The Marine Corps is Experimenting With a New Service Rifle

Yeah well that's buisness. France finally made one good decision, its about time. Gentlemen its time to face the facts, HK416/417 is a proven design with a star spangled record now. It has its place in the small arms world as a leader and massive success.

The facts and empircal evidence prove this, so get over it. All the youtube, and forum "nay sayers" are just working for other companies and that is competition in the market. Or they are just parroting what the competition repeats as belief. My opinion is based on facts, reason and evidence. Not every army needs them nor does the internets trolls but the design works extremely well, so I would suggest the usual haters too just embrace it.

If you look at CC they built many guns to compete with the HK416 because they were lossing contracts in some key areas that a DI design although was adequate was not ideal, in the end it doesn't matter there is room for other system or weapon designs. The engineering done on the HK416 by Munch and Lav to name a few adressed those needs. The newer evolutions like the A5 have adapted to market demands as well.

All firearms companies like HK,Colt variations are largely produced to meet specific standards and requirements set out by militaries of Nato. HK has done that and more.

Just go out & get one. Buy them all boys, CC,lMT, DD, COLT USA,KAC, enjoy what the wonderfull world of ARs has to offer.

Colt was the first company to have a piston system platform back in 1969. It was the RO703 model also know as the M16A2. Piston systems are nothing new. HK is just trying to reinvent the wheel. I have had indepth conversion with Trey from KAC on this topic. I also talked to engineers from Colt and Colt Canada. The AR-15/M-16 platform is 60 years old. There have been 8,000,000 rifles built with 90% of them still in service.

Here's Reed Knight's 2cents:

The major thing that we’ve seen with pistons is the bolt cracking of the locking lugs at maybe a higher rate than what we think it should be. The gas piston system does not help that issue, and it exacerbates the bolt cracking. If you take the things that were allowed to be done to improve the gun, such as some of the things that they’ve done for the HK 416, if they were allowed to do that or do some product improvements on the M4, the M4 itself I believe could have a higher reliability in its own design. Unfortunately, there are some things that you help when you go to the piston-driven upper, but there’s also some things that you don’t help. One of the major things is that in a gas impingement system, when the gas pressurizes the chamber in the bolt carrier, it actually pushes the bolt forward, and that pushing of the bolt forward, as it unlocks, takes a good amount of load off the back of the locking lugs as it’s unlocking.

That system allows you to have a less stress on the locking lugs while it’s unlocking.

The gas impingement system is pushing back on the bolt carrier, evenly from the inside, and pushing forward on the bolt relieving the rearward pressure on the lugs. With a piston, as you’re pushing back on the bolt carrier, you not only have tilting pressure which is uneven, it’s pulling the bolt backwards, which adds more load to the locking lugs of the bolt as the bolt carrier’s going to the rear, and the faster you drive it to the rear, the worse off it is. If you use an M4 in its conventional barrel length, which is 14-1/2 inches, I don’t think a piston gives you any advantage over a gas impingement gun. I think that an M4 in a 14-1/2 inch barrel is just as reliable as a piston gun with the 14-1/2 inch barrel. The gas piston has added different problems.
 
Rebel ahh. No. not exactly. You are quoting Reed knight of Knights Armament Corporation. Direct competition, they were getting their asses handed to them when the 416 came to market. They have caught up a lot in my opinion, i own there stuff and want more KAC always.

First off the BCG of thee great HK416 is weighted to alievate carrier tilt issues. So they solved that on the first batch of prototypes back in like 2001 or 2002 can't remember exactly. . Also the wear stops at certain point anyways so its not an issue at all. The only people that were seeing this issue were drop in piston system from other companies. No bearing on HK416 design.

As for Problems. What problems. Most of these issues these guns have are minor issues. Also keep in mind water bound operations also favor the 416. Also the idea they were reinventing the wheel is ludricous. The need was for a 10.4 gun tgat could handle suppressed and high amounts of FA originally. Hk did all that. And now its also good in heavy longer barrel configs for suppression fire roles eg IAR.

If you want all take you out one day and you can shoot some of my hk"s and all make you a believer.

Rebel just go out and get one.
 
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This is turning into a weird post. The fanboys and haters need to calm down.

The 416, with the water ports (or whatever, forget the name) cut in the barrel, works in water far better than a DI system does in water. Marines are amphibious, and while Obama's Asian Pivot strategy may not have panned out too well because of the mess in the middle east, odds are it will still happen eventually and the Marines will be looking at conflict in more wet enviro's. Given that DI guns do not do well with water, it might be smart for the Corps to get a piston gun.

I honestly think if the entire US military is going to switch firearms (they aren't, I'm speaking theoretically), they may as well get a new caliber while they're at it. Given that the AR is fine for most applications, and so is 5.56, especially in the sweet new versions the US has, I don't think it'll happen. The USMC may have a legitimate need for piston guns, but the rest of the military really doesn't.

Oh and to the people who are talking about what the Norwegians or some PD thinks, the USMC has been fielding M27's for some 4 years now in a SAW-like role, if there were issues with them you'd probably hear about it from the Marines themselves.
 
Hint: The CF combat divers are also looking at a short piston rifle because the C8s blow out too often because of the water, last I heard from my MCpl buddy who is one, he was going to Belgium to try out some short-barreled FN SCAR-Hs in 7.62x51mm.
 
Unsurprisingly for a rifle introduced in a SAW role, the 416 has a sustained rate of fire roughly 3x as high as a vanilla M4, no small difference.
 
Yes, because MCpl Combat Engineers have a lot of pull when it comes to weapons procurement.:jerkit:
 
Yes, because MCpl Combat Engineers have a lot of pull when it comes to weapons procurement.:jerkit:

Note how I wrote "to try out some FN SCAR-Hs" and nothing about having a lot of pull for any kind of procurement, but nice of you to leave your highly thought-out "opinion". :jerkit:

Going straight into my folder of 10/10 quality posts.
 
FBI SWAT = Colt M4
FBI HRT = HK 416
ATF Agents = Colt M4
ATF SRT = HK 416
US SF = Colt MK18 (I know Navy Term, whatever Army wants to call it then)
US CAG = HK 416
US SEAL = Colt MK18
US DEV...SEAL....= HK 416

Anyone see a pattern? pay attention, those small highly specialized units that have a choice and do not have to accept what the larger organization is giving out
Choose HK 416.....and....they do it for very good reasons.
I love my DI AR's...right now my first choice for playing gun games...but let's get real people.
These discussions about how great DI AR's are and how deficient the HK 416 is....are often had by those who do not have operational experience
with anything other than a Colt M4 / C8 DI.....or no operational experience at all.

Rich
 
Very interesting post Rebel Rouser, good thing HK has quality control on their bolts....(most of the time!)...they need to.
Does not speak well of many brands of DI AR's that tend to break bolts much more often than HK.

Rich
 
FBI SWAT = Colt M4
FBI HRT = HK 416
ATF Agents = Colt M4
ATF SRT = HK 416
US SF = Colt MK18 (I know Navy Term, whatever Army wants to call it then)
US CAG = HK 416
US SEAL = Colt MK18
US DEV...SEAL....= HK 416

Anyone see a pattern? pay attention, those small highly specialized units that have a choice and do not have to accept what the larger organization is giving out
Choose HK 416.....and....they do it for very good reasons.
I love my DI AR's...right now my first choice for playing gun games...but let's get real people.
These discussions about how great DI AR's are and how deficient the HK 416 is....are often had by those who do not have operational experience
with anything other than a Colt M4 / C8 DI.....or no operational experience at all.

Rich

You summed it up the best.

Cheers

Rich
 
Note how I wrote "to try out some FN SCAR-Hs" and nothing about having a lot of pull for any kind of procurement, but nice of you to leave your highly thought-out "opinion". :jerkit:

Going straight into my folder of 10/10 quality posts.

Hey no problem. Glad I could help out.:d

Because you obviously weren't trying to imply anything...
 
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