#G28

The US Army’s new Squad Designated Marksman Rifle, or SDM-R, is set to be fielded at the brigade level starting in September 2018, according to the Program Executive Office Soldier.

Schmidt & Bender has won the Bundeswehr Tender for 368 units of Schmidt & Bender’s 1-8×24 PM II ShortDot Dual CC riflescope.

A warning against romanticism in military planning.

Heckler & Koch, Germany, have been renaming their weapon systems. It’s been going on for a while and I’ve been trying to decipher this ever since I saw some of the new HK firearms at Enforce Tac 2017, Germany.

Recent photographs and information have come to light detailing the possible adoption of the Heckler & Koch G28 by Turkish special operations groups. Specifically the Turkish Combat Search & Rescue (Muharebe Arama Kurtarma) component of the Turkish Air Force has received the rifles possibly as early as 2014. From what we understand the CSAR component might have got them from trials done on the G28 by Army commandos but due to the political situation between Turkey and Germany over the refugee crisis (among others), the supply might have fallen through. The image above is actually from some of those trials.

In January of 2001, the US Army introduced a new slogan to replace the classic “Be All You Can Be” which young men had recruited under for over two decades. The branch’s new slogan was “An Army of One”, signalling a brand new take on a force that wanted desperately to reinvent itself. Those behind the slogan sought to re-humanize the Army, atomize it, bring it down to its individual components, i.e., the people who filled its ranks. It would be, they hoped, the slogan of a new Army that through the strength of its individuals helped make the world a better place. Over the next 5 years, however, it became the slogan under which men and women all over the world would sign up to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq as part of what became known as the Global War on Terror.

Dickson was at H&K in Germany. While on tour, he had this photo taken of him wielding an H&K G28.

The United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM) is considering a caliber change for their future semiautomatic sniper weapons systems. Although traditionally these medium range precision weapons have been chambered for the 7.62x51mm caliber common to NATO, it seems SOCOM is looking to get a little more out of them by changing over to a new 6.5mm/0.264″ caliber round. The Command is investigating two off-the-shelf options: The 6.5mm Creedmoor (6.5x49mm) and the .260 Remington (6.5x52mm). Both rounds are extremely similar, each being based on the .308 Winchester case (the Creedmoor by way of the all-but-forgotten .30 T/C) necked down. From Military Times:

The G28 precision rifle will be available as the G28 Z. I would think that the “Z” stands for “Zivil”, or civilian.

At the 2017 SHOT Show, Heckler & Koch was proudly displaying their victorious CSASS entrant, now designated the M110A1 by the US Army. The Compact Semi-Automatic Sniper System competition was created to find a lighter weight, more compact sniper weapon system to replace the Knight’s Armament M110 SASS. The H&K rifle that reportedly won the contract was slightly different than the rifle on display at the show, the latter sporting the new Geissele M-LOK handguard which replaced HK’s proprietary “backwards Keymod” negative attachment handguard.

Recent experience in Afghanistan, coupled with concerns about the effectiveness of the M4 Carbine – and perhaps also just a general long-term swing of the pendulum – has spurred many to advocate for a new configuration of infantry weapon centered around long range fire enabled by compact, efficient ammunition firing low-drag projectiles. I am not one of these advocates, and indeed it’s no secret that I find serious flaws with this approach to infantry small arms weapons systems. Still, this idea of having a long-range sharpshooter-centric force does seem to be gaining ground, and therefore I think it would be worthwhile to take some time to go down that rabbit hole and see where it leads. Our eventual goal in this endeavor is to paint a picture of a future infantry force that lives and works with these weapons, and what compromises they have to make to reap the benefits of such powerful long-range weapons.

The Bundeswehr’s H&K G28 Designated Marksman Rifle is one nice looking, albeit heavy, rifle.