Five days after the assassination attempt on the former US president Donald Trumprated by the director of the United States Secret ServiceUSSS for its acronym in English, Kimberly Cheatleas ‘the most significant operational failure in the Secret Service in decades,’ he has published a request for proposal for new rifles sniperThe request includes requirements for both the rifles themselves and the provision of accessories and training services, according to military news outlet The Warzone.
According to the procurement document, dated July 18, ‘the United States Secret Service has a requirement for a multi-caliber rifle, for use in all environmental conditions‘ and ‘the weapon must be commercially available and in series production.
Rifles must be able to be configured for both right and left handed shooters and its multi-caliber condition must be compatible with four: .300 Winchester Magnum, .300 Norma Magnum, .300 Precision Rifle Cartridge and .308 Winchester.
The base rifle must not weigh more than 16 pounds –7.25 kilograms– being empty, without accessories and configured to fire the .300 Winchester Magnum caliber, with no weight specifications for the other calibers mentioned. The application does detail The different types of barrel length depending on the ammunition used: 26 inches -66 cm- when loaded for .300 Winchester Magnum, 27 inches -68 cm- for .300 Norma Magnum and .300 PRC, and 24 inches -60 cm- for .308 Winchester.
According to the application, all ‘barrels must be stainless steel, carbon wrapped stainless steel barrels are acceptable’ and ‘Barrel changes should be able to be performed at the operator level with minimal tools. Replacement should be done without the need for a barrel screw.
The trigger must be single stage and ‘be free from any perceptible travel, as well as any perceptible overtravel’ and offer a ‘trigger pull (which) must not measure less than 2 pounds, nor more than 3 pounds’. That is, between 0.90 and 1.36 kg.
The rifle must have a folding stock and one adjustable cheek piece for warping. You should also have a combination of Standard Picatinny and RRS-Lock accessory railsalso known as R-Lock, for attaching scopes and other accessories to the weapon. The only ones specified in the request are suppressors. ‘The rifle will be supplied with a suppressor Thunder Beast Arms Magnus-SR 30 caliberwith non-synchronized secondary retention brake, SR NTB. If the rifle fails using the requested suppressor, a suppressor will be installed and tested Thunder Beast Arms Ultra 9. If the rifle fails with the Ultra 9, the proposal will be eliminated.’
The Secret Service will conduct a multi-phase evaluation of the proposals received, and must Each of them presents four rifles and accessories. ‘At the end of each phase, unsatisfactory proposals will be eliminated from consideration’ and the USSS ‘intends to award a single contract‘, according to the request.