I like it. I am sure it will have bugs but its a great start. Against armor barricades it should be great. The ballistics should be a east button.
It's a very hot round. The casing itself is actually a two piece design. The bottom of the casing is crimped onto the upper portion and is made of steel alloy to be able to handle the higher pressures (80,000 PSI) The manufacturing process is actually quite amazing. The bullet will be traveling in excess of 3,200fps at the low end (They are still tinkering with the final load) and the bullet itself is also still under final design by another government contractor. It will be cool to see what the final military projectile will look like. The round that was used during testing was a Ball round. Like I have stated elsewhere, this will become the new military standard and I would not be surprised if NATO ends up adopting it as well within the next 5 years. That being said, we should start seeing more rifles chambered in that hitting the shelves in the next few years.
Also because the military will be transitioning away from the 5.56 over the next 10 years, places like Lake City will also be converting their two major manufacturing lines from 5.56 to 6.8. This will lead to an additional increase in cost for both 5.56 and 7.62x51 as both are being retired by the military over the next decade.
The other NGSW rd was 277 Fury I think... But I don't see this replacing the M4. In my opinion, the NGSW weapons are awesome, but it will go to the special teams 1st. I think it will be like 10mm with the FBI, It will be to powerful for regular people to qualify with. They will need more training in order to shoot accurately when compared to the M16 rifle in 556. Remember big Army was supposed to buy the scar in large numbers and then never did anything except small orders for the A-teams...
Well, in this particular case it actually is going to be a full replacement and all units will have them by 2030. This is from my friends that are part of Army procurement. While the round is obviously quite a bit larger than the 5.56, the gas and recoil system do really tame it down a lot. It will be interesting to see how the Army trains the new soldiers on them. I know a lot of people have commented that they have seen these rifles in full auto and they do not look that controllable, to which I agree. However the Army does not train their soldiers to use full auto even though the M4A1 has it.