[JamesIkanov]

Doing a bit of googling on this subject to get myself a bit more informed (my previous post focused more on the "interim" part of this project somewhat blindly)

It seems as though there are a few factors at play here not readily available in the Original post at top:

1)Even though they're pitching M80A1 as "better" than M855A1, M80A1 has absolutely no fucking chance of popping an ESAPI either. ESAPI, and somewhat comparable civilian "Level 4" plates can somewhat reliably take .30-06 tungsten/steel cored AP. Civilian shit has to do it 100% of the time on the first hit, military just has to do it 50% of the time for weight reasons. Both of these EPR rounds are REALLY good against Level 3 armor, which is roughly equivalent to a regular SAPI, AFAIK. They punch holes in AR500 steel all day long, UHMPWE plates, and I think most L3 ceramics. It's completely unreasonable to expect them to beat something that takes AP .30-06 and keeps trucking.

2)The guy talking about this in the article is also involved in the production of some secret sauce AP round with better penetration stats than either of the aforementioned rounds, and they hope to be fielding it in the next year or two, specifically in 7.62x51.

3)There are (I believe) already 5.56 Tungsten/steel Cored rounds, along with 7.62x51 rounds of same, that are capable of beating the armor they want beaten, albeit with some range restrictions. The rounds I reference are the M955 AP for 5.56 and it's 7.62x51 equivalent. I can't be 100% about this, as while I can buy or acquire a plate to test on, getting the AP ammo itself is expensive, illegal, and very very hard, to say the least.

4)The reason it's interim is because the whole point of the program is to patch a gap in capabilities while a bunch of very technically qualified people continue evaluating a variety of 6mm rounds.... the army as a whole seems to have very very little interest in returning to .308 versus the capabilities of a 6/6.5mm round.

I think, but cannot be sure, that this is a program with a specific goal of equipping some units (which ones, I couldn't tell you) with a DMR or Marksman rifle capable of beating ESAPI plate equivalents, while someone else figures out a new service rifle in a 6.5mm/.280 type cartridge that can maintain an AP advantage over 5.56 or 5.45 projectiles.

I speculate that part of the reason for the transition or goal of transition from 5.56 to 6.5/6mm is that these rounds are intermediate between 5.56 and .308, or in more realistic terms, can probably be adapted to function well at longer ranges than 5.56, maintain most of the ballistic effectiveness and AP ability of .308, hopefully while keeping most of the weight advantages of 5.56 ammo. I definitely think that's been motivated by some infantry experiences in recent memory, but that is again only my opinion.

I don't know a whole lot about an arms race between ammo and armor, but it seems plausible. Almost all my experience is with civilian ratings of body armor, and I have some vague understanding that there is something of a bit of one up manship in terms of threat versus armor. I guess to be more clear, in something of a more civilian context, there already is an arms race. IIA for pistols, but if it's a big pistol then you need II and if they're some kind of gang banger and have an UZI or a MAC or whatever than you want IIIA, but if you've gotta deal with some kind of active shooter with an AK then III works and is all good and dandy but if it's some crazed lunatic with .30-06 AP then you better have some 4, and so on and so forth. The thing with the civilian world is that conceal ability is a factor, whereas with the military it's always been more like a weight thing, AFAIK. That means that .mil essentially defaults to a III equivalent in most cases, hard armor rated for rifles. That's actually what most units went to the ME with as far as I recall from various sources of literature, until the one up manship game came into play and snipers using AP 7.62x54R started targeting the side plates on people's IOTVs, and getting double kidney blowouts, which are fucking nightmares to try and treat in ideal conditions. As I've read (emphasis on read) that was the main reason for people getting ESAPI plates.

In most ways, the best armor currently available can't be beaten by the best standard infantry carried round available, which does present a lot of interesting questions. I doubt armor tech is going to regress any time soon (I actually expect that it will be getting a lot better, and I'm mildly hopeful for light, rifle rated, soft armor within the next decade or less, and that current soft armor standards will be available in materials that are generally comparable to the feeling of regular clothes, albeit very expensive, within a similar time frame) so the natural end result is that people need pointier bullets. The question for me being, how the fuck do we improve from here? Tungsten/steel is fucking hard. If modern armor can already beat Tungsten/steel core .30-06, then what exactly can we pull out of a lab to beat modern armor?

I can recall of one example of a promising concept, but it was very far from a battle rifle. It was essentially very strange, very swedish, UZI/MAC type clone. It fired very hot 9mm (I think it was 9mm, could be offbase) and had a specialty round that was a saboted AP core. It could beat not just the soft armor rated for SMGs but some of the lower end of the rifle rated armor as well, all out of a subgun barrel. I can't say whether we'll see similar things in rifles, but either more complex AP ammo like saboted projectiles, or some very impressive materials science is needed to go much further.

TL;DR: The army doesn't want battle rifles. There is definitely an arms races of AP versus Armor.

Hopefully I'm not just running my mouth here.