The Army has canceled current efforts to find a temporary commercial replacement for the M4 carbine chambered in 7.62 mm instead of 5.56 mm.
But, officials at the Army’s lethality branch at Fort Benning, Georgia, clarified on Friday that the replacement, called the Interim Combat Service Rifle, was not an official program but an evaluation of what was available if the Army decided to move small arms in that direction.
Matt Walker, a retired command sergeant major who now works as deputy director of the lethality branch at the Army’s Maneuver Center of Excellence, said the idea of outfitting all soldiers in the squad with a 7.62 mm weapon was an idea that “has kind of run its course.”
“We’re not going to burden the soldier with a larger weapon,” Walker said.
Officials had requested industry samples for the potential of supplying up to 50,000 of the rifles as recently as early August.
But that was a query, not an official program.
“The ICSR was an idea in someone’s mind, kicking it around for some unfunded request,” Walker said. “Everybody kind of jumped the gun.”
Walker clarified that previous reports that the program had been cancelled may have been misleading since there was no program for the ICSR.
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