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The M16 has some major design flaws, but some good features as well. It vents gas into its own action with every shot, dirtying the rifle's most vital parts. It must use high-quality propellants, as cheap powder will foul the thin gas tube and jam the rifle. If a case sticks part-way out of the chamber, the recoil buffer will be protruding into the stock, preventing the opening of the action to clear the jam. With this type of jam, one must unscrew the front hinge pin screw to seperate the upper & lower receivers, not a happy prospect when you're under fire and/or at night. The forward assist is clumsy to use under stressful conditions. The rifle is sensitive to dirt, mud and sand, and must be constantly cleaned. The 5.56mm cartridge showed a clear lack of effectiveness in Afghanistan, regularly failing to stop the enemy with solid torso hits and lacking the ability to penetrate even light cover with any remaining energy. Its controlability in full-auto fire is very poor, which is why the complex and fragile burst mechanism was added (a bad technological solution to a training problem - proper fire control). The good features of the M16 is it's ergonomics (controls are all in the right place), accuracy, light weight and use of modern materials and manufacturing methods.

The M14 is pretty heavy, is very expensive to produce, and the 7.62mm NATO cartridge has too strong a recoil impulse to allow any control at all during full-auto fire in an infantry rifle-sized weapon. The open-top receiver allows mud and sand into the action. It's good points are that in semi-auto fire, its a rifleman's rifle, a dream to shoot, and very accurate. It's rugged and reliable. It has excellent long-range and penetration of light-to-medium-cover capabilities.

The AKM remains the best compromise, being supremely reliable, reasonably light, having a cartridge that offers reasonable controlability and good stopping power and penetration, and being very cheap to produce with the most outdated machine tooling. It's downside is that the ergonomics stink (the safety being the real problem), the AK-47 milled receiver variant is way too heavy, and it has limited long-range capability.

The answer may be to incorporate the best features of all these weapons into a new rifle with a new cartridge. The Russian 7.62x39mm cartridge that the AK uses enhances reliability greatly because of its tapering case. US military ballistic testing has identified the ~105 grain 6mm projectile at ~2900 fps as the best ballistic 'sweet spot', similar to a .243 Winchester round with heavy bullets. Advances in smokeless propellants, such as those used in Hornady's Light Magnum ammo, offer higher velocities in the same round with the same case pressures, compared to standard IMR powder. So a tapering case cartridge, maybe slightly larger than the 7.62/5.45x39mm ComBloc case, using the new high-tech powders and a 105 grain 6mm bullet at 2900 fps would be the round for a new rifle. It would offer a lot less recoil, would be shorter and lighter, and yet would offer similar long-range, stopping power and penetration performance as compared to the 7.62mm NATO. Like the .243 Winchester it's ballistically identical to, it would be a deer round, not a varmit round like the 5.56mm NATO round. Caseless ammo technology just isn't ready yet, so the conventional brass case is still the way to go.

The new rifle would use the tested & proven gas system of the AK-47. It would be embodied in a rifle using modern materials, but incorporating the loose tolerances of the AK. The milled aircraft aluminum upper receiver (a la M16) and polymer lower receiver (a la Glock) setup used on the new Armalite AR-180b may be the right choice. Also, a bullpup design like many current battle rifle designs offers a standard-length barrel with a short overall length, a great asset in close quarters while retaining long-range capability. Some kind of simple recoil buffering system and/or a very efficient muzzle brake would help controlability in full-auto fire, as would the bullpup configuration.

As for the under-barrel grenade launcher, the 20mm pump-action unit on the OICW may be reliable and effective without all the electronics junk. It should be set up as a modular system where the grenade launcher and electronics are add-ons that meld well with the basic weapon, and all systems can still work if the electonics fail. That is the opposite of the OICW approach, where the technogadgets, the programmible-fuse grenades, electronics, optics and 'secure' computer battlefield network were the primary goal of the design, with a chopped 5.56mm carbine tacked on almost as an afterthought. The basic rifle should be a rifle before anything else, reliable, effective and capable in its own right.

Those are my ideas on this subject. Comments?

We've beat this horse to death over the course of the past few years on this forum - bottom line is until it reaches initial production it's hardly fair to comment on its potential shortcomings.

Comparing OICW to an iron sighted Garand is misleading. Yes, it will probably be less durable, at least initially. The POTENTIAL is you'll be able to kill targets that are invulnerable to typical small arms fire- against which, your Garand, M14/M1A and FAL are as useful as rocks. IF IT WORKS, OICW will prove a dramatic step forward in small arms lethality. Keep in mind, it's not intended to replace every rifle on the battlefield - they will be issued only to combat troops, and only to every few soldiers, due to the cost and logistics burden of supporting these systems in the field.

Those soldiers armed with OICW will have the ability to kill targets anywhere within range - up to 1000yd - that aren't behind 360deg and overhead cover. Imagine for a minute how much harder that makes life for an advancing - or defending - enemy.

Durability, reliability, weight and cost remain issues, but you can rest assured this technology will eventually supplant large numbers of direct fire small arms in armies worldwide.

This, according to Heckler & Koch, is the infantry weapon of the future - nicknamed "No Place to Hide."

What a horribly cumbersome looking weapon. What's the barrel length here, 8 inches? I'd be surpised if the effective range is much greater than one of the "room brooms" made by Ingram or Uzi.

Granted H&K have a well desreved reputation for making excellent weapons, but they seem to be a bit perplexed why the British troops in Afghanitrashcan are complaining about constant malfunctions, jams, misfeeds, and other problems with their weapons.

Thanks but no thanks, I would just as soon keep my trusty M4. This thing looks like something I would hate to lug around. And what's up with that cord that appears to be connected to the pistol grip/trigger area? Did Smith and Wesson put in their 2 cents on this, some kind of smart safety?

The battlefield of the future is going to see U.S. troops so encumbered by the high tech gizmos they've been issued that they can hardly move around. Try running around the battlefield with a big bulky weapon plugged into a computer on your vest, a gas mask on one hip, a plugger (big bulky army issue GPS) on the other, NVGs strapped to your helmet, a computer with email capabilities strapped to your wrist (drop down view screen and digital camera attached to helmet).

To make matters worse, since all of these little toys are so expensive, the army is careful to make sure you pay for any damage that occurs to them when you use them. Issue a troop several thousand dollars worth of high tech gizmos and tell him he has to pay for them if they get damaged, and you're gonna see a bunch of people hunkering down in a foxhole instead of getting up and fighting the bad guys.