12 pounds of rifle is just too much rifle. You've already got around 80 pounds of ruck on your back, and I think most of the vests these days carry around 10 magazines, 30 rounds apiece. I dunno what this 13 dollar round weighs, but 300 of them (plus the 30 already in your rifle) have got to weigh plenty. Hell, the MOLLE rig I have here weighs about 25 pounds all by itself, empty. No need to add extra unnecessary weight to a load like that.
The rifle itself looks to me like a Buck-Rogers-ized AR anyhow. No excuse for that extra weight. What the hell does the average trooper need with a sound suppressor? That's just another pound of useless weight for them to carry. They'll eventually have to give each trooper his own robot too, in order to carry all the useless crap they insist has to be carried.
Personally, I think if they went back to the old M16A1 with a 12 inch rifling twist and M193 ball ammo, they'd be good to go. They've been screwing with the AR platform for 40 years now trying to make it "more lethal", and have only succeeded in making it LESS lethal... so now they have to go with this new crap? Just wait until they get done making it "more lethal" too.
Procurement and testing very often runs a shit-show all it's own. I have an idea - teach troopers to hit their target with whatever they happen to have to hand instead of saddling them with even more junk that they don't need... fanciest gun in the world ain't gonna do you any good at all if you have a habit of shooting over their heads instead of into their heads. On the other hand, a Sears Special will do the trick if you drop some lead in their head from it.
By teach them to hit their target" I mean just that. I think it's around 10% or 15% of soldiers that will actually shoot to kill. The rest just shoot to scare. There is a world of difference between shooting a paper target on the range and shooting at a living, breathing one trying to shoot you right back. People get jittery about that, which IMO is an issue that could be addressed in training.
My Dear Old Dad had a system for training - "Here's five shells. that's all ya get. Either bring back all 5, or enough pieces game to account for the missing shells. if ya don't, next time you only get 3. You ain't wasting all MY ammo!"
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The rifle itself looks to me like a Buck-Rogers-ized AR anyhow. No excuse for that extra weight. What the hell does the average trooper need with a sound suppressor? That's just another pound of useless weight for them to carry. They'll eventually have to give each trooper his own robot too, in order to carry all the useless crap they insist has to be carried.
Personally, I think if they went back to the old M16A1 with a 12 inch rifling twist and M193 ball ammo, they'd be good to go. They've been screwing with the AR platform for 40 years now trying to make it "more lethal", and have only succeeded in making it LESS lethal... so now they have to go with this new crap? Just wait until they get done making it "more lethal" too.
Procurement and testing very often runs a shit-show all it's own. I have an idea - teach troopers to hit their target with whatever they happen to have to hand instead of saddling them with even more junk that they don't need... fanciest gun in the world ain't gonna do you any good at all if you have a habit of shooting over their heads instead of into their heads. On the other hand, a Sears Special will do the trick if you drop some lead in their head from it.
By teach them to hit their target" I mean just that. I think it's around 10% or 15% of soldiers that will actually shoot to kill. The rest just shoot to scare. There is a world of difference between shooting a paper target on the range and shooting at a living, breathing one trying to shoot you right back. People get jittery about that, which IMO is an issue that could be addressed in training.
My Dear Old Dad had a system for training - "Here's five shells. that's all ya get. Either bring back all 5, or enough pieces game to account for the missing shells. if ya don't, next time you only get 3. You ain't wasting all MY ammo!"
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