Hopefully this is the right forum for this topic, apologies to the moderators if not. That being said...

I've been doing a lot of reading on HK's new M110A1 CSASS rifle, and the CSASS competition itself. My question is fairly simple - If the RFP was to create a sniper rifle that's as compact and portable as possible, why not go with a bullpup design?

Any ideas or thoughts?

Ever Messed around with a Desert Tech SRS? short and Compact for sure. But does not far well with leftys. Akward to use at times. A semi auto would be the same. And remember that these are Sniper Rifles. Not door kicker rifles. Not gonna be clearing rooms and jumping through windows and stuff with em.

But they're also planning to outfit several of the new HK rifles for the squad DMR role, and those guys will be expected to kick doors and clear rooms.

The new Desert Tech MDR is ambidextrous with convertible ejection on either side, and several other semi-auto bullpup rifles are or could reasonably easily be re-engineered for ambidexterity.

Maybe I'm putting far more emphasis on the "compact" part of the title than the military intended, just to me it makes more sense to go with a bullpup platform to gain compactness and maneuverability without sacrificing barrel length, i.e. velocity...