The problem is that you obviously give them a M4 when they need an LMG and not a M4. (Or just buy them a carbin that can shoot a lot without jamming).

Solution: The last rifle to be issued by the US Army which received almost universal praise, was very accurate, had impressive stopping power, and was very reliable under poor conditions and sustained fire was the 1903 Springfield. Let's bring back the 03! *Sarcasm off* It's hard to believe the military can spend $150 million to $500 million per unit on aircraft with a back-end maintenance cost of five to tens that per unit, but we can't feed our guys times per day, buy every grunt his own bottle of CLP once per week, and keep the A10 flying. I guess when you live in an elitist metro-sexual GQ world which is short of brains and even shorter on practical experience, your government assigns suffering to those it wouldn't want showing up at its parties in wranglers and cowboy boots or worn out tweed, thick glasses and a pipe. Oh yeah, and congress now needs a pay raise so they can 'live decently' in DC. I'm getting rather sick of a bunch of 1.5 GPA urbanite men with smooth hands who spend more time on their hair in the morning than their wives pile driving everything from education to the military into the ground in this country. *Rant off*

What is the MTOE for an infantry platoon?  Not including TPE weapons.

This.....LUBED.

I think "you" should actually read up on the history of that engagements to see where the failures were.

Because "my" commanders in Afghanistan covered every small piece of TI in 240's, MK19s, and m14/110s, while having QRF no more than 30 minutes out since CAS was a bitch to make happen.

"Their" commanders could have given every soldier an M2, and it still wouldn't have done a lot of good.

So maybe "their" commanders made mistakes in planning and executing a small undermanned, and undergunned piece of TI too far away, at the WORST location deep in a valley and without a pre approved CAS plan for potential overrun.

The M4 didn't kill those troops. The Taliban did. They were able to, in part due to mid level command failures.

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The M4 didn't kill those troops. The Taliban did. They were able to, in part due to mid level command failures.

Whoa! You mean officers make mistakes??? Well,crap! I never would've guessed. I thought it was always the fault of the grunts or the gear.

Yet you propose a firearm design that would add probably five or more pounds to the weight of the rifle?  Or are we going back to 9mm submachine guns?

It's not a DI gas system.

And it don't get much simpler than the Stoner system.

Which decade?



 

They all could have been carrying M14s 240s and M110s and still wouldnt have walked out of there without CAS.

Obviously every single one in the inventory is a huge steaming POS.


They should pack them all in crates and send them to me for disposal.

WTF are you talking about?
I had used the Stoner 63 as a example of a versatile weapon system, that's all, I'm not proposing that we use the stoner 63..
What's wrong, did I get your AR panties in a knot? I'm so sorry, who's the good stoner boy? who's the good stoner boy? You are!
There now, feel better?

Has nothing to do with Eugene Stoner.  You're the one who opined that locked breech firearms are too complicated and that we should use simple blowback firearms.

Yes, once again, like I had said: "a simple delayed blow back action, fuck the rest". What does this have to do with 9mm?

YES!...LOL, that's why I was speculating on a DELAYED blowback system....lol

And your point is?

which is?

Have you ever shot a G3, then immediately fired an AR10?

Yeah, and your point is?

That RDB is mechanically complicated, difficult and expensive to machine, susceptible to malfunctions due to normal wear, heavy, difficult to adjust, and requires corncobby solutions like chamber fluting to prevent failures due to "aggressive" extraction.  

Delayed blowback is inferior to gas operation

I’m not a big HK fan (I don’t know why someone had referred to them, I'm not advocating that we use a roller rock), but I don't think their change in systems was because it was more difficult to engineer, it is a mature design and has been proven with hundreds of thousands if not millions of weapons sold. The German military were very slow to adopt the 5.56x45 mm NATO round - weapons made for export were another matter as were licenses granted to developing countries. The HK33 was a fine weapon, but Germany never got around to eating it's own dogfood with the downsized G3 and figured it was time to flip rifles entirely when they made the caliber change. The same thing has happened in many countries, the US in particular (M14 to the M16, two weapons with nothing in common philosophically), but this is just my opinion.  

Another thing with HK, not everything that glitters HK on the side of it, or claims HK's heritage, is gold. Enter the 416, are will willing to say that the 416 is superior to our M4/M16's?  No, that's absurd, but HK engineers know something we do... right?...that's ridicules.

Debatable, I would say it depends on the gas system (and the delayed blowback operation). As we all know M16 is not the weapon of choice for sustained heavy volume fire, that is the role of the MG, but what if by some engineering marvel we were able to attain the same role with one weapon?

See, the Germans have a certain approach to engineering design.  Their design process is very top down, i.e. "It vill have exactly ZIS functionality, nein ifs, unds, or buts!".  And then their engineers bustle around for a while and come up with a beautiful, sophisticated design that performs the function.  It's expertly machined to very precise tolerances using state-of-the-art equipment, and all the little components work together like a swiss watch....

...until they don't.  Their designs (tend to be) over-complicated, failure prone (as a result), and too difficult and expensive to manufacture to really be considered elegant.  These problems literally go back to the first world war (and maybe beyond) with their super-expensive artillery pieces that worked wonderfully...for a while...after bankrupting their military.  Or look at the issues with the Tiger tank.  Best tank on the battlefield... when it was running.... or available, since they couldn't afford to build many at all.

Design maturity is one thing.  Manufacturability and ruggedness is another.  DBB systems have all but disappeared in modern weapons because the manufacturability, ruggedness, and weight tradeoffs were not worth the possible benefits.

I agree with you in principle, but DEVGRU and CAG didn't seem to have any qualms about adopting the 416.

I'm being rather unfair to them, of course.  I don't have any experience with the 416, so I can't comment directly on its design.  I just think it's funny how so many German designs seem to suffer from the same types of problems.

On the opposite side of the coin, the Russians tend to produce crap that barely works, but is so damn simple to manufacture that you could basically build an Energia rocket engine using stuff you'd find in a blacksmith shop.  

^This^

It's not the shortcomings of the weapon. It's not "catastrophic barrel failure". It's the fact that people nowhere near the battlefield are moving troops into places like pieces on a board game.

"Just load them up with more ammo"

Bottom line is soldiers are being pushed into places they don't always stand a chance of coming out of. They could go in with Phased Plasma Rifles and still get thrashed. Bad intel. Bad upper-leadership. Bad coordination of resources to get the soldiers evacuated from these areas. Bad communication equipment. There are failures on so many levels. Stacking more body armor and magazines into the pockets of the soldiers does nothing for survivability when their grossly out numbered and out of their element. Sorry... that's the reality I'm seeing. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Lets be honest, half of the weapon is about 50 years old. Yes they made a new stock and changed the mag well a bit but the 416 isn't exactly a new weapon.

As for the article the main concern was the M4 wasn't an LMG.

Haha well, yes, they didn't reinvent the wheel, but they did change the gas system.

The HK33 was never really satisfactory. Heres what Jim Schatz has to say about 5.56 DRB:

The German Army never issued the HK33. They transitioned directly from the G3 to the G36. Contrary to popular belief the roller-locked guns are not as reliable as one might think (there are 80 different locking pieces for the G3 alone for different barrel lengths and ammunition types, 40+ for the 5.56mm roller locked HK's) and they are costly to make in todays world of polymer molding. The G36 was developed by HK to meet an urgent requirement for the German Army once the German constitution was changed in the early 1990's allowing German forces to deploy outside Germany. They therefore wanted a modern 5.56mm rifle and HK opted to go with the op rod gas system feeling it was superior for the rifle required. The G36 is one of the most reliable 5.56mm assault rifles on the globe and actually outperforms the HK33 in HK's own testing. That similar op rod gas system was later used in the XM8, HK416, HK417 and MP7 with excellent results as well. It is unlikely that you will see any new roller-locked HK rifles designs from HK.

From: http://www.hkpro.com/forum/hk-long-gun-talk/110932-hk33-vs-g36.html

And also what Larry Vickers has to say:

A while back I was talking to Blake Stevens of Collector Grade publications fame on the phone- we were discussing the excellent roller locked book he had just come out with ( specifically there was an error I caught and I called to bust his chops ) - he had mentioned in doing the book that HK never quite got the 5.56 roller locked guns right and there was almost an unsaid 'elephant in the room' type vibe that they knew that mechanism was not a good fit for that caliber- Blake theorized it was because it is dimensionally a small cartridge compared to 7.62 NATO but operates at high pressures - that combo has proven problematic

It was interesting as I had never stopped to think about it but obviously he is right; name one roller locked 5.56 weapon that has been a real success ?