New military rifle lighter, more powerful

It was designed with input by U.S. Special Operations Command warriors for special ops missions to be lighter, more maneuverable and longer lasting.

Earlier this month, the MK-17 – dubbed the SCAR by its Belgian manufacturer FNH – went into "full rate production" making it the first new assault carbine to be purchased by the U.S. military since the M-16 and M-4 rifles went online four decades ago. The rifle is expected to be particularly valuable in situations like those faced by soldiers fighting in Afghanistan, where the weapon's additional range will provide a significant upgrade.

Don’t we still have excellent firearm designers?

That we do. What we lack is the manufacturing capability which we had in the day we could turn out a million battle rifles like the Garand annually, not to mention tanks, aircraft, and the like.

I’ve looked at the Springfield Arms improvements and upgrades in the old M14 and they look damn good.

They are indeed. But they started with a hell of a platform. I own a fairly 'vintage' M1A and it's an outstanding, if heavy, weapon. It's also wickedly accurate pretty much out of the box. The accurized ones are quite lethal at ranges of nearly 1,000 yards. That's not a rifle to be trifled with.

“But don’t we still make superb hunting rifles in this country?”

Do we have the capability to produce 50,000 at a moments notice? I’m not sure if we do. I’m not saying we don’t, because Colt can...but who else?

“I’ve looked at the Springfield Arms improvements and upgrades in the old M14 and they look damn good.”

Not good enough to shed 4.5 lbs like the new one. Keep in mind, the military selects requirements and if SA doesn’t want to meet those reqs, then the contract goes elsewhere.

“Don’t we still have excellent firearm designers?”

Apparently they can’t convince the military they are, probably because greed intervened somewhere. Think about this: The week point of the M4 is the dirt and crud from the gas operation. How long did it take Colt to finally offer a gas tube assembly to keep the action clean? They charge so much to convert an M4 to the system that the military has only outfitted the Spec Ops guys with them. Colt could produce all of it’s rifles like this, but it would mess up the lucrative deal they have now.

You make great points, and I’m not discounting them all...but to me, this smells like a money issue. We have lost our ability to compete on everything because of greed from many parties. I won’t get into all of that. Suffice to say that we can buy just about anything made somewhere else cheaper. That’s sad.

Reading some of this is pretty funny. Any AK variant is, hate to say it, junk. The way they are designed regardless of the tolerances used (Usually sloppy) means it will always be an inaccurate rifle. In fact no gas piston rifle like the SCAR will ever have the potential accuracy of an AR type Rifle. The much vaunted M1A does not have the accuracy of the AR including it's offspring the M14. That's just the reality of rifles.

If you need to cheaply arm a bunch of clueless commie peasants who couldn't effectively clean a rifle even if they had the inclination then the AK is the way to go.

If you have infinite tax dollars provided by the American people, are a professional bureaucrat who thinks the Stoner design isn't sexy enough to get funding, then the SCAR is for you.

If you think that a national match springfield armory m1a or a socom m14 is the most accurate dependable rifle since the dawn of time despite ARs consistently beating them in all major competitions then buy all means buy one.

I'm a gun guy and given infinite amounts of money I would own multiple variations of all rifles mentioned, but since I'm on a budget I'm just going to have to stick with an AR. Sure the .223/5.56 is little better then a varmint round but guess what it can be chambered in .308 too if one had some sort of fetish for this particular round. Personally I would have to go with 6.5 Grendel.

Americans are a nation of riflemen and it's sad to see so many people jump all over weapons with sadly inferior accuracy.

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