...of good enough. This is the oldest story in military procurement:

Pentagon sources tell NBC News — and internal Army documents seem to confirm — that Army officials consider Trophy a threat to their crown jewel, the $160 billion Future Combat System (FCS). Under FCS, the Army is paying Raytheon Co. $70 million to build an RPG-defense system from scratch.

REMF

But it often works the other way around. Grendel and British .270 existed before .223, yet the 5.56mm round was adopted and resists all attempts to displace it, because it's good enough. Only the recent demand for short-barrelled weapons may be able to tip the scales. So, suppose something like the above gets adopted. We won't hear the end of complaints from the partisans of better solutions.

Bill Alexander invented the 6.5 Grendel a few years ago. I met him at a public range while he was still doing development work. It does not predate the 5.56 which goes back to at least 1957.

I got my facts wrong? Wouldn't be the first time.

My Army days are long over, but I suspect a healthy (if that's the right word) strain of "not invented here" still runs through the procurement and R&D ranks.

Oddly enough, this doesn't always hold true for tankers, (e.g Rheinmettal 120mm gun, FN's M240 medimum machine gun to replace the absymal M73/219 series) who tend to much more cross-service and cross-nationality comradity than the other ams and brances. That being the case, I'm a little surprised the israeli solution isn't being fitted on M1A1s as we speak.

Defense Tech and others are not impressed with NBC's reporting of this story.

http://www.defensetech.org/archives/002743.html
http://www.murdoco nline.net/archives/004114.html

It appears that NBC reported old information but failed to report some legitimate Army concerns including the real possibility of collateral damage to both civilians and US infantry forces who might be in the system's line of fire.

(The second URL has an embedded space added to get past the bizarro spam censor.)

Tim,

Tankers kept me busy crushing the feed trays on the 240's when they traversed and elevated the main gun. There was a mod for a 'flapper' that was supposed to prevent the open feed tray from being crushed. No one in the Armor section would ever have the machine shop fab some much to my chagrin.