M-16 Replacement

From: Kenneth Winland <kwinland@chass.utoronto.ca>
Subject: Re: M-16 Replacement (yet another Popular Mechanics article)

	Comparing it to a basic M-16A2 is fallacy, but you could sort-of
compare it to an M-16A2 with all of the bells and whistles, and the
new
battle-rifle is STILL expensive.  I have seen footage of the tests,
and
while it works well in "demos", I have no doubt that this puppy is
going
to have severe teething problems.

** Though, to be fair, they had a LOT of trouble developing the German
G-11 caseless rifle, but it is quite a piece of kit. 50 rounds in the
mag. Weight per round pretty decent - not carrying all that dead
weight of casings!
Accurate. I'm told that with the autoburst, due to the rotating breech
and hideous cyclic, the weapon has actually fired several rounds
accurately before the burst recoil starts to take effect. On the
downside, ammo must be produced. And I still have no idea how often
they clean this baby or how they handle IAs... though with a caseless
round you probably get less problem as you have no casing to eject.
Sealed action probably protects it from a lot of environmental crud
too. But I understand during development, they started with a 4mm,
then a 4.3mm, then a 4.7mm and finally a 4.9mm round as they couldn't
get ballistic stability. And the gun itself had teething problems. I'm
sure the zoomy new OICW will have problems... esp this prox fused
trick to let you execute overhead attacks on prone targets.... but it
is the way things will go, and when they get it right it'll be scary
(just like the look-around-the-corner HUD sights for the rifles they
are developing). And mass production will drive down costs. Mind you,
a soldier these days costs more per pound than one in WWI.

Thomas Barclay
Software UberMensch
xwave solutions
(613) 831-2018 x 3008