Yahoo News America to use new assault rifle which hits targets ‘like a battle tank’
America’s soldiers will soon be equipped with a new assault rifle described as the most powerful in the world – and which rips through body armour with the pressure of tank rounds.
The Next Generation Squad Automatic Rifles (NGSAR) will be in use by 2022: it’s a 6.8mm rifle with unprecedented power, accuracy and range.
Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley told Military Times, ‘This is a weapon that could defeat any body armor, any planned body armor that we know of in the future.’
‘There is a target acquisition system built into this thing that is unlike anything that exists today.’
Colonel Geoffrey A. Norman told Task & Purpose that the weapon will fire, ‘a small bullet at the pressure equivalent to what a tank would fire’.
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Colonel Norman said that the weapon would be more suitable for open terrain and ‘near-peer threats like Russia’.
Colonel Norman said, ‘For the past 10 or 15 years, we’ve been really focused on the requirement of lethal effects against unprotected targets.
‘Now we’re looking at near-peer threats like Russia and others. We need to have lethal effects against protected targets and we need to have requirements for long-range lethality in places like Afghanistan, where you’re fighting from mountaintop to mountaintop over extended ranges.’
