Army Individual Carbine Competition: On to Phase II

Military.com is reporting that companies are receiving their notices that they are moving on to Phase II of the Army Individual Carbine Competition.  Reportedly, Colt, FN, HK, Remington, and Adcor Defense have reported receiving letters allowing them to move to the next phase.  

What are the phases?  According to Military.com:

Phase I of the competition had nothing to do with evaluating test prototypes, but instead focused on weeding out companies that may not have the production capacity to make thousands of weapons per month.

Once Phase II of the carbine competition begins, Army testers will shoot hundreds of thousands of rounds through the test weapons to assess accuracy, reliability and durability. Phase II will end with the award of contracts to three gun makers that will advance to Phase III. The Army will buy more of these weapons out of the contracts to conduct three limited user evaluations.

So, frankly, Phase I wasn't much of a cut -- it is just weeding out the garage tinkerers.  Phase II will start to separate the wheat from the chaff.