05-17-2011, 04:55 AM
LRRPF52 Wrote:Biggest obstacles that I see are barrel life with hot-rodded smaller cases, finding appropriate bullets for mass-production during this major swing in demand for eco-friendly bullets, finding links for smaller than 7.62/larger than 5.56, and feed pawl geometry development and T&E. If solids are demanded by Uncle Sugar, driving bands would actually help with barrel life since there is much less bearing surface.I'm sure that 6.5-7mm bullets of the type used by the military do not exist. They would need to be manufactured.
The same goes for machine gun links, they'd need to be designed and produced. (FWIW: links made in the 1970s for the 6mm SAW can still be had in small quantities, and they might be usable with Tony's 6.5 GPC, although originally made to fit a case of 0.012" smaller diameter. I have a couple of 6mm SAW links, and they fit 6.8 SPC cases almost perfectly.)
I haven't seen any indication that the military is interested in solids. The only usefullness I see for solids is for some comparative testing in the absence of true military bullets.
Biggest obstacles I can see are:
1. Getting terminal effects test data to show that the intermediate caliber truly is good enough. It seems that nobody has both the desire and the ability to do such testing.
2. Demonstrating the improved ballistic performance of the new caliber, probably via surrogate rounds like (downloaded) .260 Rem and/or 7mm-08, fired in, for instance, modified M60 machine gun and AR-10 DM rifle.