Flexing Guns: Army Making Big Push to Update Small Arms.

• Author: Carberry, Sean

AUSTIN, Texas -- Ukraine has centered attention on drones, artillery, armored tactical vehicles and other heavy platforms and systems. But small arms are a big part of the fight, and the Army is quietly in the process of evaluating and fielding a range of new small arms weapons and related technologies.

The service has several small arms priorities, said Col. Scott Madore, the Army's product director for soldier lethality. These include developing a weapon to engage targets in defilade, ensuring communication across enablers and weapons, producing effective suppressors that do not require extensive field maintenance, reducing size and weight of weapons and addressing toxic fumes, he said.

"A lot of the products are in production and deployment," he said at the National Defense Industrial Association's Future Force Capabilities Conference. Others are in earlier stages of development.

For example, the Army is conducting a 36-month Platoon Arms and Ammunition Configuration Study to assess future medium machine gun needs and options.

"This examines the full trade space of feasible combinations of fire control, ammunition and weapons capable of performing in a dismounted and platform-mounted configuration," said Maj. Marcus Farmer, lethality branch chief for Soldier Requirements Division.

The study will determine options such as improving the existing M240, transitioning to a new caliber or developing an entirely new weapon to replace the M240, he said. The study will run through the end of fiscal year 2023, with preliminary results expected in the second quarter of 2023.

One of the high-profile weapons in the early stages of fielding is the Next-Generation Squad Weapon. Earlier this year, the Army selected the Sig Sauer XM5 Rifle and XM250 Automatic Rifle, along with the Vortex Optics XM157 Fire Control system, for the Close Combat Force.

Testing of the weapons--and the new 6.8mm ammunition--is focusing on "dispersion, reliability and toxic fumes," and assessing technical performance improvements based on the data received from the prototype, Farmer said.

The weapons will be put through their paces during a Nov. 20-22 soldier excursion, he said.

This excursion will use close combat force soldiers to execute live-fire tables to inform the product manager and Soldier Lethality Cross-Functional Team on the operational effectiveness of the weapon system, he added.

Fielding of the new squad weapons is expected to begin about a year from now...