US cancel OICW-1
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say goodbye to XM8 for now
OICW-1 Canceled, Door Closes on XM-8 For Now
2. US cancel Objective Individual Combat Weapon, Increment One, Family of WeaponsOriginal Solicitation No. W15QKN-05-R-0449
The U.S. Army ARDEC, Picatinny Arsenal, NJ 07806-5000, on behalf of the Program Manager for Soldier Weapons (PM-SW), has a requirement for a non developmental family of weapons that are capable of firing U.S. standard M855 and M856 ammunition.
The family consists of a Carbine, Special Compact (SC), Designated Marksman (DM), and Light Machine Gun (LMG) weapon systems.
This endeavor will be conducted in three phases consisting of a System Design and Development (SDD) Phase, a Low Rate Initial Production (LRIP) Phase and a Full Rate Production (FRP) PhaseThe purpose of this Amendment is to CANCEL Solicitation W15QKN-05-R-0449, OICW Increment One.
This action has been taken in order for the Army to reevaluate its priorites for small caliber weapons, and to incorporate emerging requirements identified during Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. The Government will also incorporate studies looking into current capability gaps during said reevaluation.This isn't unexpected, given the backsliding over the past year or so after it appeared that the XM8 might be on fast track. If the "said reevaluation" includes a long hard look at the 5.56, this will probably all be worth it.
01 nov 2005 http://www.murdoconline.net/
Looks like the Marines and SOCOM, who adopted the M16A4 and the FN-SCAR (respectively) despite initial interest in the XM8, made good calls.
MO will hopefully have more on this soon.
more back ground
3.Do you think US is wise to keep the M16?What are the implications of this cancellation?
4.Lucky we have SAR 21 Rifle and going to have
Squad Support Weapon (SSW)
more on SSW -
This action has been taken in order for the Army to reevaluate its priorites for small caliber weapons, and to incorporate emerging requirements identified during Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. The Government will also incorporate studies looking into current capability gaps during said reevaluation.
Is it the real reason for cancellation?Operation Enduring Freedom is ended in early 2003.Operation Iraqi Freedom is still under the bloody ops.
The review of Operation Enduring Freedom has not been finished after 2 and half years!!?? -
Got laser energy weapons still need to produce kinetic weapons?
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This is a big news.i am suprised few people is interested.
M16 is not perfect.XM 8 hopefully can be better and replace it.Now XM 8 is scraped and it is a good news for M16 frens.
But is it good to keep on using M16 without any imoprovement?
Technology improve a lot for past few decades.But M16.......??
So.for US small arms,good luck to their XM 25 which has just been tested. -
maybe they can go with an improve M16 system like that of the HK M416 .. a piston based M16 system . this system eleiminate the direct gas system of the M16 and put in a more reliable gas piston, and there will be minimal training involve and cost will be lower than that of the XM8.
DaveC