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.