US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

Nevermore

Junior Member
Registered Member
Given the pace of China's reusable rocket development, the technology should reach maturity within five years. By accelerating launch rates, it is feasible to complete China's version of Starlink and a low-orbit anti-stealth military satellite constellation by 2035.
 

BoraTas

Major
Registered Member
Anyone noticed that dark eagle hypersonic missile has mach 17 speed at terminal phase? It appears that US hypersonic tech is not behind China. I don't think any china hypersonic can reach mach 17.
The DF-26 enters the atmosphere at Mach 18 and is a way bigger system that can also home on ships. I specifically used the DF-26 as example because the Dark Eagle has a conical RV with enlarged fins. It is never going to glide as efficiently as the DF-17. Really weird comment on your part considering rocket top speed is just about the ratio of gross weight to post-burnout weight.
 

Aniah

Senior Member
Registered Member
A review of the new XM7 NGSW by both civilians and military personnel.


Some keynotes.

Gun:
- Not much improvement over the existing AR-15-type weapons.
- Quite heavy
- Bad hanguard design that is constantly loose or gets loose easily, ruining accuracy.
- Middle of the ground accuracy when it works. ( 2 MOA)
- Really expensive at $5K per rifle.


Bullet: (Civilian version & General Purpose rounds)
- Extremely high pressures cause jamming & extreme wear and tear on the rifle.
- Reports on gun jamming/in need of replacements by 1000 rounds and as low as 500 rounds.
- A larger round means fewer rounds per mag and total mags carried than 556, and more weight on both the gun and person.
- Surprisingly inaccurate due to many factors
- Kicks like a mule and is uncomfortable to shoot repeatedly unless the $1.6K suppressor is attached.
- Loud and very hot
- Expensive and rather hard to make, with an undisclosed number of failures with each batch.


Overall:
- Giving every soldier a battle rifle is a bad idea.
- If you absolutely want to give every soldier a battle rifle, there are better calibers and rifles to choose from.
- When soldiers reported the ammo or lack of ammo issues while in the field, they were told to "shoot less" (lmao )
- The $10K smart scope that's supposed to come with every rifle doesn't always work, and when it fails, it would pop up "error" signs over the reticle, making the scope useless.
- Some military personnel in the comment section say that if they could choose, they would stick with the M1As with an upgrade kit and different caliber kits rather than using this rifle.

- Funny enough, SIG sent the rifle plus $8,000 worth of rounds of 6.8 to the YouTuber, thinking it would be a positive review. Got dunked on by everyone who's shot it instead.
- Turns out, you can't just give a soldier an XM7 with a smart scope and think it magically turned every rank and file soldier into a marksman, much less a sniper. You're gonna need training to shoot past 600 meters where the bullets intened for.
 
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4Tran

Junior Member
Registered Member
Overall:
- Giving every soldier a battle rifle is a bad idea.
- If you absolutely want to give every soldier a battle rifle, there are better calibers and rifles to choose from.
- When soldiers reported the ammo or lack of ammo issues while in the field, they were told to "shoot less" (lmao )
- The $10K smart scope that's supposed to come with every rifle doesn't always work, and when it fails, it would pop up "error" signs over the reticle, making the scope useless.
- Some military personnel in the comment section say that if they could choose, they would stick with the M1As with an upgrade kit and different caliber kits rather than using this rifle.

- Funny enough, SIG sent the rifle plus $8,000 worth of rounds of 6.8 to the YouTuber, thinking it would be a positive review. Got dunked on by everyone who's shot it instead.
- Turns out, you can't just give a soldier an XM7 with a smart scope and think it magically turned every rank and file soldier into a marksman, much less a sniper. You're gonna need training to shoot past 600 meters where the bullets intened for.
I don't get why this weapon exists. The ability to shoot to 600m is nice in a pinch, but that's why DMRs exist. If it were a practical capability, the world wouldn't have switched to an intermediate cartridge for their assault rifles to begin with. And to top it all off, service rifles don't matter. Unless it's absolute garbage (I'm talking about you, INSAS), a better rifle is only going to marginally increase the capability of a combat squad, but the capability of individual combat squads just isn't going to factor much in a larger battle.

The entire process reeks of corruption so it's no surprise that the end result is junk.
 

4Tran

Junior Member
Registered Member
It is the Army fighting the last war as usual.
They made a rifle perfect for fighting in Afghanistan. After they left Afghanistan being 20 years there.

In Afghanistan the US troops feared the PKM and Dragunov equipped Taliban. So they came up with this shit.
I doubt that combat at greater than 300m happened in any more than 5% of the firefights in Afghanistan. For that kind of problem, you'd just issue a few more DMRs. Going whole hog like this is just idiotic, even if it's to fight Afghanistan 2.0.
 

Shocktrooper262

Just Hatched
Registered Member
I doubt that combat at greater than 300m happened in any more than 5% of the firefights in Afghanistan. For that kind of problem, you'd just issue a few more DMRs. Going whole hog like this is just idiotic, even if it's to fight Afghanistan 2.0.

The Army leaders who were at the top for the major NGSW goals, were the guys who wanted to issue everyone 7.62x51 rifles for the war because they were all in places of troop command in the war and really disliked the supposed "range gap".

What the Taliban (and anyone else who got lumped in with them) figured out is that US troops would attempt to respond to any and all gunfire, so if you wanted to waste US time, you popped off a few shots from 800-1km away and ran while the US spent hours trying to return fire or bomb you. I have a few PowerPoints (I'll link them when asked) but a whole lot of the program was just going:

"The PKM and SVD can shoot out to 2km, and ergo can score combat effective fires at this distance. We need to do that too." The body armor thing was slapped on at the very end before we picked SIG as the winner and to measure the effectiveness of it the Army showed off the gun shooting cinder bricks.

The whole NGSW is a solution, making its own problems to justify it.
 

CasualObserver

Junior Member
Registered Member
Good heavens!

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WASHINGTON — The Pentagon now anticipates the F-35’s Block 4 modernization won’t be complete until 2031 at the earliest, a five-year delay from its original timeline, even as the department rescopes the effort to include fewer capabilities than originally envisioned, according to a new report by a congressional watchdog.

The latest estimate, published in a Government Accountability Office report today, is two years later than the last published projection of 2029 in May 2024.

The F-35 Joint Program Office is currently reorganizing the F-35’s Block 4 modernization and Technology Refresh 3 into a new subprogram due to a 2023 congressional mandate, which sought to improve execution of those efforts in light of continued cost increases and schedule delays. (Technology Refresh 3 includes a package of hardware and software upgrades necessary to support Block 4, which include upgrades to weapons, communications equipment and electronic warfare systems, among other technologies.)
 
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