Why the Marines have failed to adopt a new sniper rifle in the past 14 years

00 Del said:

The reason that the Marines don't have a .300 WM or .338 Lapua sniper rifle is because the military acquisition system is slow (and there are some good reasons for this), unless an urgent needs statement is provided to the system by senior level commanders. The Marine snipers apparently haven't made a compelling argument to the senior levels of command that would cause a more powerful sniper rifle to be fielded. I don't believe that sniper course qualified officers are common in any service, so perhaps it isn't surprising that this would be a difficult case Marine snipers to make.

Also, there are about 4-5 times as many soldiers as there are Marines, so the Army has a larger budget and more money to spend on things like new sniper rifles or conversions. Also, the Army Acquisition system had the forethought, which doesn't always happen as much as one would like, to order their Remington 700's with long actions, which facilitated the change to a larger round. The Marines have short actions so the common larger sniper rounds will not fit. Also, the fact that Marine sniper rifles are made by Marines is apparently important to the Corps. The Army doesn't have this requirement or interest, and can call on industry for things like conversion to a more powerful caliber. So the rate at which the conversions are done isn't limited to the capabilities of an existing, in-house shop.

The best solution for the Marine snipers is to get the command involved and to get an urgent needs statement validated. A second solution might involve getting a Marine sniper association (I'm assuming this exists) involved with industry directly. This may facilitate a solution that can be cost-effective that can be shown to the command that would get the wheels of change turning. I'm aware that the Quantico Precision Weapons guys used to be in the business of making 1911 pistols for MARSOC, but ultimately they could not provide enough pistols. So I believe the current solution is that new pistols are sourced from industry. So, it seems that out-sourcing is possible.

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When it comes Marines qualifying at 500 yards, I happen to know that the target that is used is a lot larger than the standard Army "Ivan" pop-up target. When soldiers qualify they shoot at "Ivan" out to 300m, granted a different target is used for 25m. The target exposures and transitions between targets are also timed more stringently than on the Marine course. I don't mean to imply that firing at 500 yards is a bad thing, but it doesn't necessarily in itself produce a better practical marksman than other methods. Also, it is not the case that the Army never uses paper targets on know-distance ranges. This does occur, it just isn't a part of the standard rifle qualification course. A best-case scenario would involve both firing at extended ranges and pop up targets, but each service has its own methods and requirements for qualification.

If we're going to compare service weapon qualification solely on the basis of range, the most impressive qualification I've heard of was a Navy qualification. A friend described a Navy weapons qualification to me once that went like this. The sailor was brought out on deck and provided a .45 and rounds for same. The target was the horizon and a successful score was achieved by all rounds hitting the ocean. So, with a point of aim of the horizon, the target hits were certainly farther than 100m, with a pistol! The sailor in question hit the target 100% of the time. Certainly the target was larger, but if we're just considering range those are impressive hits!

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