Red Room? Militaryforge: Iraqi Army Ditches AK47 for M16...

I never did understand why we haven't gone with the MX-8.

It wasn't perfect. I heard it had problems with overheating causing the handguards to melt.

Isn't an easy solution to that just... changing handguard materials?

Cool, with the US and Iraqi militaries no longer buying up all the 7.62x39mm ammo, it will go back down to its lower prices.

Hmmm...
While the MX-8 makes me want to cream my pants, I still love the Steyr Aug and pretty much any Bullpup configuration weapon. Also the P90, or the civillian model PS90.

I cannot own a PS90. The temptation would be too great to cut down the barrel and rethread it for the flash hider.

Why don't you? Can you not SBR a rifle in Hawaii?

I don't think he wants to go to the trouble of getting a tax stamp...

If you're going to shell out the jack for a PS90...what's an extra $200?

IMHO the Iraqi army is displaying a case of "bad workmen blame their tools" syndrome.

They don't perform as well as the US forces in theater, and they can't accept that this has more to do with the culture of how they fight than the weapons. They've had training and they fight better than the insurgents to be sure, but still not as well as US troops.

The fact is if the insurgents had M-16's and SAWs and the US troops were armed with AK-47s and RPKs, the US troops would still be winning every battle.

The best all-rounder you could get today IMHO would be an AK-101. It fires the same 5.56x45 round as the M-16, and has similar accuracy, but the action is pure AK and thus has the reliability associated with that. It can take M-16 mags and it has polymer furniture rather than wood, making it a lot lighter than the AK-47 or 74.

RE: The, ahem, "MX-8"

For one, isn't it called the "XM-8" not the "MX-8"?

Anyway...

Change them to what? Something more expensive and heavier, therefore eliminating one the chief reasons to come up with a new battle rifle?

I was gonna say that, too.

And to be completely nitpicky, the Army doesn't use a "-" in its nomenclatures. M16, M4, M1A2, etc...

I typo'd. It's happened before, it'll happen again.

The XM8 has way to much plastic shell for me to be comfortable with it... Too many little compartments that require cleaning out.

I hadn't heard of the re-test. I noticed in the first test, they were using an M-4 instead of an M-16. Did they do that in the re-test as well? I'd like to have seen how the M-16 would do. I suspect that the problem with the M-4 isn't the DI system alone...but maybe a combination of the DI system in conjunction with the fact that the system is so much shorter than it was originally designed to be.

That would be my impression as well. It seems that you could get AK-type reliability with M16 accuracy.

Bah. Among other things, our GPMG and SAW are both Belgian and our MBT has a German gun and tracks and British armor.

Soon, Marine One won't be a US helicopter.

If the design is better, it's better.


BTW, a few years ago FN was actually manufacturing M16s for us (although ISTR it was in a US-based FN plant).

We didn't make those weapons before we adopted them, either.

If the military selected the 416, I figure that we'd get a license from H&K to start manufacturing them here just like we manufacture M9s from Beretta, M240s and M249s under license from FN and M256 120mm cannon from Rheinmetall. All in US plants.

Or the old Bofors 40mm cannon we used on every navy ship during WWII. We licenced the design from the Swedes.

And Oerlikon 20mm, too.

According to COD4....the M16 is better.

Shit I could go off on a tagent about the COD4 weapons.

Wow, now there's a stretch.