Grendel as a Universal Infantry Cartridge

[Tony Williams]

In light of the fact that such an optimized bullpup does not exist, combined with the longstanding antipathy toward bullpups in the US Army and the matter that the British Army has been put off them, might it be better to concentrate on pursuing a cartridge that can give the desired performance in a conventional carbine?

The problem with designing the cartridge to achieve a given performance from a 14" barrel is that it will need to be more powerful than one which achieves the same performance from a 20" barrel. So the cartridge will be bigger, heavier, recoil more and produce a lot much more muzzle flash and blast - which are all undesirable.

On the other hand, if you accept that you're only going to achieve the long-range performance you want from a 20 inch barrel so will only be able to use MGs and DMRs at long range then you can use the smaller cartridge, but the short-barrelled carbine will then be limited in its range performance. So you will still have two shoulder guns - a long-range rifle and a shorter-ranged carbine - instead of one general-purpose one, although the difference in their performance will be nowhere near as great as it currently is between 5.56mm carbines and 7.62mm rifles.