Marines closer to choosing new rifle

[unhappycamper]

Marines closer to choosing new rifle
By Kevin Baron, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Friday, December 26, 2008

ARLINGTON, VA. — The Marine Corps has moved one step closer to selecting a next-generation light automatic rifle. On Friday, the Marine Corps Systems Command in Quantico, Va., announced contract awards for three competing weapons manufacturers to produce and deliver their final entries to the Corps by the middle of next year, in what signifies a final round of competition that began with ten candidates.

The lighter, magazine-fed Infantry Automatic Rifle — or IAR — is intended to replace the belt-fed M249 Squad Automatic Weapon — or SAW — in "the Marine Rifle Squad within infantry battalions and in the scout teams in Light Armored Reconnaissance battalions" but not for all Marines, according to a statement by MARSYSCOM spokesman Bill Johnson-Miles.

The Pentagon requested up to 10 samples of a 5.56 mm IAR prototype from FN Herstal, which would be made in Belgium; Heckler and Koch Defense, which is based in Ashburn, Va., but whose samples would be made in Germany, the home country of the parent company; and two entries from Colt Defense, made in West Hartford, Conn. The rifles would undergo limited testing by infantry Marines.

Under the five-year contracts, the Pentagon could tap the winning entrant for an acquisition of 4,476 rifles, with an option to purchase up to 6,500 copies at a possible value of $28 million for FN Herstal or Heckler & Koch, or $24 million for Colt.

The SAW, which is manufactured by FN Manufacturing, the US subsidiary of Belgium’s FN Herstal, weighs 16.5 pounds and fires 750 rounds per minute.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=59629