[Robert A Cook PE]

I know the Marines qualify everybody marksman (or higher!) .... But I'm repeating what field reports confirm. Long range shooting at explicit targets rarely occurs.

Actual in combat firing is rarely "marksman-quality" nor allows marksman-timed rates of fire....

See the excellent, though now out-of-print history of how the Army totally screwed up the M16 development out of a sense of "not-invented here" - with almost deliberately bad testing and maintenance and design failures!

In fact, few, if ANY actual "army-designed" weapons were effective in combat.

Every weapon actually used in large numbers in combat was from INDIVIDUAL design and machining changes done (sometimes by Army designers!) on their own initiative. The Army only was dragged kicking and screaming to each change after its "official" designs and "official policies" failed - killing soldiers in the field.

Civil War, War of 1812, Spanish_American War, WWI ... Vietnam ... And now this design?

Doesn't have a good history behind it, but it "might" succeed because of the German machining: as with the 1903A3 copying the Mauser.
Granted the exceptions mentioned above as well.

[R. Scott]

But I'm repeating what field reports confirm. Long range shooting at explicit targets rarely occurs.

Rarely occurs - true, but when it does it would be nice to able to reach out effectively. I never did like it when the “efficiency experts” came around with their stop watches and calculators telling us we didn’t need a piece of equipment because we did not use it enough to justify having it. When you need it you need it.