Re: M-16 Replacement

	Howdy!

On Sun, 18 Jul 1999, Thomas Barclay wrote:

> ** 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!

	I love the G-11, but the germans never fully adopetd the thing.
When I last talked to some Bundeswehr types, the gun was only used by
rear-echelon forces, in like engineering units and other such groups.

 > 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

	Yeah, it went through 3-4 different calibers in the '70s, but it
was sort of "finalized" in 1980 or so.	The 3-round burst was especially
nice due to the lack of recoil/rotary bolt thing.

	Ken