Program Beginning
In 2004, the Joint Service Small Arms Program created the Lightweight Machine Gun and Ammunition program to compare conceptual, lightweight machine guns and ammunition designs by two teams of companies. The team of eight, led by AAI Corporation had their design chosen over the design of the General Dynamics-led team. In 2005, the project was replaced with the Lightweight Small Arms Technologies program to place the emphasis on developing technologies for a wide range of small arms. The earlier Lightweight Family of Weapons and Ammunition concept is visible in the new program. The cohesive team of companies is combined with government support to ensure success.
In accordance with the program's name, the focus is on creating lightweight technologies for all small arms, and the Light Machine Gun it has started with is an entry point for a family of lightweight small arms and ammunition. Beginning with an LMG is unusual for an effort to develop a new family of weapons, although the increased engineering difficulty of a machine gun over a rifle is balanced against decreased attention and antagonistic scrutiny. The program minimized development risk: it used G11 technology that had been on the verge of deployment; and the parallel development of the composite-cased and caseless ammunition meant that, if the caseless ammunition effort succeeded, much of the development work gained with the composite cased weapon could be applied to it, and, if it failed, the composite-cased version was likely to succeed on its own. This parallel development involves using what is essentially the same weapon for both types of ammunition, with the same action (having only marginal differences, such as added chamber sealing technologies required for the caseless firing version) and the same weight-lowering technologies. The program uses extensive computer simulation and modelling, particularly of the weapon action. This reduces both time and expenditure for prototyping and testing. The program also uses a 'spiral development' approach, whereby the weapon and ammunition is rolled out in stages or 'spirals', each stage producing a new version that is an improvement on those from previous spirals.
The LSAT program uses a 'clean slate' design and had no requirements imposed on abiding by contemporary ammunition and weapon standards. Despite this, the program is using the M855 5.56x45mm round to provide comparison with existing weapons. The program has listed scalability of the ammunition calibre as a requirement, and its pursuit of a very light company machine gun would require a larger round. Therefore, the program seems set towards a more accurate, harder-hitting round (such as the 6.5 mm Grendel or 6.8mm Remington SPC).
The program has set itself weight reduction goals over the existing M249 and its ammunition of 35% for the weapon and 40% for the ammunition. Further goals to improve battlefield effectiveness have also been set: improved lethality; improved controllability (through recoil reduction, etc.); improved ergonomics; improved reliability and maintainability; integration of electronics; and equivalent cost and producibility to the existing weapon and ammunition.
Read more about this topic: Lightweight Small Arms Technologies
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