Sunday, December 29, 2019

SIG .277 Fury - Army next generation squad weapons competition

First off, her'e the article about the SIG .277 Fury here.  (And notes about True Velocity's rival cartridge here.)

Background:  The US Army, in its infinite insanity, began a search for a new, longer-ranged, harder hitting rifle, carbine, and LMG cartridge.  They specified a proprietary, currently classified 6.8mm bullet, because reasons.  Competitors had to provide not only a cartridge, but a rifle and LMG to fire it.  The standard?  3,000 fps out of a 16 inch barrel, using a 140 grain 6.8mm bullet.

That's just a little nuts.  For comparison, the standard military 7.62x51 (.308) fires a 147 grain bullet at 2,800 fps from a 24" barrel.  That generates 2,559 foot-pounds of energy from 60,000 psi of pressure.

What does this new cartridge do?  Let's see.  SIG says the cartridges generates "over 80,000 psi" of pressure.  Well, won't that be entertaining to the ear drums.  Especially in urban combat.  (That's probably why the Army announced that the weapons must also be suppressor ready.)  How much energy is this?  Taking the bare minimum of 3,000 fps (from a 16" barrel, mind you), that works out to 2,798 foot pounds of energy.  That roughly 240 foot pounds (9%) more than the 7.62 NATO.  Assuming a 10 pound rifle (loaded with optics), that generates 14.7 pounds of recoil.  As a comparison, the current M16A4 generates about 4.3 pounds of recoil when fired.

Naturally, this new carbine/rifle/LMG will be completely controllable in fully automatic fire mode.  Just like the M14.  Of course you can trust me, I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.

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