master of military art and science , page-9

Sheesh boys - you blokes are so skittery you are flinching at everything.

This is just a university type thesis from some student turkey (Miskinis Jr) going for his Masters degree in Military Art and Science. It is an 87 page thesis titled 'Should the US Army Adopt New 5.56mm Ammunition Cartridge Designs to Reduce Overall Ammunition weight.'

Having a Masters degree of my own (in a totally different field) I have to point out that in the context of a student thesis of this type, it covers Metal Storm (sourced off the MST website) in a superficial and dated way. This is just a students view of the options to lighten ammunition weights that a grunt has to carry in the field. In that context, Metal Storm gets a mention because their stacked round technology avoids the (significant) weight of brass cases in conventional ammo. He only mentioned Metal Storm so that his lecturer/supervisor would be able to see he made some effort to address the range of potential options to lighten the field load for the grunts (which was his topic). Anyone who has followed MST for years and knows their current developments would realise the student naivety of him talking about a stacked round 'rifle' being at least 10 years away. As we know, no such 'rifle' for the grunts is even in development by MST at this time.

I am surprised that some people may have thought this was relevant to the pointy end of MST today. Personally, I would not have bothered to post it in the first place, without at least a strong caveat that it was interesting, but irrelevant to us.

In summary - this has NOTHING to do - NADA - ZIP - FORGET IT - with current MST TRL levels or anything else to do with MST's current real world trials and tribulations to bring product (i.e. currently maul shotgun and later 3GL grenade launcher - no 'rifle') to market. We have enough on our hands without boxing at shadows over some student exercise.