Tag Archives: U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit

A look at the new .264 Round from FN and the Rifle that Uses it

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FN America brought some of the best new tech to SHOT Show last month, including a new weapon system developed for the “Irregular Warfare Technology Support Directorate.”

Built around a new 6.5x43mm Lightweight Intermediate Caliber Cartridge, or LICC (lick?), that the company says delivers 7.62 NATO performance in a 5.56-sized package, FN’s new Individual Weapon System was developed for the IWTSD, a government office that supports the U.S. special operations community. Originally formed in 1999 as the Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office, for those curious, the “IWTSD Identifies and develops capabilities for DOD and Interagency customers to conduct Irregular Warfare against all adversaries, including Great Power competitors and non-state actors.”

The 6.5x43mm was developed by the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit in partnership with IWTSD and was originally dubbed the .264 USA back in 2014 while the LICC designation was in use by 2016. Awarded a contract in 2019 to further develop the concept and a weapon platform to use it, FN delivered prototyped 6.5x43mm Individual Weapon Systems to the government for testing last summer.

FN optimized the round for practical use and had examples on hand at SHOT Show, seen here with 103-grain bullets loaded. Would be interesting to do the math on that ballistic coefficient. (Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com)

The IWS is a fully-ambi piston gun rather than using direct gas impingement like the M4 series. (Photo: FN)

More in my column at Guns.com.

‘The Boss’ Just Doing What She Does

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I’ve talked about Staff Sgt. Amanda Elsenboss a few times in the past. A Woodbury, Connecticut native and marksman/instructor on the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit’s Service Rifle Team, she picked up the 2019 NRA National Long Range Championships at Camp Atterbury, Indiana with a win in the Mustin match and a shoot-off score of 100-9x. She also won the Leech Cup with a 200-15X and 100-6X shoot-off score as well as the Viale (with a 198-11x) and Critchfield Memorial Match (200-12x) then shot a 200-12X in the Kerr Match– going on to win the Overall Long Range Champion title with a 1,641 – 95x.

At the 56th Interservice Rifle Championships in 2017, she won the High Service Woman Title, the Interservice 1000-yard Individual Match (Open Division), and the Interservice Individual Long-Range Match. She was also an integral member of two match-winning teams during this 56th annual competition between the military services. Tabbed into the President’s Hundred, she joined the Army in 2010 and has been competing with the AMU since at least 2014 after a prep career where she made the Connecticut All-State Rifle Team out of Nonnewaug High School.

And this month, “The Boss” made history at age 33, becoming the first woman to win the President’s Match an event that’s been in existence since 1894, firing a very impressive 391-12X (ST-99-1, P-RF-99-4X, P-SF-99-4X, Final-94-3X).

More over at The Gun Bulletin.

Big Green pulls it down at Bianchi

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Sgt. 1st Class Adam Sokolowski in the Falling Plates, his last event to win the Bianchi Cup last week. (Photos: U.S. Army)

The U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit cleaned house at the 2018 World Action Pistol Championship with the unit’s SFC Adam Sokolowski walking away with the overall win.

The big showing by Sokolowski, who chalked up a perfect score of 1920-176X, means that he has cleared all three Bianchi Cup divisions — Open, Metallic and Production — in the span of three years. Besides picking up the cup itself, Sokolowski last week won 1st Place in Multigun Champion with a score of 3822-329X, as well as Service Champion, High Master, and Moving Target Event (Open), competing against 174 athletes from eight countries.

Can you say, upgrade?

The competition was held in Hallsville, Missouri this past weekend at the Green Valley Rifle & Pistol Club.

More in my column at Guns.com

Clean your M4 (or AR) the Army way

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Fort Benning’s Army Marksmanship Unit has put out a short training film on Disassembly and Maintenance of the M-4, and it isn’t half bad.

The AMU has been producing “Shooter’s Corner” clips for the past several month and most have focused on weapon’s manipulation and nomenclature of the M4 and M9.

In this latest production, SSG Michael Howard with the AMU’s master firearms shop, walks you through basic field stripping, cleaning and PM.

Sure, sure, we know this is all stuff you already can do upside down and blindfolded, and you have a piston gun anyway (or a Kalash) but it’s still interesting to see how the AMU guys do things.

And in the end, it’s always something you can pass on.