New Marine Corps squad configuration, M27 automatic rifle revealed...

ARLINGTON, Va. ― The Marine Corps rifle squad has lost a member but will gain a suite of capabilities in a servicewide initiative to bring powerful tools from information to precision fires to the lowest echelons of combat.

Commandant Robert B. Neller told a crowd of hundreds at the Marine Corps Association and Foundation Annual Ground Awards Dinner on Thursday that the new configuration would consist of three, three-Marine fire teams and a command element of three ― a squad leader, assistant squad leader and squad systems operator.

The systems operator will be the most tech-capable Marine in the formation, Neller said. Rather than create a new Military Occupational Specialty, the systems operator will come from the infantry ranks.

And all squad members will carry the M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle.



https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/ne...ing-a-squad-systems-operator-commandant-says/

Interesting setup. The squad has lost a member, as well as a belt fed machine gun (SAW).

But it will now have a "squad systems operator" (electronics) and the M27 rifle.

The M27 is essentially a beefed up piston driven AR. It does not put out the volume of fire of the M249 SAW, but it is nearly half the weight and more accurate.

Its to be used almost as a dual purpose gun-both as a light machine gun, and a designated marksman rifle (DMR) which is an accurized rifle used against snipers, etc.

While the M27 is not a belt fed machine gun, and while its not a DMR like a scoped M14-its going to take on the roles of both, along with replacing the M4 carbine.

While the marines are retiring many of its aging M249's, there are still .30 caliber LMG's for use.

 

The increased accuracy (heavy barrel and optics) are supposed to increase its suppressive fire capability.

Accessories[edit]
The M27 is essentially an HK416 with accessories required by the Marine Corps.[35] The standard optic is the Trijicon ACOG Squad Day Optic (SDO), officially designated the Sight Unit, SU-258/PVQ Squad Day Optic. It is a 3.5×35 machine gun optic that has a Ruggedized Miniature Reflex (RMR) sight screwed on top for close-quarters engagements under 100 meters. Created for the SAW, the day optic offers slightly less magnification, but longer eye relief than the ACOG Rifle Combat Optic (RCO) on M16s and M4s. The longer relief helps reduce injury risk from recoil.[4][23] It is issued with the Vickers Combat Applications sling and rail sling mounts, AIM Manta Rail Covers, Harris bipod, KAC backup iron sights, a foregrip, and bayonet lug.[36] The M27 initially had a Grip Pod, which is a foregrip with bipod legs inside, but it was later replaced by a separate foregrip and bipod.[9]

In January 2017, a USMC unit deployed with suppressors mounted to their M27 rifles as part of a concept to suppress every weapon in an infantry battalion. Exercises showed that having all weapons suppressed improved squad communication and surprise during engagements; disadvantages included additional heat and weight, increased maintenance, and the greater cost of equipping so many troops with the attachment.[37]

M38 DMR[edit]
In late 2017, the Marine Corps began fielding the M38 designated marksman rifle. Although certain M27s were employed as marksman rifles since 2016, the M38 version outfits the M27 with a Leupold TS-30A2 Mark 4 MR/T 2.5-8x36mm variable power scope, the same optic fitted on the Mk 12 Special Purpose Rifle. The naming of the M38 followed a similar convention to the M27, being named after the 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines unit that tested the rifle out.[38] By April 2018, fielding to all three Marine Expeditionary Forces had been completed. One M38 marksman version, fitted with a scope and QDSS suppressor, is to be fielded per infantry squad to hit targets at 600 meters. Full operational capability is planned for September 2018.[39]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M27_Infantry_Automatic_Rifle

There is a new 5.56 round being used in these as well. Its supposed to offer better accuracy and penetration.

https://www.americanrifleman.org/ar...ng-the-army-s-m855a1-standard-ball-cartridge/

 

The new squad configuration will also have more grenade launchers, a carl gustov, and a quad-copter drone.

More on the squad here...

 

Does that mean the M-16...

... is gonna be half-priced now?

 

One thing about the 7.62 X 51 mm M-60 and the M-240 machine guns, they come with a spare barrel to change out while in a fire fight so you don't burn up the barrel and end up with a stoppage from overheating.

The M-249 SAW has a spare barrel to change out during a fire fight.

The problem I see using the M-27 as a SAW is that the M-27 doesn't have a spare barrel.

Also the M-60, M-240, M-249 SAW. BAR, Thompson Sub Machine Gun like most full auto weapons fire from a open bolt position that helps keeping the weapon cool.

The M-27 like most infantry rifles fire from the close bolt position.

 

Yup certainly going to hurt its ability to put out lead, though maybe the idea is that there will be more guns in the fight.

One place where this change might come up short is in room clearing/close quarters combat.

Now, instead of the light and compact m4, and the belt fed SAW-its the entire squad has these heavy, large rifles.

This rifle with silencer attached is longer than the M16.



Of course, the squad will have options when assaulting like the Carl Gustov, guided grenades, and a quad copter drone which can be used for surveillance during an assault and to spot Marine and Naval artillery.

 

Each of the 3 rifle teams will have a 40 mm grenade launcher capable of launching a guided RPG with a 2 km range, capable of blowing through walls.

 

Been reading up on the drones that will deploy.

 

Reply to follow.

 

Call me when we start using laser and plasma rifles.

 

One in combat will find himself in the prone position most of the time.

One of the problems with a 30 round magazine compared to a 20 round magazine, not much clearance between the 30 round mag and the ground and a rifleman finds himself exposing his head and body to enemy fire.

Ever seen a commie gook or Islamist ******** firing the AK-47 with a 30 round mag ?

The magazine is in the dirt.




The M-27 should dump the bipod.
The M-27 is reported to be front heavy with the bipod and the M-27 like the FNL and M-16 aren't well balanced rifles compared to the M-1 Garand and M-14.





Below using the bipod.
More of your upper body is exposed.

 

DARPA is already working on a small portable battery.



One huge drawback, it would create a new MOS, Combat Field Battery Charger Man.

 

They will need to keep those drone and i-pad controllers charged. 15 minutes of flight time but deploy able at the squad level.

It can even identify and signal targets to the squad, as well as a weapons company with mortars, and artillery.

And then theres the Carl Gustov and grenades. There are lots explosives available to these squads.

 

Video looks like they are at Fort Irwin.

Only one problem with recoilless rifles, the back blast.

Small man portable recoilless rifle...pretty cool.

This was our favorite recoilless rifle platform in Vietnam, the ONTOS.
6 X 106 mm recoilless rifles and 1 X .30 cal machine gun.
Best counter sniper weapons platform ever devised.




M-50A1 Ontos, Le My Outpost, Viet Nam

The Ontos at the battle of Hue

 

That combat footage from Hue was nuts. Entire buildings gone.

 

The problem with using the M27 to take the place of the SAW is that it fires from a closed bolt. You try to use that rifle for sustained suppression fire and you are going to quickly run into an overheated weapon if not a runaway gun.

 

I’ll try to see if I can find it later, but I read a very good article from the CGSC on cutting the squad configuration down to a single SAW and also eliminating the fireteam as an independent element.

 

Overall good decision. One of the problems is that is the SAW is heavy. Many times Marines have to go on long dismounted patrols and fight at very long ranges in Afghanistan. A 2 MOA rifle that is almost as light as the M16 is a good option. Everything else, the SAW would be better. However I think there will always be squads with SAWs, it won't be completely replaced by the IAR, but there shouldn't be a SAW for every fireteam..

I'd watch the racism. You are doing a disservice to your brothers in the service, especially today's demographics.

 

All automatic weapons used as a SAW are heavy and have to be heavy. The purpose of the automatic rifleman is to lay down surpressive fire so the riflemen can close in and kill the enemy.

The best SAW ever to go to war was the BAR. At 19 pounds empty, chambered for the high power 30-06 cartridge it had little recoil.
https://wikivisually.com/wiki/M1918_Browning_Automatic_Rifle

Rule of Thumb:
For every 10% increase in weight of a rifle or handgun, 10% decrease in recoil.

The M-14 was suppose to have been the replacement for the BAR. But the M-14 weighing 9.5 lbs the recoil was just to much to control at full auto fire and being used as a SAW.

So in Vietnam the automatic rifleman in each fire team attached a bi-pod to a M-16 A1 and it was called a SAW. Many times we would have a Marine armed with the M-60 machine gun with a bi-pod attached to a rifle squad and it was used as a SAW. Every Marine in the squad had to carry usually two ammunition belts for the M-60.

Basically neither the Marine Corps and the Army had a real SAW for over twenty years until adopting the M-249 as the SAW during the early 1980's.

The Marine Corps rifle company, platoon, squad and fire team organization and tactics are different from the U.S. Army. U.S. Marines fight diffrently than U.S. Army soldiers.

The four man fire team, three fire teams per rifle squad, three rifle squads per rifle platoon, three rifle platoons per each rifle company was created during the Banana wars and was the most affected organization to use in an amphibious assault or an assault on the battlefield during WW ll, Korean War, Vietnam War, the first Gulf war and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The fire team, squad or platoon can take heavy casualties and keep on advancing and fighting.

It's all based upon the "Rule of Three." It has worked extremely well for over 100 years.

From Inc. magazine.

 

Well times have changed. Modern soldiers wear plates now. A full set of body armor can weight 35 lbs. Add that to radios, better medical supplies, batteries, modernized opservation gear, and nightvison equipment, you have a soldier carrying way over 100 lbs.

Now yes, a heavier weapon does help with recoil, however the M27 has the bipod, and it's better accuracy and lightweight is much more suited in enviorments like Afghanistan where you need to march for long periods over mountains and enemy engagements can happen at 300 or so meters. Aimed shots from a rifle will be more effective than burst from Light machineguns. M240s and M2s are good at those ranges, however those are not for every squad. Again the M27 is not completely replacing the SAW, but supplementing it in some roles. On the streets of Fallujah, the SAW is likely the better weapon(except in room clearing) and probably will be used more in those roles.

 

THE OVERWEIGHT INFANTRYMAN
January 2017

The Infantry has a weight problem. The amount of weight soldiers or Marines are asked to carry has grown exponentially while their ability to carry that load has not. This issue was brought to the forefront recently when retired Army Col. Ellen Haring wrote an opinion piece for the Marine Corps Times in which she was critical of the requirement for Marine Corps infantry officers to carry a load of up to 152 pounds for more than nine miles, at a twenty-minute-per-mile pace—a standard that Haring argues is unrealistic and prevents women from successfully completing the Marine Corps Infantry Officer Course. At first glance this may seem like a reasonable argument: 152 pounds seems like more than most humans can carry.

Many of the rebuttal articles, including one on Tom Ricks Best Defense blog by former Marine infantryman Aaron Ferencik, state that not only is this a realistic requirement, it happens regularly in Afghanistan. Ferencik writes that he was required to carry almost 200 pounds of gear, armor, and weapons.

Despite the robust back-and-forth argument related to the 152-pound Marine Corps standard that was spawned by Haring’s piece, one fundamental question was never answered: What is the right amount of weight an infantryman should be reasonably asked to carry? And how do we get these loads down to a reasonable weight that allows the infantry to be a flexible and agile force?

How did we get here?

From the ancient Greek hoplite all the way up through the American Civil War infantryman, the overall weight carried by a foot soldier changed very little, holding steady at about forty pounds. Infantrymen didn’t see a significant jump in their load until the beginning of the twentieth century. During World War I infantry loads increased by 50 percent, up to over sixty pounds. World War II saw those loads increase again, to 80–100 pounds, depending on the type of weapon system the soldier carried.

Soldier loads stayed pretty constant from World War II through Vietnam. In the last thirty years, however, loads have skyrocketed. During the operation in Grenada soldier loads went unchecked by leaders, resulting in soldiers carrying over 120 pounds. In their paper Load Carriage in Military Operations, Joseph Knapik and Katy Reynolds quoted one soldier in Grenada: “My rucksack weighed 120 pounds. I would get up and rush for 10 yards, throw myself down and couldn’t get up. I’d rest for 10 or 15 minutes, struggle to get up, go 10 more yards, and collapse. After a few rushes, I was physically unable to move and I am in great shape.”

The story hasn’t changed much since then. In the video below, a soldier steps up on a scale to illustrate how much he carries on a two-day mission. With weapon, body armor, and pack his gear weighs in at over 130 pounds.


The British Army has had similar problems. In 2011, a senior British Army officer wrote that the Taliban refer to British soldiers as “donkeys” who move in a tactical “waddle” because of the weight they carried in Afghanistan, which averaged 110 pounds. The officer continued, explaining that “our infantry find it almost impossible to close with the enemy because the bad guys are twice as mobile.”

What should a combat load weigh?

How much should a soldier carry? Many studies have been done on this subject by both the Army and Marine Corps. The Marine Corps Combat Development Command’s 2003 Combat Load Report cites S.L.A. Marshall’s book Soldier’s Load and the Mobility of a Nation as the go-to source on the subject. Marshall concludes that a soldier could optimally carry 33 percent of his body weight. The same Marine Corps study determined the average weight of a Marine male was 169 pounds and the average female’s was 130 pounds. This would put their combat loads at 56 pounds and 42 pounds, respectively.

The Army field manual on foot marches, FM 21-18, which has not been updated since 1990, does not take into account individual body weight. It prescribes a fighting load of no more than 48 pounds and an approach march load of 72 pounds. There is, however, a caveat to those weights. The manual states, “The primary consideration is not how much a soldier can carry, but how much he can carry without impaired combat effectiveness—mentally or physically.” This essentially bases a determination about the amount carried on individual capabilities.

Bridging the Gap

Soldiers today are consistently carrying loads into combat that weigh 70–100 pounds more than what Marshall or the Army field manual prescribes. This over-burdening has significantly hindered soldiers’ and Marines’ ability to effectively maneuver on the battlefield. So how do we get soldier loads closer to these prescribed weights?

There are two potential technological solutions to this problem. The first is to provide assistance in carrying the weight. Up until World War I, armies used beasts of burden to assist in carrying some of their equipment. With the advent of the combustion engine armies turned to trucks and other combat vehicles. The problem is these solutions tie the infantryman to roadways, restricting movement. Getting the infantry away from roads is vital to their ability to effectively maneuver against the enemy requiring innovative solutions.

Several companies are working on robots that can follow behind a maneuver formation. These robots would carry the packs of several soldiers, leaving the infantrymen to carry only their basic combat load of ammunition and body armor. Reducing soldiers’ carried weight to this basic combat load would significantly increase their maneuverability on the battlefield and survivability in a fight.

Another concept under development is a wearable exoskeleton. This would allow soldiers to continue to carry their own loads but with the load-bearing assistance of a hydraulic-powered system attached to a soldier’s legs. Infantrymen would thus retain the same equipment they currently carry on the battlefield, but the exoskeleton would reduce fatigue and the consequent erosion of combat effectiveness.

Unfortunately, none of these systems are ready for combat. Problems with noise, the ability to traverse rugged terrain, maintenance, and the amount of actual weight they can carry have prevented these systems from being issued to combat units. Noise was the biggest concern for Marines. They felt, and rightfully so, that a robot with a lawn mower engine following behind their formation would easily give their position away. Until the noise and other problems are solved, these systems will remain impractical for soldiers on the battlefield.

The other way to attack this problem is to reduce how much the things a soldier carries weigh. On today’s battlefield the two main culprits are batteries and body armor. Almost everything a soldier carries today requires batteries, which can add almost 20 pounds to their load—a problem soldiers have only contended with in the past generation. One solution to the problem is the use of solar panels like the Marine Austere Patrol System being developed by the Office of Naval Research. These lightweight panels would allow soldiers to recharge batteries on the go and reduce the total amount of batteries needed per mission.

Body armor is another area where the military is looking at to reduce weight. The current Improved Outer Tactical Vest weights over 30 pounds. The Army is planning to begin issuing a new system of body armor in 2019 that weighs in at around 23 pounds. Additionally, plates can be removed to tailor the system to the mission, potentially reducing weight even more.

Where do we go from here?

The potential solutions identified above are great starting points but more can be done. Many of these technologies are still in their infancy and not quite ready for combat. While not as sexy as a new fighter jet or aircraft carrier, more resources should be allocated towards the objective of reducing a soldier’s load. Doing so will directly impact battlefield performance. A fighter jet cannot seize and hold terrain, but then neither can infantrymen who are so overburdened that they can’t maneuver effectively on the battlefield.

source -> https://mwi.usma.edu/the-overweight-infantryman/

 

The BAR is hardly the best SAW ever built. It wasn’t even the best SAW of WW2. The Bren beats it by a mile. Only 20 rounds to a magazine, couldn’t do sustained suppression fire, the American version didn’t even have a bipod until 1943 or so and it never had an interchangeable barrel.

Seriously, the best SAW to ever go to war is the SAW, the M-249.

 

I have an idea but it might be stupid a supply drone they are getting quieter with the newer tech, have each unit have one drone with stealth features to fly in and drop added supplies these could be operated from any forward operations base. And you could have each unit then carry only armor which could be lightened with some research, weapons and things for their specialties and essentials enough that if cut off for a time it wouldn't be an issue. Or just fly over and drop them with parachutes lower to the ground or in a padded air case to bounce on the ground. But something must be done.

 

The Bren was used as a light machine gun by the Limeys. The organization of the British infantry squad was different from the U.S. Army and Marine Corps.

The Marine Corps has always used the "Rule of Three" and rifle squads consisted of three fire teams each fire team having a squad automatic man. Where as U.S. Army rifle squads consisted of two fire teams. 12 man squads during WW ll and 9 man squads after WW ll. Each Army rifle squad having a SAW.

The BAR just wasn't used as SAW to lay down suppresive fire from the prone position but was also and originally designed for "walking fire" being fired from the hip while assaulting an enemy position.

It's one of the reasons that the BAR doesn't have a pistol grip.

(Don't listen to those anti gun liberals who don't know jack crap about fire arms. The only reason why the AR-15/M-16 has a pistol grip is to direct 100% of the recoil back into the shoulder to reduce muzzle rise.)

If you have an AR and a conventional rifle without a pistol grip hold both rifle if you were going to fire from the hip while walking. It's a lot easier without a pistol grip.

Why does the Thompson sub machine gun have a pistol grip ? It was originally designed without a butt stock for clearing trenches. Same with the BAR. Being fired from the hip.

 

You can also fire the Bren from standing and from the hip. The BAR was a garbage SAW and it’s was only middling as an automatic rifle.

The Polish and Swedish versions of the BAR were better than the US.

By the way, who the **** in post-Civil War combat is walking and firing from the hip? That’s a great way to get instantly dead.