Ha that’s based on a major assumption. One that is wrong Urban warfare isn’t Close quarters warfare. Room clearing is CQB, Indoor fighting is CQB, Police work is CQB but combat in urban is mixed. In MOUT you could be fighting to clear what is in front of you yet then come under long range fire. Farther Europe isn’t a mega city out of Judge Dread. It’s a mix with open steppe, hill-lands woodlands, Arctic, urban, even desert. M5 and M250 seem designed more to establish a wider range of combat capabilities. IE it’s the same length as an M4 or M249 weapons well considered for Close combat. Well also offering range potential to one Km. That means that it’s designed to allow engagement in a building vs foes with Aks we’ll also allowing engagement of a sniper in a high rise 600 m away. The assumption that this is a return to M14 and that this is an error is based off the assumption that one couldn’t fight in close quarters with such weapons. That is wrong they could just not as efficiently due to their long size.
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US soldiers fighting in Tet Offensive.
Farther one of the failures of the M14 as a weapon was that until the advent of the M21 sniper system M14’s range was limited by the fact it like the rifles that came before it used Iron sights only. That system is okay if your trying to engage out to 300m but vs the potential range of the M14 is akin to putting a moped engine in an Muscle car. M16 proved effective as its .223 caliber round was able to be operated very effectively out to 500m in a stretch well still offering effective lethality and much more friendly to iron sights and the spray the berm engagement of the time.
Thing is as this was happening Russian forces recognized that the pure assault rifle infantry formations lacked something and adopted the Dagunov. This allowed Russian forces a weapon that could engage out of 800m.
US and western forces wouldn’t adopt in wide numbers a similar concept until the the late 1980s early 1990s. Yet even then they were based around the “improved” 5.56x45mm weapons. By the new millennium US forces had adopted 7.62x51mm weapons to this role by force as in Afghanistan and Iraq they faced off against insurgents armed with a number of Russian sources weapons. The PK and SVD both chambered in 7.62x54R easily out ranged 5.56x45mm weapons with American infantry’s responses being the DMR rifles in resurrected modified M14s and Weapons squads using M240 machine guns in 7.62x51mm.
The Russian rifle squad has during its reorganization adopted modernized or legacy iterations of the same PKM and Dragunov at the squad level (save for in VDV and Naval Infantry formations) Offering superior range of engagement.
Of course they are not the “Pacing threat” the US DOD is watching. The PLA claims to similarly out range the US infantry forces with 5.8x42mm weapons in the QBU88 QJY88 families with claimed ranges between 500-1000m which seems a stretch on the latter QBU191 out to 800m which is more conservative.
As a result the 5.56x45mm has lost ground farther exacerbating this was the move to the M4A1. Though widely appreciated for its compact size, better features and trigger. The barrel length reduction from the 20” M16A4 to the 14.5” M4/M4A1 resulted in significant reduction in muzzle velocity and effective range. Moving from a 550m point target to 500m and 800m area target to 600m still beyond the 300m rule but with the then addition of Body armor to the mix. It is significant ground lost.
Of course I can already hear “then why not adopt M5 as a DMR?” What happens if the one or two DMs in the squad are the ones pinned down? That’s a bit of a problem point isn’t it.
How do you maintain a force with three ammunition types at platoon level? The want here is that the three primary small arms of the US Army squad would be using the same ammunition type. A universal cartridge… Gee sounds familiar? A cartridge common between Infantry rifles, LMGs and GPMGs… and common capabilities. Reasoning that with the advent of smart scope systems like Tracking point and Smartshooter the technology is available to actually make a General issue weapon able to allow the soldier to engage at extreme long range well still having suitability for close quarters.
This is the biggest shift from the M14 compared to M5. That the weapon as issued is designed to cover both close and longer range engagement.
It’s why the XM157 NGSW Fire Control system exists and is the real “game changer” of the set up. It’s part of why I wonder how so many are obsessed with the M5 on their criticisms well ignoring the M250.
At the moment it won’t become NATO Standard and as to US infantry it will require retraining to get the soldiers up to speed.
As it was just adopted by the US it would take time to begin a process of NATO standard assuming it even did. Not every NATO state is looking at its doctrine the way the US is.
I mean hell some NATO states don’t use 5.56 but 7.62x51mm as their main cartridge. Despite the meme of 7.62x51mm NATO, The US didn’t force NATO to adopt an “11.43x23mm NATO” (.45Acp) and with the adoption of SS109 was forced to adopt a Belgian 5.56x45mm NATO round as opposed to the original American .223 Remington on which it was based. Farther of late multiple NATO states have adopted weapons and cartridges and not pushed standardization IE .300 win mag, 300 Norma mag, .338 Lupua mag, .338 Norma mag, 5.7x28mm, 4.6x30mm, 6.5x48mm, 35x228mm, 40mm CT, 50x319mm These have all been adopted or the cusps of by NATO states including the US in some cases yet never a STANAG. Just because the US Army chooses 6.8x51mm doesn’t mean that France or Germany have to redraw their modernization programs to match.
Currently Australia is looking at 6.5x51mm for their potential future weapons systems.
Tranche 2 Land 159 obviously not a NATO state (well observer status).
The UK and Canada are in the stages that they are looking at replacing their main service weapons and may go this route but as yet no solid evidence.
