It's too soon to tell if the new gun and ammo is a boondoggle or not, and too soon to tell if the military will or will not use it to its potential or hamstring it with poor tactical doctrine. Either is possible.
I am in full agreement there. I don't think M-16 full auto did any good in Nam. Its not that full auto is not useful, its just not the answer every time (or even most of the time)
Some of the guys returned from Afghanistan (particularly ) have noted semi auto is the norm. But it takes well trained professionals to do so. The day of the draftee (at leas in US) is gone. That is not to disrespect what the draftees did and or tried to do. But you read the data from Civil War on and its some shoot, some go through the motions and some do not. I tend to think I would have been an case of incapacitation if exposed to more than a couple of battles. I found if I can't sleep I get overloaded and begin to fall apart. Not a coward (or so I believe) but my reading of what the troops have and go through, I do not think I would make it.
Amp44: I am puzzled by that statement of not tested. They did go through a number of test phases doing down select (3x?) and in the end I thought they had a representative prototype of the various options.
A protest is common, I don't see it as justified. The other two finalists had huge risk factors (and one did not meet the MG requirement and was substitution a magazine fed rifle)
I do think they took viable tech (pressure, barrel and the Smuzzle which is both a silencer and redoing mitigation) to max advantage (again 6 to 9 feet less drop than a 5.56 mm at 1000 meters is huge).
Advantage of Smuzzle in recoil mitigation means the impact of the high pressure round is minimized.
I never like the AR15/M-16 controls. I have a friend out of Nam who loved the M-16 because it was light. He has a XCR which I found to be extremely intuitive, he does not like it because it feels heavy to him (he is also older and the M-16.M4 has gotten heavier so.....)
As noted, there is nothing that says short barrels cannot be issued if a Jungle fight comes to be and that is deemed an advantage (boy is that a touch one)
WWII is an interesting example of the GI adaptation. Yes the M1 was a modern wonder and while we did not have a good light MG (aka MR34/42) we had more fire spread out in a squad as well as the BAR (which in my opinion got wrecked in the inter war period, the WWI version and the Belgian built variant was much better)
As the European war moved into the towns and cities after Normandy, a lot of swapping went on and you caw companies that were half equipped with a sub machine gun.
An M1 clearly is not the rifle to clear rooms with.
Even Normandy was different from the British end (more open) to the US end (heavier and tighter Bocage).
I did a check on the M5 and it has an easy to change barrel (under 5 minutes). Not that is not sighted in.
But say you have a patrol in open country aka Afghanistan and you have to go through some villages as well. Given the barrel you could have a mix of short and long barrels.
If there is enough difference on a barrel change to be a short range issue, then you pre sight in and log the adjust. If not, you keep the sight in for the long barrel and the short makes no difference.
The options are there now.
And a huge part is the Fire Optic and of course that is mid and long range. That is high tech at its best.
Does every grunt need it? I don't think so but that is also what the testing should reveal.
The M-16 had no testing and lost of horrid decisions. This is slowly being tested and trialed and not in combat initially but in the US.
There are lessons on the SAW that does not work well. A big part was they were worn out. The other part was they had the useless mag feed that did not work that the (again Israeli's I believe) worked out. Fix it or get rid of it.
Some things I clearly do not like on the M5. Two charging handles? Come on, go one way or the other (a left charging is right ergonomics for most of us)
I liked the XCR Forward assist, you could use it if you wanted to (not recommended) but it was build in and did not add weight and parts and cost to the gun.
But I also see the idea of transition as the troops are trained on a manual of arms. I give them far more credit in being able to adopt but I could be wrong (we adjusted going into WWII as the M1 had noting in common with the 1903 in that regard)
I am not saying its guaranteed to work, but I do think its a good process they went through. Adaptation is also staged and if show stopper then stop the show until resolved (or so I hope)
I am also seeing for the first time cost is not the driving consideration, its how effective and the reality is that using cost as a main driver is the wrong way to go. The cost of that can be lost lives and we don't want that. Times have changed.
