Posted on 11/18/2010 11:16:23 PM PST by ErnstStavroBlofeld
Lt. Gen. George Flynn, who heads the Marine Corps Combat Development Command in Quantico, told reporters at a Washington, D.C. breakfast that the service plans to finish outfitting five battalions with the new M-27 Infantry Automatic Rifle next month and then will observe how those Marines use it on deployment before changing the organization, training, and tactics of infantry units around the new weapon.
But Flynn pushed back at critics of the M-27, saying the improved accuracy of the Heckler and Koch-made automatic rifle makes up for a lower rate of fire compared to the M-249 Squad Automatic Weapon it's being fielded to replace.
"The initial feedback was that the IAR performed pretty well," Flynn said of early evaluations of the M-27. "Accuracy has a suppressive power all by itself."
(Excerpt) Read more at military.com ...
If you don’t believe me, read the interview with Eugene Stoner (one of the designers behind the M16) and he will tell you the same thing I did.
You are free to express your opinion though when it is uneducated you come off looking foolish.
Stoner is only one man that was part of a design team 40 years ago, with his own opinion, there are many, many designs in the US that never see the light of day. Get a tour of KAC’s technical library someday or if you are lucky enough to visit a SOCOM weapons library.
Facts are for $2000.00 year get a type 10 and make anything you want and blast away. What most people in the consumer gun world don’t understand, it is about money. Some entity or person has to “pay” for the invention, then get it to the market and that begs the question, what is the market?
In the US it is dominated by walmart thinking gun owners. Government purchases on the local and State level are very much the same as proven by glock’s dominance for a while, cheap cheap and cheaper. Innovative gun designs go no where in the us or in the EU unless private money pays for it or a Government end user. H&K survived for years on German federal duechmarks and did MAN making the MG-3, SIG Sauer leached on the swiss government for years as loss leader for the parent Swiss Industrial Group, FN even worse when you dig into that history, Steyr, the same. In the US not so much, hence companies die off or merge.
Look at SIG now that it is privately owned, off the Swiss dole, develop new handguns and rifles or die, same for H&K, develop or die. FN is under going the same, develop or die. Ruger continues to develop. When caseless ammunition comes about or new barrel technology hits the market soon, many changes will occur on how a weapon will look and function.
I understand what Mr. Stoner is stating, but I do believe the firearms industry has much more capacity and design intiative than 20 years ago. That is my story and I am sticking too it.
“This is just someone’s way of compensating HK for the loss of a couple of big contracts. This little project will allow the Germans to unload their unwanted 416 parts on us after all. “
Not true at all, SOCOM units have been using the 416 for at least 4 years. The system has been refined over that time and is a solid option against the M4. Both are fine platforms when maintained. All the 416’s on this contract will be made in the US under license. H&K is the master at setting up manufacturing anywhere in the world, that is what kept them open for years, H&k has it down to a science.
When you see an new HK 416 or HK 45, check the proof mark.
The production of AR-type rifles is booming. But not of new designs, and not on government contract(s).
Cranking out an existing design like the AR isn’t difficult, and it gets even easier if you have a wire EDM machine for a couple of the operations (eg, the mag well).
That really IS a wonderful read - thanks for directing me to that.
Concerning HK - Gotta say, I own a cheap G3 knock-off bought undocumented at a gun show a while back. Damnedest erogonomics I’ver ever seen. It’ll misfire equally well on ALL .308 ammo, unlike my SA M1A and my DSA FAL knock-off, which won’t hardly shoot the cheap surlus stuff at all, but do so-so on the primo stuff (after being sent back to the factory for a defective extractor and ejector, in that order).
So, the upshot is that the G3 knock-off is buried off-site with several cases of the shitty ammo as part of my back-up SHTF cache: I certainly hope it never gets to the point where I have to rely on it to stay alive! There’s also a buried old AK with several cases of ammo buried elsewhere as well, and that’ll be my first choice: less accurate, but reliable as hell. And the Ruskies traditionally have built better battle rifles than the Germans anyway.
I say Pakistan. They have a cottage industry that Homebuilds Aks that hardly work.
You missed my point. FN Herstal is a Belgian company, even if they have a US-based subsidiary (FNH USA). Most foreign arms manufacturers have US-based subsidiaries. H&K has H&K USA, Glock has Glock USA, etc.
Evidently it's to replace our Belgian firearms...though I think most of FN's stuff is made in North Carolina. But at least we're buying them. We stole the Mauser.
I don’t see the wisdom of replacing a belt fed automatic rifle with a magazine fed one. The idea is for the machine gunner to deny an area to the enemy, and that is hard to do with a mag-fed 5.56x45mm NATO piece of hardware. The SAW had its problems, but it could put alot of metal into an area in a short period of time. This IAR can’t do that.
But then, I thought the E model of the M-60 wasn’t too horrible. And the 7.62x51mm NATO turned cover into concealment pretty well. Never got to play with the M240.
‘Cause gun control and the BATF have destroyed firearm innovation here in the States.
Springfield passed on the MAG as unsuitable for US troops while virtually every other non-Warsaw Pact country found them highly effective. The M240 was reintroduced to the US Army in the late 70’s as a replacement for the M73/M219 series coaxial machine gun found on tanks. For those unfamiliar with the M73 it is easily the most abominable excuse for an automatic weapon ever issued to US troops. It proved beyond all doubt the given enough time and money that Springfield was capable of producing a machine gun more unreliable than the French Chauchat!
The M60 is largely considered adequate only because most folks had no experience with better.
True statement. My 60 had alot of problems once you got beyond a hundred rounds or so downrange.
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