Quoted:
I will dispute the relevance of that part.  Allow me to elaborate.

... to my interpretation, it seems like the purpose of the NGSW contract was to develop the ammunition and provide initial capacity, not necessarily award a sole-source supplier indefinitely.

...  We'll have to make some assumptions. Is all of that 3.3 billion dollars ammo?

...  easy math, 3.3 billion rounds of ammunition.

6.6 billion rounds to cover 1,375,000 "weapon-years" means that each weapon will be firing 4800 rounds per year. When I was in, I felt lucky to fire a fifth of that per year.  Often, it was less.  And 4,800 rounds per year sounds like you're going to be going through two barrels a year with this new extreme high pressure ammunition.  That just doesn't square.  I see no way on earth those rifles from the initial batch will be able to fire 48,000 rounds over ten years. I don't think Sig will be putting out billions of rounds at all. I think that will fall to Lake City and will be outside the scope of the $4.5 billion contract.

This doesn't provide any hard numbers, but I'll add this from the press conference I linked earlier, which should be illuminating:

It's obvious that the Army's intent is to produce the vast majority of all 6.8x51 ammunition, they just need time to build the infrastructure at Lake City first.  I wonder if Winchester-Olin will run that, too?

That's a measly 4.5% of the 3.3 billion figure I used to steel man your argument, and seems like a much more likely number.

The only reasonable conclusion I can draw here is that this rifle is pants-on-head stupid expensive. I can't wait to see this covered in Rand Paul's Festivus fraud-waste-abuse report this year.

Quoted:


I will dispute the relevance of that part.  Allow me to elaborate.

Yes, the NGSW solicitation was for a weapon system including ammo and an optic - but the optic as we have seen has already been given a separate contract.  And to my interpretation, it seems like the purpose of the NGSW contract was to develop the ammunition and provide initial capacity, not necessarily award a sole-source supplier indefinitely.

Lake City is gearing up to produce 6.8 and it's been put out that the government is already supplying projectiles to Sig for their own efforts in this initial phase.

This is the best info I can find on the subject of ammo going forward, from the Army's press conference transcript, emphasis mine:



I want to just emphasize this part again:



That tells me Lake City is going to be pumping out M1184/M1186 fully in-house.

Even if Lake City will be complimentary to Sig Sauer's own production, there's still this:



As anyone who reloads can tell you, bullets are a not-insignificant portion of the expense, and the EPR projectiles are probably among the most expensive to make.

But let me steel man the argument that a huge chunk of the 4.5 billion is for ammo.

We'll have to make some assumptions.  First, that the NGSW cost about 50% more than their peers. I'll put the M5's peer as the IAR which costs the Corps $1300 per sample, and the M250's peer as the M249 (which it's intended to replace), which costs about $4087. So let's say the actual per-unit cost of the M5 is $1950 per, and the actual cost of the M250 is $6131 per.

Now we've got to break down that 250,000 units somehow.  Per the press conference, the intended amount of M5's to outfit the "close combat force" is 107,000 and the number of M250's is 13,000. So we're looking at a 89%-11% split, roughly. 89% of 250,000 is 222,500 and 11% is 27,500.

222,500 M5's at $1950 is $433,875,000 and 27,500 M250's at $6131 is $168,602,500. So that's $602,477,500 of the contract accounted for.

Let's be EXTRA GENEROUS and assume that the cost of spare parts amounts to 100% of the cost of the weapons.

That gets us to $1,204,955,000. We're still 3.3 billion dollars short.  Is all of that 3.3 billion dollars ammo?

Sig is selling the ammo to the civilian market currently at $80 per 20 rounds.  $4 per round is obviously not what the government will end up paying.  I would put that figure at closer to 50 cents a round (when you're talking millions of rounds) but let's be extra generous and say it's $1 per round, government cost.  Keep in mind, Sig is using 100% government supplied projectiles.  So the Army is paying Sig to load Army projectiles in Sig cases, this $1 doesn't even cover the full cost per round. That's easy math, 3.3 billion rounds of ammunition.

Now we have to figure in Lake City's production.  Let's conservatively say (and this is hysterical to me) that Lake City is only matching what Sig puts out.  Not doing something more realistic like 90/10 or 80/20. So we're at 6.6 billion rounds of ammunition.

Now factor in that this contract is for ten years, and those weapons will be delivered over the course of ten years. Let's say that Sig will deliver 25,000 weapons per year. So the cumulative fielded number of weapons in year one will be 25,000, year two will be 50,000, year three will be 60,000, etc. To make this math easy, we'll think of things in terms of weapon-years so we can break the ammo down per weapon, per year fielded.

25,000 + 50,000 + 75,000 + 100,000 + 125,000 + 150,000 + 175,000 + 200,000 + 225,000 + 250,000 = 1,375,000 "weapon-years".

6.6 billion rounds to cover 1,375,000 "weapon-years" means that each weapon will be firing 4800 rounds per year. When I was in, I felt lucky to fire a fifth of that per year.  Often, it was less.  And 4,800 rounds per year sounds like you're going to be going through two barrels a year with this new extreme high pressure ammunition.  That just doesn't square.  I see no way on earth those rifles from the initial batch will be able to fire 48,000 rounds over ten years. I don't think Sig will be putting out billions of rounds at all. I think that will fall to Lake City and will be outside the scope of the $4.5 billion contract.

This doesn't provide any hard numbers, but I'll add this from the press conference I linked earlier, which should be illuminating:



It's obvious that the Army's intent is to produce the vast majority of all 6.8x51 ammunition, they just need time to build the infrastructure at Lake City first.  I wonder if Winchester-Olin will run that, too?

Last, I'd like to point out this quote from Mathew Moss at Overt Defense:



That's a measly 4.5% of the 3.3 billion figure I used to steel man your argument, and seems like a much more likely number.

The only reasonable conclusion I can draw here is that this rifle is pants-on-head stupid expensive. I can't wait to see this covered in Rand Paul's Festivus fraud-waste-abuse report this year.

Quoted:
I wonder how much these payoffs are. They must be YUGE

Quoted:


I think doing math based on the max value of the contract is a fools errand. Take the MHS contract as an example: max value of the contract is $580 million. The Army said that the total number of pistols the services intended to purchase is 420,000 (195,000 Army, 130,000 Air Force, 60,000 Navy, 35,000 Marines). Divide the value of the contract by the number of pistols and you get $1,380.95. Actual unit cost according to the Marine Corps is $180. We're only actually spending $75,600,000 on guns; the rest is going to ammo, accessories, training, contractor support, and unused capacity in the contract.

Quoted:


I broke out the ammo separately in the post you're quoting.

As to the rest - are you arguing with a straight face that each M5 only costs about $1,300 but that we're piling $12,000 on top of that, per unit, in the form of accessories and training?

Yeah, no.  That's batshit.

Quoted:
looks like they are going a whole different direction.

https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/JCB_4113a.jpg

they are putting loudeners on them.

Quoted:
I can't confirm or deny your numbers tho as a WAG I think you make a lot of sense.

I still see trouble ahead on the ammunition;  pressures & mass production of hybrid cases, barrel life, parts breakage to start with.

The only absolute upside I see to this program for the taxpayer is if he is sort of Fuddy like me and can eventually score some cheap bulk .277 diameter bullets for his .270 Winchester.
 

Quoted:
I just read this today - May 4, 2022 Special Ops Magazine -

"We're exploring several options to ensure that it hits what the gun aims at," Gordon told Task & Purpose. "The system will adjust and potentially only fire when the muzzle lines up with its target. It will consider atmospheric conditions, and even automatically center the weapon using an internal system. We're looking to get these capabilities ready as soon as possible."

You'll need a green light to indicate shot is lined up? Or it'll automatic, and the fire control will be inhibited until conditions are considered optimal?  WTF?