Quote:
Originally Posted by m21sniper
I love gadgetry, what 'cha thinkin' bro?  |
For battle rifles, I'm not sure what would be cool and functional, because to be honest I'm not sure what the requirements are.
Looking at some of the prototype battle rifles that the US military evaluated, it seems that they aren't trying to break much new ground on the rifle part. The effort seems to be to integrate the rifle into a "weapons system", so that the infantryman can fire multiple types of projectiles (most popular seems to be grenades with and without airburst) with advanced optics (range-finding, night-vision).
Okay, this is all very
Starship Troopers cool, but I can't pretend to know if it makes sense for a soldier, and if it does, for what kind of soldier in what kind of situation. I mean, for all I know, what a soldier really wants is some sort of "fire around corners" feature like the German MP44 had in WW2.
For just the rifle part, I agree the HK G11 is super interesting. Not just the caseless ammunition, but also the idea of the first three rounds fired so fast that all bullets leave the barrel before recoil has a chance to throw off the user's aim, then subsequent full auto fire at a much slower rate. Wow! And the space and weight efficiency of the square caseless rounds, double wow.
The various bull-pup designs are also very interesting. You can get the barrel length of a M16 in a package smaller than an M4.
The FN P90 is darned innovative too. Too bad they don't make it in a more practical and less expensive caliber (for civilians).
But it seems that, if the military R&D guys gets their way, the next US battle rifle will be more notable for its internal flame-thrower, grenade launcher, electronic sight, ability to feed targeting data to air support over secure high-speed wireless networks, yadda yadda - than for any feature than we civilians will be able to use.
Think about it - the M16/AR15 may be the last US battle rifle platform that you and I will be able to actually buy.