Senate Coughs up Cash for Army’s Next Generation Squad Weapon

By Chris Eger

The M249 Squad Automatic Weapon is closer to a replacement as lawmakers have added more money that the Army asked for to an upcoming budget to cover a proposed new machine gun. (Photo: U.S. Army)
A key U.S. Senate committee added nearly $20 million extra to the White House’s request for work on the Army’s new 6.8mm Next Generation Squad Weapon-Automatic Rifle.
The funds were included in the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, a $750 billion Pentagon spending bill advanced by the Republican-controlled Senate Armed Services Committee last week. In all, the committee funded some $126 million for infantry support weapons, including $19.9 million above the administration’s request for the NGSW-AR, a program to replace the FN-made 5.56mm M249 series Squad Automatic Weapon.
The Army aims for a degree of flexibility in the design of the belt-fed M249s replacement, saying that it should combine, “the firepower and range of a machine gun with the precision and ergonomics of a rifle, yielding significant capability improvements in accuracy, range, signature management, and lethality.”
Last October, the Army issued a limited award for five NGSW competitors — AAI, FN, General Dynamics, PCP, and Sig Sauer — to submit a single NGSW for initial testing to begin sometime

Source: Guns.com