Its knee jerking time, again on this. If they mean by interim battle rifle just buying more of something in 7.62 Nato to replace a few M4/M16's out of a line platoon for the Afghanistan not a bad idea. If they mean replace all M4 with something like this, dumb.

The writing is on the wall. You need something totally new that addresses modern body armor and long range. Its not the 1950's any more and you can do more with small arms ammo with a blank page. The dumbest thing possible would be suddenly buy 500000 battle rifles of some sort when 7.62 nato is no better at defeating ceramic plates than 5.56. And the 6.5 and 6.8 are worse at defeating armor than 5.56. So to knee jerk and not prepare for 1st world issues and go nuts over the goat humping garbage at this stage is probably counter productive. Getting something battle rifle like into the line platoons in Afghanistan does make sense. But those guys will hate life up till they have to engage folks far off or take less ammo.

But to get blinded to the needs of Afghanistan at this point is counter productive. The Army needs to get back its edge its lost on the meat and potato stuff of fighting a 1st world power. On some stuff a full generation behind places like Russia.