[lentulusgracchus]

Immaterial. The advantages of standardizing on a caliber and staying with it are huge. The costs of changing over would be proportionally large, and not just in dollar costs.

If you aren't going to support 5.56 any more, all the other countries that use 5.56 are opened up to competition from other armorers, calibers, and weapon families.

Like to lose South America as a market to the Chinese? Think about it.

[flashbunny]

exactly. The US isn't going to switch out away from NATO for it's main rifle. That means it's 5.56 until nato changes. And since 5.56 is extremely velocity dependant, the fact that the XM8 is slower with the SAME barrel lengths, means that it's just a big loser in that department. With the cut down barrel lengths, the fragmenting range goes WAY down too.