- The US Army wants its Next Generation Squad Weapon (NSGW) to revolutionize small arms, much the way the iPhone did for consumer electronics.
- "We have hundreds of capabilities we can put into this weapons system, but we want to do it by holistically creating a system that takes advantage of everything we've done in the past," Army Col. Elliott Caggins told T&P. "This means its capabilities will only grow, just as the iPhone's did."
- These new weapons will replace the M4 service weapon and the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon.
The Army isn't on the hunt for any old rifle for its Next Generation Squad Weapon program — it's looking to spark a "revolution in small arms" on par with what the iPhone did to consumer electronics.
At least, that's how Army officials at the Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC) at the Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey described their overall goal in a conversation with Task & Purpose following the release of a formal Prototype Project Opportunity Notice calling on industry partners for a rapid prototyping and testing run of the brand-new platform.
"Imagine that Steve Jobs and his engineers were trying to convert the iPod Touch to the first 3G iPhone," said Army Col. Elliott Caggins, project manager for soldier weapons. "There were a thousand technologies they could have put in the first iPhone but they were looking to mature the platform before they could actually go onto the system."
Rather than slap future additions onto an outdated platform like the service's current M4A1 improvement program, the Army wants future capabilities baked into the NGSW from the get-go in a "one end-all solution" to replace both the M4 and the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon. Call it firing for effect for the acquisition process; the first PON was meant to gather critical industry data before a second PON refined the requirements for the rifle.
This logic of the platform, Caggins said, was reflected in the unusual run-up to the January PPON. As Task & Purpose previously noted, the January notice followed an initial draft notice in November 2018. While several defense contractors previously received separate contracts under the NGSW program, those prototypes aren't for play; they're "totally intended to determine if industry could deliver from the performance and manufacturing standpoint," Caggins said.
The January notice, on the other hand, is the real "no-kidding agreement," as Caggins put it — and one of three companies selected by the Army will ultimately end up cinching the contract to actually produce the weapon in all its glory.
"We have hundreds of capabilities we can put into this weapons system, but we want to do it by holistically creating a system that takes advantage of everything we've done in the past," he added. "This means its capabilities will only grow, just as the iPhone's did."
Those capabilities, according to Arthur Fiorellini, NGSW team leader, include:
- a specially-designed fire control system engineered to boost hit probability at extended ranges
- the Advanced Small Arms Ballistic System, an onboard processor hardened against cyberattacks that miniaturizes the positioning system and range finder typically used on Army artillery pieces
- a sensor suite designed to accommodate for changes in pressure and density using multi-laser rangefinder system to estimate wind speed and adjust rifle positioning accordingly.
"The operator, as he lases the target, instantly gets an aim point and the system adjusts for ballistics instead of the operator trying to figure things out," Fiorellini told Task & Purpose. "A dot is displayed on the optic that the operator just puts on the target and everything else is taken care of ... the processor takes all of the information and boils it down.