The Negev can fire over 700 rounds a minute in full-auto — a bit less than the M249 — or, it can be switched to semi-auto for highly accurate single shots. It already comes in 5.56mm and 7.62mm variants, and IWI says it could be easily reconfigured to take different calibers.

Textron is not just betting it will win the Next Generation Squad Weapons contract: It’s betting the Army will want to start buying in bulk ASAP. That’s not a bad bet.

Retired Maj. Gen. Bob Scales is the former commandant of the Army War College, a Vietnam veteran (and recipient of the Silver Star for valor) turned military historian and futurist. He’s also one of the fathers of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’s Close Combat Lethality Task Force to reform the infantry. In this op-ed, Scales goes… Keep reading →

The Army plans to move at least $25 billion over the next five years from low-priority programs to preparing for major war. That includes developing a wide variety of new weapons, from high-speed aircraft, to partially-robotic armored vehicles, to a long-ranged 6.8 millimeter rifle to replace the venerable M16/M4 family and its controversial 5.56 mm round.

The Army is just weeks away from awarding contracts to begin buying prototypes of new infantry weapons, with live-fire tests next year.

The catch, of course, is that the Army’s tried to field all these things before — and failed. Why would things go any better this time around? Brig. Gen. Christopher Donahue has an answer for that.

What’s the one technology the Marine Corps Commandant wants more than any other for his riflemen? It wasn’t an amphibious vehicle, more JLTVs, a new rifle or friggin’ lasers. It is “a smart way to recharge batteries,” Gen. Robert Neller told reporters.

PENTAGON: Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, a former Marine Corps rifle platoon leader, wants better technology and training to keep frontline foot troops alive. He sent a Feb. 8 memo (below) to the Joint Chiefs, service chiefs, combatant commanders, and other top officials to create a Close Combat Lethality Task Force, applying the kind of top-level… Keep reading →

UPDATED: Adds SecArmy Esper Roundtable PENTAGON: The figures aren’t final, but the Army hopes to get about $6.8 billion in additional funding for fiscal year 2018 thanks to the recently concluded budget deal, Army Secretary Mark Esper said this morning. The service’s new plan would start delivering a Next Generation Squad Weapon to the infantry… Keep reading →

CRYSTAL CITY: The Army needs revolutionary technologies from robot tanks to a long-range super-rifle, the Chief of Staff said today — and it can get them without repeating the mistakes that doomed high-tech programs in the past. By reforming the acquisition bureaucracy, embracing commercial technology and rigorously prototyping new tech to work out bugs, Gen. Mark… Keep reading →