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Another senior U.S. Army officer has spoken out about the service’s need for Shahed-136 like long-range, expendable drones. The need for the U.S. to procure exactly these kinds of relatively simple, comparatively very cheap and adaptable drones, built at scale, is something that TWZ has recently made a detailed case for.

When asked by Howard Altman of TWZ about a possible Army requirement for Shahed-like drones, the answer from Maj. Gen. James (Jay) Bartholomees, commanding general of the Hawaii-based 25th Infantry Division, was unequivocal.

“Absolutely,” Bartholomees said, speaking this week at the Association of the U.S. Army’s (AUSA) annual symposium. “We are behind on long-range sensing and long-range launched-effect strike.”

Bartholomees confirmed that the United States Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM), the unified combatant command responsible for the Indo-Pacific region, is “learning from what is happening in Ukraine,” where the Pentagon’s tardiness at widely adopting lower-end drones for its own offensive operations has been highlighted.

The Iranian-designed Shahed-136 long-range one-way attack drone, which is being mass-produced in Russia as the Geran, has become Moscow’s primary standoff weapon with which it bombards Ukraine on a daily basis.

While the U.S. military is lagging behind, Bartholomees said there’s good news on this front, too.

“I think we can catch up very rapidly,” Bartholomees said. “The formations that we built are ready for those capabilities to land.” Those formations include a launched effects company that the 25th Infantry Division is currently standing up. This will join the launched effects platoon that already exists within its multifunctional reconnaissance company.

As an initial experiment, the launched effects company will be created within the 25th Infantry Division’s artillery unit.

“We absolutely need to build this capability quickly,” Bartholomees continued. “We need to test it in our region; we also need to work with our allies and partners to do the same.”

Referring again to the Shahed, Bartholomees noted that, because this kind of drone “is very cheap, easy to produce, and easy to put together,” it makes it “exactly the type of capability that we would love to have for our allies and partners in the region.” Not only would long-range, expendable drones of this kind help regional allies and partners protect their sovereign territory, but they would also be relevant to defend their maritime spaces, something Bartholomees described as “a unique problem set.”

When asked where the U.S. Army was in relation to Russian efforts in the field of long-range one-way attack drones, Bartholomees admitted that “We are behind in that sense, we need to push faster, all the services, frankly, are on this chase to move faster.”

He did, however, note that there are some “defeat mechanism concerns” that have put something of a brake on the development of at least certain types drones.

Bartholomees identified the importance of the work being done within divisional innovation labs, specifically the work on a nascent long-range one-way attack capability.

“We’re building our own drones,” Bartholomees said. “We’re already starting to produce one-way attack, fixed-wing [but] the longer range obviously gets harder and harder to do, that’s where you need more airworthiness expertise.”

It should be noted that, with its focus on long range and cost effectiveness, a drone in the mold of the Shahed is of particular relevance to a future contingency in the Indo-Pacific theater in which the 25th Infantry Division would likely be engaged.

The Shahed-136 has a range of around 1,000 miles, depending on variant and payload. The extreme challenges of the Pacific call for strike weapons with long range. In fact, TWZ has advocated in the past for an extended-range one-way attack drone, which would be especially useful for reaching from the Second Island Chain to the Chinese mainland — a one-way trip of roughly 2,000 miles.

Bartholomees said he agreed with Lt. Gen. Charles Costanza, commander of the Army’s V Corps, which has a presence on NATO’s eastern flank, who also discussed drones and counter-drone capabilities at AUSA before talking further with Howard Altman of TWZ.

“We aren’t moving fast enough,” Costanza continued. “And it really took Russia’s invasion of Ukraine [in 2022], and the way they’re innovating, and Ukrainians are innovating, to realize, hey, we need to move fast.”

When asked specifically if the U.S. military needed a capability broadly in line with the Shahed drone, Constanza responded: “I think we do.”

Returning to Bartholomees, he argued that the rapid pace of drone development in the Ukrainian war is, in no small part, due to the result of an existential threat, which means the Ukrainian industrial base is “pushing incredibly hard for the sovereignty of their entire nation.”

“I have no doubt that we can push further, faster to get there,” Bartholomees, pointing to the partnership the Army is forging with the Marine Corps and Air Force, in this regard.

Of course, as we have argued repeatedly in the past, the United States could also find itself facing an existential threat, including an adversary that has a much larger arsenal of long-range, expendable drones. Namely, China.

At the same time, the need for huge numbers of long-range guided weapons that can pierce China’s anti-access bubble is coming to the forefront at a time when existing stockpiles are clearly below the required threshold. This is a reality that is meanwhile driving the development of a wide array of lower-cost, long-range weapons. These include low-cost jet-powered cruise missiles, but these are still significantly more expensive and complex than a Shahed-136 clone and/or they lack range in comparison.

Currently, there are a handful of smaller companies in the United States that are pitching a Shahed copy, or something very similar. While this is a useful starting point, it should be recalled that Russia is already mass-producing these kinds of weapons and is now understood to be building 5,000 a month.

Thankfully, we are finally seeing some much-needed change when it comes to the U.S. military’s plans for fielding its own lower-end drones.

With senior officers like Bartholomees and Costanza making the case for long-range one-way attack drones, we might also start to see some more urgency here, too.

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While both Ukraine and Russia have sustained large amounts of helicopter losses due to dense traditional frontline air defenses, in some cases, drones, and attacks on bases, the U.S. Army is taking a measured approach in applying lessons learned to the future of its own rotary-wing fleet, a top commander told us. Maj. Gen. Claire Gill, commanding general of the U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence is adamant that not everything that happens in Ukraine applies to the U.S. Army and it’s absolutely critical that only the right lessons should be heeded.

“When we talk about Ukraine, there are a lot of lessons to be learned,” Gill told us on the sidelines of the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) annual conference in Washington, D.C.. “We focus on the right lessons to be learned.”

“There are some differences between positional warfare with drones – they’re doing World War One with drones right now in Ukraine – and the way that the United States Army fights, particularly as a member of the combined arms team and as a member of the joint force,” he added. “So, there are a lot of things that we should pay attention to there, but they’re not flying at night. They don’t plan like we plan. They don’t bring all the collective elements that we could bring to bear when we execute our operations.”

Ukraine and Russia are likely using deception as part of their operations, “but…using the night, using the terrain, using the degraded visual environment, we’ve got some pretty exquisite capabilities, and some well-trained folks, as do the Ukrainians,” Gill noted.

Gill is less convinced about Russian training.

“On the Russian side, I’ve seen some shoot downs that make me wonder, flying around the daytime, at altitude, flying the same routes. That just makes me think you can’t equate the way that they’re flying with the way that we might fly. So I think there’s a lot of opportunity there for us to learn some things, but not throw the baby out with the bathwater.”

“This is something when I talk to young aviators about what we should take away from some of the decisions that are being made in terms of divesting aircraft out of the army and investing in [unmanned aerial systems] UAS,” Gill added. “We have to make changes, right? We have to see the world the way it is. I know we’re not done with rotorcraft like I told you. Everything that we’re flying right now is going to be on the ramp for a long time.”

Army aviation assets include UH-60 Black Hawks, CH-47 Chinooks, AH-64E Apaches and heavily modified MH-60M Black Hawk, MH-47G Chinook, and AH/MH-6R Little Bird helicopters. You can read more about the future of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment’s (SOAR) aircraft in our recent story here. In the coming decade, the Bell MV-75 Valor tilt-rotor aircraft is slated to come online as well. More on that later in this story.

The fate of helicopters in Ukraine has hammered home the need for missions to be mapped out with excrutiating detail before launching, Brig. Gen. Philip C Baker, the Army’s aviation future capabilities director, told us.

“We’ve got to have that ability to have really good planning tools going into mission sets,” Baker explained. “And planning tools is really driven by our data integration across all of our combat systems, intel, maneuver, fires. So when you look at NGC2 [Next Generation Command and Control] that provides us an integrated data path to bring in as much of information early on to planning, so our crews, both manned and unmanned, can plan them out right mission sets so they understand enemy, they understand the electronic spectrum, they understand weather, they understand all that before they go in.”

In addition, “when you look at the battlefield data and the speed of data that passes around the battlefield, we’ve got to be able to have that inside of our operation cells, and we’ve got to have that inside of our aircraft. And so we’re doing a lot this year onboarding new communication capability onto platforms that will bring into our experiment in March, that brings in satellite-based communication, that brings in mesh networks onto platforms to be able to drive that data flow onto platforms inside of our operation cells.”

Having standoff munitions capabilities is also key, Baker posited, pointing to the Army’s developing launched effects effort, a broad term that the U.S. military currently uses to refer to uncrewed aerial systems configured for different missions, like reconnaissance or acting as loitering munitions, which can be fired from other aerial platforms, as well as ones on the ground or at sea. For the Army, one example of a longer-range weapon being fielded for Army helicopters is the Israeli-designed Spike-NLOS. It gives Apaches the ability to hit moving targets far away with exacting precision. Far longer-ranged launched effects will also become available, including those that can decoy, jam, and attack targets many dozens, or even hundreds of miles away.

“The role of launched effects is to provide that standoff capability, not like a Hellfire at eight kilometers, but multiple, multiple kilometers out, so we can make contact with the enemy early, understand what the enemy is doing, and then have an effect on the enemy,” Baker suggested. “So that’s really the role of launched effects.”

New and improved sensors will also help rotary-wing aircraft survive by making them better able to operate in a degraded visual environment, Baker added.

“As we bring new sensors onto the aircraft, we want to be able to truly operate in those environments that give us the highest capability and survivability,” Baker pointed out. “So during darkness hours, during dust, during, you know, the environment where we need we can operate not in daytime. So we’re bringing on sensor capability to our platforms that allow us to even enhance our ability to operate at night.”

Asked about what the right lessons from Ukraine are, especially for a potential fight against a peer adversary like China, Baker said they are “really tied to that standoff range. We know standoff is going to be critical to be able to stay outside of weapon engagement zones so we can operate kind of a sanctuary.”

The Army also wants “to rely on that data network to be able to pass information quickly so we can strike quickly and affect the enemy,” Baker added. 

Lessons learned from Ukraine are informing how the Army is developing the Valor, Brig. Gen. David Phillips, program executive officer of aviation, told TWZ.

“I would offer, from equipment perspective and a sustainment perspective, you can look at the equipment decisions that we’re making on MV-75 and tie them directly to these lessons learned, how we integrate launch effects, how we integrate networks, how we integrate the survivability on the platform, the survivability off board the platform, and just the aircraft survivability itself. I think we’re absolutely integrating those into our design efforts today, as we’re headed toward the critical design review that’s coming up in the spring.”

With many Russian helicopters being lost from attacks on their bases, Maj. Gen. Lori Robinson, Commanding General of Army Aviation and Missile Command, said it will be important to keep an eye on the skies.

“I think the right lesson is that everyone does have to look up,” Robinson told us. “And that includes your sustainment footprint on the ground. So we’re looking into how to make that mobile. We don’t have a mound of stuff on the ground. And then every soldier out there, whether you’re in the aircraft or you’re sustaining the aircraft on the ground, is going to have to be aware of what is above them.”

When it comes to thinking about lessons learned from Ukraine, Gill said one thing stands out. While crewed rotary wing aviation will be in the mix for years to come, uncrewed systems will ultimately be at the pointy tip of the spear.

“The Army made a decision to move toward unmanned capability,” he noted. “And so I think the lesson that I take from Ukraine and this nature of warfare is you lead with unmanned systems, right? So whether you want to create an effect, whether you want to create a diversion, whether you want to find something, and then you introduce people. When you need humans to do the things that humans are really good at doing,”

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Leonardo DRS has revealed a new capability in its range of what it calls Maneuver Air Defense payloads. The new Air Defense Light Variant (ADLV) is based on the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) as a lighter-weight member of its counter-unmanned aerial system (C-UAS) and short-range air defense family. It comes hot on the heels of the counter-drone directed-energy Stryker armored vehicle that the company unveiled last year at the Association of the U.S. Army’s (AUSA) main annual conference in Washington, D.C.

The ADLV revealed this week at AUSA blends a different set of sensors and effectors, with the Leonardo DRS RPS-42 MHR radar for detection and the EOS R400 Slinger remote weapons station equipped with an electro-optical sensors, laser designator and a 30mm cannon. APKWS laser-guided rockets and Stinger missiles in a four-pack launchers make up the type’s longer-reaching effectors that can also engage traditional aircraft and other threats. The AV Titan 4 provides electronic warfare support and a Skyview system offers passive detection of unmanned aircraft. This is all packed into an extremely mobile and supportable platform that the JLTV provides.

Leonardo DRS’ Joseph Ralwes talked us through the company’s approach to the latest U.S. Army C-UAS needs, and how he sees this in-demand role evolving in the coming years.

Check it out in the video below:

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The U.S. Army continues to lag behind global trends when it comes to fielding drones and systems to counter their use by hostile forces, according to a top general overseeing soldiers in Europe. Units forward-deployed in the European theater are trying to break a cycle of seemingly endless experimentation to actually operationalize relevant capabilities, especially within smaller units, buoyed now by major U.S. military-wide initiatives.

Army Lt. Gen. Charles Costanza, commander of V Corps, talked about issues relating to drones and counter-drone capabilities at a panel discussion at the Association of the U.S. Army’s (AUSA) main annual symposium yesterday. TWZ‘s Howard Altman was in attendance and had a chance to talk further with Costanza immediately afterward. From World War II through the Cold War, and for years afterward, V Corps was a key component of the Army’s presence in Europe. Inactivated in Germany in 2013, it was reestablished at Fort Knox in Kentucky in 2020, and a forward headquarters in Poland was subsequently stood up.

“We’re behind. I’ll just be candid. I think we know we’re behind,” Costanza said in response to a direct question at the panel from our Howard Altman. “We’ve been talking about counter-UAS [uncrewed aerial systems] and UAS capability for a better part of a decade, since, really, we watched the war in Armenia and Azerbaijan go on, and saw very much the beginning of the drone UAS capabilities.”

Azerbaijan’s armed forces captured particular global attention with their use of kamikaze drones during a war with Armenia in 2020. They had already been employing those capabilities on a more limited level for years beforehand. The Israeli-made drones they employed traced their roots back decades, and came from companies that continue to be world leaders in this space, as you can read more about here. In 2020, Azerbaijan also employed Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2s, a traditional fixed-wing design capable of employing precision munitions that has seen significant sales globally, including to Ukraine.

The propaganda video below from the State Border Service of Azerbaijan highlights how much of a fixture kamikaze drones were in the 2020 war between that country and Armenia.

“We aren’t moving fast enough,” Costanza continued. “And it really took Russia’s invasion of Ukraine [in 2022], and the way they’re innovating, and Ukrainians are innovating, to realize, hey, we need to move fast.”

Both sides of the ongoing conflict now make extensive use of various types of weaponized drones, especially highly maneuverable first-person view (FPV) kamikaze designs, in and around the front lines, and now increasingly deeper behind them. Ukraine and Russia also employ longer-range kamikaze drones for attacks further inside each other’s territory. Various types of uncrewed aerial systems had already become steadily more significant factors in the fighting between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists in the eastern part of the country that followed Moscow’s seizure of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014.

“I think we do,” Costanza also said when asked specifically if the U.S. military needed a capability broadly in line with the Iranian-designed Shahed-136 long-range kamikaze drone. The Shahed-136 has become something of a household name as a result of Russia’s heavy use of variants and derivatives, including types it now produces domestically, in attacks on Ukraine. Last month, TWZ laid out a detailed case for why the U.S. military should already be buying tens of thousands of Shahed-136 clones, which you can find here.

As part of his response to the questions from our Howard Altman, Costanza highlighted Project Flytrap as a prime example of efforts underway to try to reverse these trends. Flytrap is an ongoing series of Army-led training events in Europe focused on counter-drone capabilities and tactics, techniques, and procedures to go with them.

“I think Flytrap is the start point to that, right? So I think Flytrap is taking the capabilities we have right now, identifying how we layer those capabilities, and then taking that, giving it back to the Army, and saying, here’s how you do it now, go make the acquisition purchase,” Costanza said. “Flytrap is just really trying to figure out what the systems are that we need. The scope and scale piece goes back to the Army.”

“What we learned is that there’s really no one system solution. It takes a layered approach. And you know, the way to think about it is, you have to detect what’s in the air, what’s a threat. You have to decide what you’re going to do about it, and that you need the means to actually do something about it,” Col. Donald Neal, commander of the Army’s 2nd Cavalry Regiment, which falls under V Corps, also said yesterday while speaking alongside Costanza. “There’s no one system solution to protecting the air above you.”

A key “challenge has been getting the network straight, being able to have the data in a cloud-based environment that we can process it in a way that’s integrated, not just with the counter-UAS systems, but the larger, integrated air and missile defense network, and how we do that. So we’re working through that,” Costanza further noted. “What we need to do now is take those systems, integrate them with an AI [artificial intelligence] capable, data-driven mission command system, [and] sync it all together, not just [for the] U.S., but across all our NATO partners.”

The 2nd Cavalry Regiment has been taking a leading role in Project Flytrap, as well as separate but adjacent efforts to step up the fielding of uncrewed aerial systems, including weaponized types, within the service’s own formations.

“2nd Cavalry Regiment is standing up what they call Delta Company,” Costanza noted during the panel. “It’s taking all the different systems that can have effects, lethal, non-lethal – so not just kinetic, but EW [electronic warfare] – counter-UAS, [as well as] UAS, [and] creating one organization to synchronize those capabilities faster than what we’re able to do right now.”

The Army has already been experimenting with similar units, which have been referred to as Strike Companies and Multi-Purpose Companies (MPC) in the past, outside of 2nd Cavalry, which you can read more about here.

Project Flytrap is also tied in with a NATO-wide initiative announced earlier this year, dubbed the Eastern Flank Deterrence Line, to bolster counter-drone and a wide array of other capabilities with a particular eye toward threats emanating from Russia. America’s allies in Europe have been seeing a surge in drone incursions, including over sensitive sites, as Moscow has been ramping up hybrid war efforts.

“I think Putin feels he’s in conflict with NATO right now,” Costanza told our Howard Altman in the interview after the panel. “I think he’s just going to continue to ramp that up until we stop it, and NATO knows that, but we still haven’t done that yet.”

When it comes to the broader issue of the Army lagging in the fielding of drones and counter-drone systems, Project Flytrap and the other work V Corps is involved in are clearly aimed at operationalizing new capabilities. The Pentagon has publicly lauded Flytrap as an example of the services moving to act on the new direction from the Secretary of War intended to address increasingly worrisome capability and capacity gaps that extend well beyond American forces in Europe.

In July, the Pentagon announced a sweeping array of policy and other changes structured around the central goal of getting huge numbers of drones, including weaponized types, into the hands of units, especially smaller ones, across the entire U.S. military. In August, Joint Interagency Task Force 401 (JIATF 401) stood up as the newest U.S. military organization intended to act as a focal point for the accelerated development and fielding of counter-drone systems for use on the battlefield, as well as to defend facilities and assets within the homeland.

At the same time, what Gen. Costanza talked about yesterday still sounds very much like the kinds of test and evaluation efforts that have been going on for years already. As he himself acknowledged, much of the work that has been done to date has not translated into major new operational capabilities, even as Ukraine and Russia, and many other countries globally, particularly China, have pushed ahead. The Army faced pointed criticism in July after touting the test of a grenade-dropping drone in Europe, a capability that has been in daily use for years now on the battlefield in Ukraine.

Sig Sauer says it has been able to trim the weight of the Army’s new 6.8x51mm M7 service rifle by nearly a pound, or just over 10 percent, in response to feedback from servicemembers. The M7’s weight compared to the gun it is set to replace, the 5.56x45mm M4A1, was among the criticisms that an Army captain very publicly leveled against the gun earlier this year. Sig had subsequently issued a vehement rebuttal, but acknowledged that the design was still evolving.

Jason St. John, senior director of strategic products for the Defense Strategies Group at Sig Sauer, gave an update on the M7 rifle, as well as the companion 6.8x51mm M250 machine gun, to TWZ‘s Howard Altman on the show floor at the Association of the U.S. Army’s (AUSA) main annual symposium today. Sig Sauer has also been working on a shorter and lighter carbine variation of the M7 for the Army. Sig Sauer did show the lightened “product-improved” M7, also known as the PIE M7, at the biennial Defense and Security Equipment International (DSEI) exhibition in London earlier this year, but does not appear to have had the carbine on display at that event.

The M7 and M250 (previously designated the XM7 and XM250), together with the associated family of 6.8x51mm rounds and the computerized XM157 optic, form the Army’s Next Generation Squad Weapons (NGSW) ‘system.’ The service selected Sig Sauer as the winner of its NGSW competition in 2022 and now plans to replace a substantial portion of its M4A1s and M249 Squad Automatic Weapons (SAW) with M7s and M250s, respectively. Sig is also supplying the ammunition, but the XM157s are being procured separately from Vortex Optics.

“So, we’re talking about the Army’s and our continued teaming effort to improve the M7 and the M250, based on our recommendations, and their suggestions, and feedback from the field,” Sig Sauer’s St. John said.

“There’s basically two combined efforts going on within the M7,” he continued. “We have a carbine version, and then we have a lighten, improved version of the M7. And so when you look at the standard M7 that’s been issued to the troops, the overall weight of the firearm was 8.3 pounds. Now, the improved M7 is 7.6 pounds, and the carbine version weighs 7.3 pounds. So we’re getting closer and closer to [a] rifle weight system similar to the M4.”

The PIE M7 also has a 13.5-inch barrel, while the one on the carbine version is 10 inches long. A standard M4A1 with its 14.5-inch barrel, as well as just a sling and a loaded magazine, weighs in at 7.62 pounds, according to the Army. It is important to note that optics and other accessories add appreciable weight to both the M7 and M4A1. The XM157 optic is notably larger and heavier than the ones the Army typically issues for use on M4A1s.

In terms of how the PIE M7 was lightened, “there’s the upper receiver, we’ve redesigned and taken some weight out of it. We’ve lessened the barrel profile slightly to get some weight out of it,” according to Sig’s St. John. “We’ve done some lightening efforts within the operating system, as well as remove the folding stock hinge. By removing that hinge, we save some weight.”

The original M7 featured a stock that was both adjustable in length and could be folded to one side. The M4A1’s stock is only adjustable in length.

“What we just found is really that the Army and the soldiers have fed back … [that] they’d rather have the weight savings than the folding stock,” St. John added. “They aren’t using the folding stock enough to justify that additional weight.”

The video in the Tweet below shows a placard with additional details about the PIE M7 and the carbine version at around 0:41 in the runtime.

Sig Sauer has also made important changes to the M250’s design based on discussions with the Army and feedback from soldiers.

“You’re going to see, instead of having a removable front handguard, now you have a hinged captured handguard, so it stays on the weapon system – rotates forward and away,” St. John explained. “The feed tray cover is extended with the big rail, so that now I have more adjustability for the optics that I put on there, and eye relief to the individual soldiers, and now I can move my optic further back or forward depending on what’s wanted.”

“I’ve got improved bipods. I’ve got [an] improved gas valve,” he continued, also highlighting improvements to how the M250 can be fitted to a tripod and how ammunition is carried on the gun. “Basically the feedback from everyone is, what can we do to improve this weapon system, make it more easy [sic] to use, and more robust and reliable.”

Work has also been done to improve the common sound suppressor for the M7 and M250.

“We’ve also redesigned our suppressor to make it shorter,” per St. John. “We’ve added a titanium heat shield on it that does two-fold [things].”

The heat shield helps reduce the chance of contact burns as the suppressor heats up during use. It also reduces thermal bloom, which could make it easier for enemies to spot friendly forces from their heat signature. St. John cautioned that no one should be rushing to grab the suppressor, especially with bare hands, after sustained use, even with the new heat shield.

When it comes to the M7, St. John said that the Army is now in the process of deciding how to proceed in fielding the PIE and/or carbine versions.

“You could see there’s probably a couple of decision points. Do they stick with the standard length M7 that’s been lightened by 0.7 pounds? Or do they and or do they move to the carbine completely?” he said. “Do they keep the carbine for specialty troops and still issue the M7, or do they take the carbine and utilize that as the new rifle across the board? So they’re trying to make those decisions.”

St. John pointed out that the Army had gone through a similar evolution in thinking in the decades that followed the fielding of the A1 variant of the M16 in the 1960s. The service adopted a succession of full-size rifle versions before transitioning to the shorter and lighter M4A1 as its standard service weapon.

That the Army is looking at lighter variations of the M7 at all is significant. The weight of the rifle was among the criticisms that Army Capt. Braden Trent had highlighted in an unclassified report he wrote while he was a student at the Expeditionary Warfare School, which is part of the Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia. Trent also called attention to the comparative size and weight of the 5.56x45mm and 6.8x51mm rounds, as well as the shorter barrel on the M7 compared to the M4A1. Trent’s findings, which raised safety concerns about the rifle and cited other issues that called its operational utility into question, came to more widespread attention after he presented them at the annual Modern Day Marine conference earlier this year.

There is one particular “major fault in the XM7, and that’s the UBL … or universal basic load. It’s a metric that can be applied to almost any weapon system, and it essentially means the amount of magazines and associated ammunition that a system uses and is expected to be carried into battle,” Trent said at Modern Day Marine. “So the XM7 [and] the M4A1 actually have the same number of magazines in their UBL seven, but remember, we’re talking about that capacity difference. The total round count a soldier carries into battle with the XM7 is 140 rounds compared to the 210 rounds of the M4A1. Now again, a 70-round difference may not seem significant, but to the soldier in the fight, it absolutely is a difference. Not to mention that every magazine added to the XM7, each 20-round loaded magazine adds another 1.25 pounds to the soldier’s load, meaning that if troops equipped with the XM7 tried to match their old UBLs [in terms of round count], they’re going to have even more weight being carried.”

“The final thing I’d like to mention is the Chief of Army Infantry’s stated goal of a 55-pound total soldier load,” he added. “If we just take the XM7 and its seven UBL magazine load, we’re almost at half that weight, and that’s before the soldier is put on body armor, water, a rucksack, or anything else that they’ll need in the fight.”

The Army’s position has been that the M7 and its new cartridge offer improved accuracy, range, and terminal effectiveness that are worth the added bulk. Concerns about soldiers being outranged, as well as improvements in adversary body armor, were key drivers behind the NGSW program. Trent’s report also calls this into question based on data he collected regarding expected infantry combat engagement distances.

Sig Sauer had also provided a lengthy rebuttal to the technical issues that Trent raised. You can read more about all of this in TWZ‘s in-depth report on the ensuing controversy following his presentation.

“I think that soldiers and citizens should want Sig Sauer, the U.S. [Army] program office to continue that practice of continually evolving and developing and improving their soldiers’ weapons systems. And I think we anticipate that we’re going to undergo those improvement processes for the next 25 to 30 years,” the company’s St. John had told TWZ at the time. “There’s going to be improvements in manufacturing [and] materials processes. The soldiers on the ground and the U.S. Army are going to dictate different operational requirements and standards for the weapons systems, and we’re going to have to react to those modifications that are going to optimize that weapon system as that evolves through time and history.”

“It should be no surprise, in my opinion, that specifically in the infancy of a weapons program that there’s a very aggressive improvement effort to ensure that the Army and the soldiers get the weapon system that they deserve,” he added.

From what we know now, the Army’s plans for the M7 are already evolving significantly, with criticisms about the rifle’s weight, in particular, having been taken to heart.

Howard Altman contributed to this story.

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Pakistan Taliban claims responsibility for attack on military convoy, leading to a deadly gunfight.

Eleven military personnel have been killed in a gunfight with armed fighters in the country’s northwest, according to the Pakistani army.

The gun battle erupted early on Wednesday during an intelligence operation in the Orakzai district near the Afghan border, the army said in a news release.

During the intelligence raid, the military said, an “intense” exchange of fire broke out with “Khawarij”, a term it uses for banned groups such as the Pakistan Taliban, which claimed responsibility for the attack.

Among the dead were Lieutenant Colonel Junaid Arif and his deputy, Major Tayyab Rahat, along with nine other soldiers. The army said 19 fighters were also killed.

The Reuters news agency, citing Pakistani security officials, reported that the fighters ambushed a military convoy with a roadside bomb before opening fire.

In a statement, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif lauded security forces for their service and paid tribute to the troops who lost their lives.

In recent months, the Pakistan Taliban, which wants to overthrow the government and replace it with their hardline brand of Islamic governance, has stepped up attacks on Pakistani security forces.

Islamabad says the group uses neighbouring Afghanistan to train and plan attacks against Pakistan, while archrival India funds and backs them, charges denied by both countries.

The U.S. Army has handed the American division of the Belgian gunmaker Fabrique Nationale (FN) a contract for further development of its semi-automatic Multi-Purpose Tactical Launcher-30mm (MTL-30). This comes as the service is still pushing to acquire a new Precision Grenadier System (PGS) that will give soldiers a new way to engage a wide range of targets, including lightly armored vehicles, enemy personnel behind cover, and drones in the sky.

FN America announced yesterday that it had secured what it called a Prototype Project Opportunity Notice (PPON) contract, valued at $2 million, for work on the MTL-30. The Army first put out the PPON in relation to the PGS effort in February. The service described it as a call for prototypes to support a “risk reduction effort separate from the Precision Grenadier Program of Record with the goal of developing technologies associated with the current capability gap.”

“This program is a U.S. Government priority with the shift in modern warfare and engagements, and FN is honored to be selected to develop this new, innovative solution,” Mark Cherpes, President and CEO for FN America, said in a statement. “Once developed and implemented, this weapon system could radically change future battlefield strategies. It will offer new capabilities at the squad level and upgraded tactical options, giving the warfighter a more effective system.”

“The FN MTL-30 shoulder-fired launcher can engage in close-quarter warfare, defeat targets in defilade, and engage unmanned aerial systems (UAS). It could also be networked with FN remote weapon stations to create a multi-layered defense against UAS,” John Bungard, Senior Director of Military Development Programs at FN America, also said. “Providing solutions that can counter multiple threats is critical for future battlefield engagements. We are excited that the Army is interested in maturing our PGS solution. We are fully committed to this system and its development.”

Though not explicitly mentioned in FN America’s release today, the MTL-30 looks very clearly to be an evolution of a previous design called the PGS-001. The Army picked the PGS-001 as one of two finalists in the xTechSoldier Lethality challenge to “showcase their innovative concepts for a Precision Grenadier System” last year. The service subsequently declared the other finalist, the Squad Support Rifle System (SSRS) from Barrett Firearms and MARS, Inc., as the winner.

Like the PGS-001, the current MTL-30 has the general outward appearance of an oversized assault rifle. The semi-automatic weapon is 35 inches long and weighs around 10 pounds. It feeds 30mm cartridges from three or five-round detachable box magazines.

The MTL-30 has a Picatinny-type accessory rail along the top, as well as additional accessory attachment points on the handguard utilizing the increasingly popular M-LOK system developed by another American firm, Magpul. No particular accessories are shown in the images FN America has released so far. The Army has not yet publicly stipulated the need for the future PGS to make use of any particular optics or other attachments. A computerized sighting system of some kind would be needed to make the most optimal use of the weapon.

“Real time soldier feedback has led to a prototype that is far more user-friendly, incorporating a footprint users will be familiar with due to the M4-style controls, grip and buttstock,” according to FN America’s release. “The system features a soft shooting launcher with low-felt recoil, enabling rapid target engagement with effective payloads from an extremely controllable system.”

More specific details about the rounds the MTL-30 fires are currently limited. PGS requirements that the Army has previously released have called for a family of ammunition that at least includes a “Counter Defilade Round” capable of engaging personnel behind hard cover and a companion round for use in training. The service has also expressed a desire for armor-piercing, dedicated anti-drone, and “Close Quarters Battle” cartridges, the latter of which could refer to some kind of buckshot-like canister round.

FN America has said the weapon has an effective range of 1,640 feet (500 meters), which is another known PGS program requirement, and that the ammunition it uses flies along a flat trajectory. The Army’s existing M203 and M320 grenade launchers both fire 40x46mm rounds that travel along a trajectory with a very pronounced arc. A flatter trajectory can be more advantageous for engaging certain target sets.

It is worth noting here that the Army primarily fields the M203 and M320 as under-barrel attachments for existing M16/M4-series guns, though the latter can also be employed in a stand-alone configuration. The maximum effective range of the M203 and M320 when firing typical high-explosive rounds is 1,148 and 1,312 feet (350 and 400 meters), respectively.

“The PGS will be a man portable integrated weapon system that enables precision engagements to destroy personnel targets in defilade and in the open with increased lethality and precision compared to the legacy M203/M320 grenade launchers,” according to another Army PGS contracting notice from February 2023. “The PGS will provide overmatch to comparable threat grenade launchers in near peer formations in future operating environments (jungle, urban, woodland, subterranean, desert, day/night/obscured). The PGS is envisioned to consist of a weapon, a fire control, and a suite of ammunition which enables the user to engage targets in defilade/cover, hovering UAS targets, conduct door breaching, engage close combat targets, and light armored targets.”

What timeline the Army might be currently targeting to start actually fielding PGSs is unclear. The program traces back to at least 2020.

Between the mid-2000s and the late 2010s, the Army had also pursued the development of a very similar weapon, designated the XM25, and known variously as the Individual Semi-Automatic Airburst System (ISAAS) or Counter-Defilade Target Engagement (CDTE) System. Also nicknamed “The Punisher,” the XM25 had itself evolved from next-generation infantry weapon efforts dating back to the 1990s.

A key feature of the XM25 was the advanced (and costly) programmable 25mm airbursting ammunition that it fired. The weapon’s computerized fire control system used a laser range finder to determine the distance to the target and then set the round to detonate at the optimal point in its flight.

The Army announced in 2018 that it had canceled work for good on the XM25, citing the weapon’s 14-pound weight and its physical bulk, as well as rising costs.

As has already been noted, FN America is also not the only company already angling to supply the Army with a new advanced grenade launcher. In addition to SSRS from Barrett and MARS, the American subsidiary of German firm Rheinmetall has been developing the Highly Advanced Multi-Mission Rifle (HAMMR), and Northrop Grumman and Colt are working together on their own as-yet-unnamed design.

The Northrop Grumman-Colt weapon is chambered to fire 25mm rounds, and you can read more about it overall here.

American Rheinmetall’s HAMMR is a version of its Squad Support Weapon 40 (SSW40), which was first unveiled in 2022. The SSW40 fires 40x46mm cartridges that are similar to the ones used in the M203 and M320, but have a higher muzzle velocity and, by extension, maximum range.

American Rheinmetall had also competed in the xTechSoldier Lethality challenge, along with two other companies, Knight Technical Solutions (not to be confused with Knight’s Armament Company) and Plumb Precision Products. At the time of writing, whether any other firms have received PPON contracts related to PGS is unknown.

The announcement of the PPON contract does show that the Army is continuing to lay the groundwork for a new semi-automatic grenade launcher that it hopes will give soldiers a major boost in capability over the M203s and M320s they have now.

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