Ah, futureweapons
Now, I'm no expert. I've never been in the military, and my only experience with fully automatic firearms was at a range where they were available for rent.
That being said, I don't think we can trust futureweapons as a source of weapons info. I caught a couple of things from this commercial that would make me cautious of this weapon system.
*It fires from open bolt - doesn't this decrease accuracy?
*Large, cumbersome magazine - the magazine slides up a long rail attached to the front of the trigger housing. It just looks hard to do in a hurry.
*Drum magazines - They looked, to me, really hard to load in a hurry (no stripper clips here!) Also, he had to stick his whole hand into the top of the drum to load each round. Aren't drums generally considered more fragile than their stick counterparts? They have lots of additional moving parts to worry about.
*"Maintenance and Lubrication free" - Didn't they say this about the space-age materials in the M16, too? Just becuase it's made of stainless steel, doesn't mean it can go without maintenance and lubrication.
I think this has been said before about similar systems (Pancor Jackhammer). This seems like a solution in search of a problem. It's big, bulky, heavy, and the rounds are the same. The "Shotgun guy" would have a harder time humping this around along with his regular stuff. If he carries just the shotgun, he can't carry the sheer number of rounds that a guy with an M4 can carry. One of his 32 round drums takes up the space of a half dozen 20-rd mags for an M4. So if it's damaged or dented, and rendered inoperable, he may only have a couple of more drums, whereas if an M4 magazine is damaged, the shooter has many to replace it. Not to mention the difference in sheer number of rounds.
As an upgrade from a current shotgun, it looked harder to load a specialty round. If you need one of those special grenade rounds, or a special breaching round, or whatever, how are you going to put it into the weapon? Remove the mag, stick it in (hard with a drum), reload mag, cycle weapon? This is going to take two hands, which means taking the weapon off-target.
With a traditional semi or pump, the shooter can top off the magazine one-handed without removing the magazine or taking the weapon off-target and then cycle it to have that round available.
The only sandbox I've ever been in looked like a green turtle and sat on my back porch. But this doesn't seem to be a finished solution to me, no matter what Mack says.
CC