Missed opportunity or solution looking for a problem?

Neither really.

Funny though how the US is going towards 6.5 (I know, not 6) for both its squad based light machine guns, and automatic rifles.

>>34021934
>>34021969
The only way we're getting 6.5 is if they use caseless ammo, they're not going to replace 5.56 or 7.62 anytime soon.

>>34022031

Polymer. Army already wants it and has developed both a rifle and machine gun for it, and they've gone beyond the testing phase with both. Look up the LSAT.

>>34022112
100% ploymer? Telescoped? Why would the Army replace M855A1 and M80A1?

>>34022195
Lighter and cheaper in the long run. Also polymer can be made from a number of resources, unlike brass which has fewer. That's assuming all the kinks are fixed though.

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>>34022031
>>34022112
>>34022195
>>34022234
Yeah man polymer cased ammo is the goddamn future.

I mean look at this shit.
>40% weight reduction from brass cased
>rugged
>well protected from the elements
>fully caseless is only 10% lighter but has all kinds of problems

>>34022112
Is polymer is basically a 1x1 replacement for brass cases dimensionally? If so, we'll just use 5.56 polymer cased.

Seriously guess, stop worrying about fighting in Afghanistan. We're not going to issue magnified optics to every joe, the platoon already has a couple of 240s, and PKM overmatch won't happen when we are forced to stabilize Mexico city or Caracas.

>>34024154
there's no heat sink problem from using polymer instead of brass?

>>34024359
You can't really have polymer cased ammo that is extracted by the rim, or maybe you can but it's really hard to make it work and it's probably just all around better to have push through extraction. So, no, you can't really just replace the current 5.56 with a polymer cased variant.
>>34024510
Yeah heat in general will probably be an issue with polymer ammo, rotating cylinder chamber's will probably be the solution in atleast LMG's, with the ordinary rifle the heat won't be as big of a problem.

>>34022112
Must be weird making a shellac case. Maybe they should of used DNA, or wood.

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>>34025959
>So, no, you can't really just replace the current 5.56 with a polymer cased variant.
Push-through is for the polymer telescoped. They have polymer-metallic composite cartridges, though I don't know how far along or effective it is.

>>34021934
6.5x47 Lapua is said to be a good cartridge, would have liked to see it produced to see how well it'd perform next to 6.5 Creedmore.

>>34027871
>I unironically think this is a pretty neato idea

>>34025959
>Yeah heat in general will probably be an issue with polymer ammo
Ammo won't cook off as readily though, the very property that prevents it from acting as a heatsink means it's an insulator, poor thermal conductivity. As long as the gun itself doesn't malfunction it should be fine.

>>34029580
LMGs firing from an open bolt shouldn't have too many problems with cooking off rounds, and US doctrine heavily favors semi-auto fire for rifles.

Having rifles fire from open bolt in automatic fire modes could also help.

>>34022195
Because the military is retarded, and prefers to bumblefuck a sleek and cool new hardware based "solution" into service, versus doing hard things like solving institutional, tactical and strategic issues.

>>34025959
If by push through you mean caseless, or effectively caseless/combusting or otherwise minimal and non-interfereing case, OK.

>>34033136
>If by push through you mean caseless
He's referring to the way the cased-telescoped ammunition extracts spent cases in Textron's weapons.