castledoom.com

[JuntaJoe]

Say hello to the XM8.

http://www.hkdefense.us/pages/military-le/rifles-carbines/xm8.html

It has hammered all competition into the dust. Colt will fight, but it doesn't have a leg to stand on.

Expect this to be the new US military small arms weapon soon.

The first issue might only be a few years away.

The link gives a great overview, but it doesn't list the variants. This is a weapon "system". You will see LMG, sniper, compact, and machine pistol variants in addition to the standard rifleman model. It's a really nice gun and even weighs 20% less than an M16.

[CooJoe]

Looks futuristic.

Judging from the overview it's pretty reliable.

The only thing I don't like is they make it seem like this will be the only weapon of the armed forces.

[JuntaJoe]

I won't be the "only" small arm, but it will be even more pervasive than the M16 and it's variants.

Only SpecOps troops and top shelf snipers will use "other" weapons. In a normal infantry platoon, only the single heavy machine gunner per squad will tote something different, namely the FN SAW.

The reason is the versatility.

It will be fitted with a heavy barrel and 100 round clip for the light machine gun men. It will be fitted with a grenade launcher for the grenadiers. It will be fitted with a match barrel for the designated sharpshooters. It will be fitted with a short barrel and collapsing stock for your point men and building assault men.

And should we change our ammunition from 5.56mm to 6.8mm as expected then a fast upper receiver change is all that is needed.

This weapon will be as accurate as the old M16 and have the durability and ease of maintenance as the AK74. You can even fire the weapon full of water. Note the specs. Barrels good for 20,000 rounds and lubrication good for 15,000 from the factory. Of significant note is the unique scope. Removing zeroed scopes used to mean a re-zeroing on a test range. Troops in the field never messed with a preset scope lest they render the scope useless until it was sent back to the range for a reset. Now the troop can pop it out for cleaning and drop it back in without losing its settings.

I've seen several testing articles from private industry experts and no one has mentioned a bad word about the weapon.

This is surely a top notch weapon and will treat our military well.

[Anonymous]

I do think its a worthy replacement of the M16. It seems like everything our military is producing these days can serve different roles...the JSF, for instance. It's actually pretty smart; if everything is based on the same basic chasis, its much easier to get parts and to fix something when Murphy's law kicks in.

[JuntaJoe]

The JSF, sure. But the F22 Raptor? That's a friggin boondoggle. They cost more than the overpriced B-1 bomber. It's so bad that we may only buy one wing of these things and they will just barely beat the latest MIG that costs 1/30th the cost. Heck, we should be buying Russian MIG's for air superiority and sneaking in some extra electronics for the extra edge.

We asked for this global economy. We need to accept that many countries produce superior weapons at the fraction of our costs. It's not cheap labor or substandard materials either. It's the way we run our design and procurement process. If we are worried about dependency on foriegn made weapons then we buy the licensing and make them here. Any foriegn producer would go crazy to sell us a deal. Selling planes to the US is like selling rifles to the million man Chinese army. I've always felt we haven't been taking advantage of the Russian intelligence. And they have dire need for our money. A MIG contract for 100 fighters could cover their military payroll for a few years.

[Anonymous]

I hear Rumsfield is trying to scrap the F/A 22 project. I've got mixed feelings on that one. On the one hand, it is a piece of technological marvel; its so more advanced than anything else that is out there that its insane. On the other hand, its extremely costly and isn't really needed, as our current F15's and soon the JSF's fill the same role as the F/A-22 at a fraction of the cost. I'm leaning towards favoring the move to scraping it, myself, but I think we should keep the plans around just in case, and perhaps try to implement some of the technology from it in other, cheaper ways.

As for foreign technology, I have no problem with it as long as we are able to produce it here in the United States. That's just common sense; you don't want to be put in a position where you're arms suppliers end up on the other side of the line as you. I was going to raise that question about the HK, but I saw that it would be produced in Virginia, so I dropped that from my last post.

[JuntaJoe]

Arms production licensing is pretty common. Most countries want their weapons made at home, for good reason. The venerable M16 is manufactured in a dozen countries or more just for this reason. The AK47 and variants are probably made in at least 20 countries.