277 Fury? 6.8x51 ....
It'll happen fairly fast once SIG gears-up ammo production and is able to meet demand and fill combat stockpile requirments. What's that, 20 billion rounds? Isn't 20 billion the 5.56x45 standard?
What's going to be really interesting to see is what they do with current 5.56x45 stockpiles. They'll keep the 7.62x51 stockpiles, which I'll explain below.
The platforms themselves are already in production so roll out will go to elite units first to put them through their paces on a mass scale. They'll work the bugs out until the the A1 is ready to go into full production. A2s will be years down the road not until after the platforms and rounds are baptised in at least two different combat environments, preferably three ... desert, mountain, jungle. MOUT is already a given ... but this platform, and round, are not really optimized for MOUT. It's a bit of a conundrum.
As I understand it the integrated suppressor systems are going-to-be one of the toughest things to manufacture and supply on a large scale in the beginning. The Chinese own the titanium market.
7.62x51 will never be replaced. It will remain stockpiled and there will be 100s of 1000s of replacement barrels made for the new platform .... eventually .... as backups .... because it is NATO standard.
I was around for the M9 switchover from the 1911s ... 45 ACP to 9mm. I was on the ACE Board in Italy under SETAF in Vicenza that shot some of the first 92s in '83 and again in '84. They had already been presented at Aberdeen stateside by then but our pistol team was close by in Italy at the time so we were chosen to spend the week at Berettas facility shooting. Triggers, mag releases (position), amd safeties were the big changes we suggested from the original 92s before the FS ... plus there were sight issues to some degree and the engineers had some structural requirements that raised some questions about the slides.
After all that was ironed-out (and it didn't take long) we were being issued M9s by mid '85 and there was a full compliment of ammo, to include the combat stockpile, on hand for all the RDF obligated divisions throughout every combat Corp in the U.S. military.
There is already a plan in place. You can bet that two years from now the new platforms and ammo will be in action just in time for this next war we're about to be thrust into to happen. They'll call it battlefield trials and there will be very little civilian ammo made available at first ... it'll take years before noticeable amounts of "surplus" ammo becomes available.
I've made threads about this, about how this new ammo will negatively affect the 2A marketplace for over a decade as contracts are handed out for production of the 277 Fury and all the major manufacturers rush to fill those contracts.
Not being able to reload it, at least for now, is what will relally hurt.
People do not understand how much our ammo marketplace is dependent upon milsurp brass .... andnhow badly it has already hurt us that so much is already being demilled by liberal post commanders.
This new ammo is a game changer on several levels ... some good, some bad.
What you think about, you do ... what you do, you become.
In a nation where anything goes ... eventually, everything will. We're almost there.
