And with an engineer’s eye for the details that the bureaucrats don’t want to acknowledge or wish they could downplay.
The net:net result comes out that the M4 has problems. Duh. The practical experience of our Vietnam vets, our vets since then (Desert Storm and Iraq), private sector shootists, et al, is borne out: there are issues with direct gas impingement.
A lot of our vets swear by the M-16 - and I can sort of understand that. It is the weapon that brought them through some really tough spots - and there’s a loyalty there for our guys who have been in tough spots with a weapon.
That should not prevent us from acknowledging that there are issues, they can be fixed (eg, the HK-416 action) and that there are better weapons that we could have.
When in our history as a nation have we kept one infantry rifle 40+ years? Seriously, when? To my knowledge, not since the Civil War have we kept the same rifle for 40+ years. The 1903 Springfield was an excellent bolt rifle - still is today. But we didn’t keep it as our primary weapon for 40+ years.
The Garand was also an excellent rifle. Didn’t keep it 40+ years.
The M-14 had issues, but was a good rifle. Didn’t keep it very long.
The .30-40 Krag, the .45-70, etc — none of them were kept 40+ years.
So why has the nation with the most firearms experience in the world, both civilian and military, so stubbornly holding onto a compromised design?
Yep time for a change...........get it done !
I agree, start with the best 6.5mm and go from there....but that’ll never happen. Not with the way our screwed up system works. Just as the 1930’s supply of on-hand 30-06 caused the army to dump the best round for the Garand, today our “legacy” 5.56 and 308 causes the army to stick with those rounds no matter what.
And it will forever, I suspect.
Historical footnote to legacy calibers: Roman coins were copied in size and weight, empire after empire, down through the centuries to the Spanis “piece of eight” coins, to the original American silver dollars.
It was always just easier to say, “Let’s make our new coin the same as the most common old coin still in circulation.”
Thus it is with rifle calibers.
So, why the 6.5 MPC instead of the 6.8 SPC? Ease and cost of conversion (weapons conversion), ammo capacity, and ammo weight (ammo carry capacity at a given load weight). The 6.5 MPC utilizes standard AR-15/M16/M4/M4A1 magazines and bolts, and will function in both the SOPMOD M4/M4A1 Carbine and belt-fed FN M249 SAW/LMG, provided you switch out the barrel(s). No further modification is reportedly necessary. Mag capacity for the 6.5mm MPC is 30 rounds (although you might still want to down-load it to 28, as many do with 5.56mm ammo for reliability purposes). The 6.8mm SPC doesn't stack properly in standard 5.56mm M4/M4A1 mags, and the magazines that have been developed for it limit ammo capacity to 25 rounds, as opposed to 30 rounds, so the 6.8 SPC mags will fit inside current military mag carry pouches. You can also use 5.56 NATO stripper clips to load 6.5 MPC rounds into the mag. At present, there are no 6.8 SPC stripper clips.