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A billion dollars? That's a thousand million. Anyone have any realistic idea of the actual cost of a changeover, assuming that everything is replaced and no current component beyond detachable sights are retained?
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Cost of fielding the XM8 was estimated at just a bit over a billion dollars, with no associated change in caliber but a need to go to a non-STANAG magazine, so I'm pretty comfortable assuming it would be a couple times more expensive to do the same with a brand new caliber as well.
(And a lot of optics would have to get scrapped as well -- AimPoints would be fine, but anything like an ACOG or MGO that has bullet drop incorporated into the reticle would probably have to go unless the new round was a very close match for 62 grain M855.)
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I'd have to say that a part of the problem, if there is one, is that Americans have a thing about big. It migrates overseas from time to time, too. The famous FAL was supposedly originally designed around the 7.92k cartridge, a round that is no more powerful than the 5.56mm. However, the FAL is actually still in service in some places--in 7.62 NATO, a round that was thought of as intermediate when it was introduced.
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We migrated it overseas. The FAL was experimentally built in 7.92x33, but was then very well developed for the 280 British round. But then the clown shoe wearing crowd at US Army Ordnance stuck their fingers in their ears and yelled George Patton quotes at the top of their lungs anytime anyone brought up the idea of an intermediate cartridge and forced NATO to go with 7.62x51. Since the FAL was Belgium's planned rifle for NATO service, it got chambered for what NATO was blackmailed into adopting by the US. I don't think anyone was enamored of the round or enthusiastic about it. (And the British adopted it in 7.62x51 with the understanding that we would adopt the same rifle in the same caliber as well, for NATO commonality, but that's a whole other lie we shafted our allies with.)
As for 7.62x51 being considered an intermediate cartridge this is only vaguely true. The abovementioned clown shoe wearing criminals who forced the cartridge onto NATO were savvy enough to realize that smarter people than themselves were warming up to the concept of an intermediate cartridge based on real analysis of battlefield use of service rifles and observations of the StG-44. So, rather than change their thinking or design, they instead took the wonderfully Orwellian tact of declaring 7.62x51 an intermediate design because it was cut down from 30-06 (never mind that it was only adopted because it identically matched the ballistics of USGI 30-06 ball ammo as adopted).