[Longdayjake]

I know that I will get a lot of flak for mentioning this because of the love for the 6.8, but I really don't think that it deserves to be the military's next main cartridge. I personally believe that it is a great breach gun. It serves close quarter combat purposes perfectly. What it will not do (with fmj ammo) is meet the 2000 feet accuracy test. Because of the low BC FMJ bullets in the 6.8 it most likely wont reach out to 666 yards (2000 feet) before it goes subsonic. If by chance it does reach out that far it won't have much remaining energy. If our military only fought in Iraq, the 6.8 would be pretty close to perfect. However, because we have to fight in areas like Iraq as well as the long range engagements of Afganistan we need something that can do short range as well as long range. The 7.62 is an obvious choice because it can do both just fine. However, it is large, heavy, and may over penetrate indoors. It would be ideal but my opinion is that it is impractical. I personally have no problem with sticking with the .223 other than it really isn't a great long range caliber either. Though it can reach out there it doesn't really carry any energy with it because of its light bullets. I personally think that the 6.5 Grendel would meet close range, long range, and lethality requirements but I seriously doubt that the government will ever accept it as their choice so my guess is that the new platform will be stuck at .223 and it will be adopted for a few months and then abandoned because it isn't that much better to justify the cost of changing over. Oh wait, thats what happened to the SCAR. In other words, it ain't gonna happen.