex of the Pentagon and D.C. Let the States compete with regional military cooperative pacts for standardization, and manage the money at the State level, rather than send it off to D.C. to be raped, plundered, defrauded, and abused.

I recently learned that 95% of my State's National Guard budget is controlled by the Pentagon, and we send off about $15 billion per year in Federal Income taxes. We could just keep our .00567% of the Federal Budget here and use it much more responsibly, especially since they print trillions like its monopoly money. D.C. is a cesspool of waste and no accountability of our money.

[Jaywalker]

The combination of our aerospace companies in the Seventies and Eighties wasn't their own idea, I assure you. The DOD realized they couldn't support multiple companies R&D and production lines with the budget they had to work with, and as each lost a major contract, the DOD worked with Department of Justice to ensure a purchase of the losing company would not fall afoul of monopoly rulings. Some, such as Northrup, managed to shoot themselves in the foot by producing a major program and taking it through testing - billions of dollars - without a clear requirement. The resultant F-5G, later F-20, was a wondrous transformation of the T-38/F-5 with a remarkable engine that would have made another MiG-21-type aircraft that had so many fewer engine parts that they could have flown two or three sorties a day, easily. That didn't matter much against the lack of requirement for the aircraft, and Northrup then became a part of Grumman.

The Belgian M249 machine gun purchase was a quid-pro-quo for the Deal of the Century, the purchase of the F-16 by the four countries of Europe in the early Seventies who had all agreed to all buy the same aircraft. Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway had committed to the F-16, but Belgium was being strongly pressed by France to buy the Mirage F-1 with the M53 SNECMA engine. This multi-billion dollar contract was coincidentally cemented after a DOD announcement that they had adopted the Belgian machine gun that became the M249. FWIW, future of the F-16 was assured by the consortium, and, to date, there have been over 4,400 F-16s produced to date, a phenomenally successful run by recent standards.

ETA: The F-111/FB-111 probably should have been restricted under then-current interpretations. At the time, strategic treaties, i.e., "special weapons," were counted as a "single" or "MIRV" (Multiple Independently-targeted Re-entry Vehicle), and if they were ever tested as MIRV, they would always be counted as MIRV under the treaty. (B-52 aircraft were counted as MIRV, for instance.) FB-111 aircraft, being assigned to Strategic Air Command (SAC), carried the same sort of payload as the B-52, so the soviet Union, quite reasonably, attempted to group Tactical Air Command's conventional attack aircraft with those of SAC. FWIW.

The B-1 was canceled by Carter, true, but he did so knowing we had the B-2 under design. Reopening the B-1 line ensured we would not have enough funding to build more than a token 20 B-2 stealth bombers, a much more effective bomber.

One more edit: While the 22 months of F-14 development is a remarkable story, it's not completely surprising even by today's standards. Typically, engine development takes about twice as long as airframe integration, and the Navy left the F-14 with the TF-30, the same crappy engine used in the F-111. It left the F-14 crew with an engine they had to manage in combat, RPMs, angle of attack, etc., when you'd really rather be doing something else. FWIW, the F-18 was designed to be cheaper than the F-14, and it failed miserably at that; it would have been cheaper and more effective, IMO, to use the entire F-18 funding line to re-engine the F-14 with the F100 engine (same as F-15/F-16), then buy more F-14 aircraft, because nothing else came close to the Phoenix interceptor missile, but that's not what happened, obviously.

[LRRPF52]

Jaywalker,

I remember all that. The F-5G/F-20A Tigershark was a great little plane. As a kid, reading Aviation Leak and Spy Technology, I was certain it would be adopted by the Air Force, but my dad related to me how the Pentagon brass openly asked, "WTF are we going to do with the F-20?", in late 1985. Since we already had the F-16, it was hard to justify, but it would have made a great Foreign Military Sales aircraft for Southern Asia, Central and South America, and so forth. From what I understand, Northrop sold the TDP for it to China, and they used that for the Chengdu JF-17 Thunder. If you look it up, you'll see the resemblance immediately.

That's the first I've heard that the F-16 licensed production in Europe was connected to the adoption of the POS SAW, which I've carried and used extensively. Similar rumblings surrounded the placement of our bases in Italy and the adoption of the POS Beretta M9 (although an actual Italian M92S is a nice pistol).

I can understand the Soviets' concern over a deep-penetration bomber, even under TAC use with the F-111D's and F's, since the combat radius of that bird was simply impressive. I do lament the retirement of the F-111 quite often. That was a beautiful plane with impressive capabilities. That we even agreed on any arms treaties with the Soviets is a testament to how they desperately needed to rely on diplomatic warfare against us, since their stuff was broke like a joke and completely overrated by their high-level double assets in the CIA, who exaggerated and spread fear at every assessment possible (MIG-25, nuke capabilities, soldier readiness, etc.). It backfired on them by ramping-up our development of weapons systems at a double-time, to a point where they're still playing catch-up, but don't seem to invest the funds into areas you'd think they would now.

They realized after Lend-Lease that capitalists will always build a better mouse trap than communists could ever dream, even with full access to the US Patent Office. They killed all their brains between 1918-1939, literally...by the millions.

[Jaywalker]

There's no question in my mind (though there is in some others) that Reagan's buildup in the Eighties brought down the Berlin Wall and caused the breakup of the USSR. Around 1980, the US was putting about 3% of our Gross Domestic Product (IIRC) into DOD, while the Soviets were spending about 20%. We increased to 6% under Reagan, and the Soviets just couldn't double theirs, and the stresses tore them apart.

The only real thing the F-20 Tigershark could have been used for (in the US) was as a Red-Flag-type aggressor aircraft, but the Navy passed on it in favor of using the F-18 (I think), and thereby lowering fly-away costs for their combat aircraft.

The US can't buy aircraft just for Foreign Military Sales purposes; we have to have and operate it, first. We sold a lot of F-5E aggressor aircraft that way.

ETA: The F-111 was impressive, as long as you could keep it in the air, which wasn't often. F-4 aircraft would do about 1.8 sorties per day (my estimate of my memory when I flew them), while the F-111 could only manage 0.8 sorties per day, across the whole fleet, including the F model, IIRC, which absolutely would not fly. (They turned it into an electronic airplane and couldn't keep it in the air - hangar queens, mostly.) There were times when the whole fleet was grounded, too, and all the other tactical aircraft had to fly their hours so we could end up the fiscal year with the exact, to the tenth of a flight hour, absurdly, that the USAF had budgeted. What PITA that was - all training stopped and we just flew to turn JP-4 into noise - add external tanks and fly cross country instead of low level training. President Johnson chose the TFX (what later became the F-111) the day after he was inaugurated on 23 November 1963 - Texas Forever - since it was to be built in Fort Worth. I worked the F-15E program, which was to replace the F-111, and the active force was glad to see it go. It was pretty, though - the Aardvark, the Switchblade Edsel.

[BluntForceTrauma]

Never in the history of internet forums have digressions been so fascinating. I simply cannot bring myself to moderate this stuff! Very cool, gentlemen.

John

[JASmith]

Never in the history of internet forums have digressions been so fascinating. I simply cannot bring myself to moderate this stuff! Very cool, gentlemen.

John

John,

These comments about the history of weapons development. production, and procurement help us better understand the large-scale challenges to be overcome in moving a cartridge like the Grendel from the status of a very interesting but specialty cartridge into a mainstream military round.

For example, part of the value of the threads on "requirements" is in helping folks better understand and think in terms that the technical bureaucrat is obliged to work with.

On top of that, it is indeed fascinating history.

My thanks to Jaywalker for bringing it to our attention and to you for being patient!

Cheers!
Joe

[Tony Williams]

I recently heard a presentation from a social scientist with an interest in military firearms history, whose theme was that it was very common for the "best" technical solution to a problem not to be selected. He was interested in why this was so.

We can all roll off the examples: .276 Pedersen, .280 British....

[JASmith]

My hipshot response is that government procurements are driven as much by political and constituency support needs as they are by the technical.

I think your social scientist can get better insight into the question by studying the larger world of government procurement.

To be sure, the requirements documents appear to codify a search for the best technical solution. In truth, however, their (unstated) role is to assure a technically adequate solution so that the larger games can be played without unduly sacrificing future capability.

Sometimes the trade errs too far on the side of the political, but so far it has worked well enough.

Hence, when advocating a new cartridge, we need to cultivate enthusiasm in that larger world. It isn't easy, but it is necessary.