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Sturgeon's House

Das Gee-Sechsunddreißig Ist Tot.


Sturgeon

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In the basement of H and K, dozens of military scientists are yelling.  Finally the VP for operations broke it all up.  "Shut up, just let us know what our options are.  There won't be anymore Belgium guns arming German soldiers."

 

"Well, we have some ideas, how about this?"  The scientist held a rifle up.  It has bunny ears on it.  

 

"That is just a G3"

 

"But it has advanced modification."

 

No, I do not think we can pass that one.  What else do we have."

 

Another rifle came out.  It was pink.

 

"That is an AK?"

 

"Us, we call it a KA."

 

"Its pink!"

 

"Urban camo."

 

"No lets see what else."

 

Out came a little rifle from a box that said, Boondoogle, 1991.

 

"How about this."

 

"Needs some modifications."

 

"We can paste some stuff on it."

 

"Good - I think the G11 is ready to come back."

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It's a bit laughably optimistic-looking to modern eyes, isn't it?

Also, there's a lot of capability the XM8 misses out on completely, like mounting night vision devices.

If it has a direct steel connection between the trunnion and sight, that would raise it in my estimation considerably, but I still think improving the M4 was the way to go. The XM8 was getting most of its weight improvement from the sight, anyway, so if they'd had any sense they'd have made a 1913 compatible version of that for the M4. One of the other major selling points of the XM8 was that it was supposed to be cheaper... About $600. Turns out, while at the time the M4 was about $900, once the solicitation opened up they got a lot cheaper... About $300 cheaper, in fact.

Keeping the M4, of course, misses out on the whole point of the XM8, though, which was to make H&K money.

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Upon further reflection, I have found the perfect candidate.

 

When was the last time the Germans won a major war?

 

What was the rifle that they armed the main body of their troops with?

 

Was this weapon used successfully despite being outclassed by a technologically superior weapon?

 

Will this weapon still be outclassed by any potential opponent faced by the Germans?

 

With all of that in mind, clearly the best option for a united Germany is the Dreyse needle-gun!

 

Gardekorps.jpg

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Looks like I may have been wrong, the XM8's receiver architecture may have solved this problem (suggesting that H&K has known about this for at least eleven years):

HtEo6rj.jpg

 

And yet they somehow missed the whole "This gun has many important parts that melt under conditions they really shouldn't" Issue eleven years later.

 

.....Welp.

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There's been some discussion of this over on tanknet

http://www.tank-net.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=40518

Take note of bansheeone's posts, he's in the german MoD

 

 

It appears that the XM8's sight does mount to steel, though without some personal time with an XM8 receiver, I cannot confirm if it's a direct steel interface with the barrel.

I would hope so, though:

 

So the melty fish gun does not melt? If you wanted night vision is should be possible to make a rail section that would fit in those lugs

 

ETA:

 

The Firearm Blog has obtained a G36 rifle as a byproduct of a police request, and it is our intent to test the rifle. We will release our findings as soon as possible.

 

Erm, why are police worried about several mags worth of full auto fire?

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Good find on that Tnet thread, Xlu.

 

So the melty fish gun does not melt? If you wanted night vision is should be possible to make a rail section that would fit in those lugs

 

We're not sure if the fish gun melts. The G36 definitely melts, but it's possible the XM8 has enough architectural differences to save it.

 

ETA:

 

Erm, why are police worried about several mags worth of full auto fire?

 

Alex is an SOT (machine gun dealer), and I'm given to understand that the police department sent him a request to get a G36 for demonstration/eval, then this whole news hit and the PD isn't really interested anymore, but the process was already in motion so they both agreed to use the rifle for testing, instead.

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The one thing I do not understand is why no one is designing a good, portable, heavy grenade launcher.

 

The problem with every rifle is paradigmatic.  Modern western military forces needs a weapon to create an exclusion zone to 500 meters around an infantry unit.  At 500 meters delivered ordnance takes over and as it gets smarter it has dominated the battlefield.  Under 500 meters danger close fire missions are life and death only for good reason, the failure rate of even the smartest munitions is simply too high.  

 

So what we need is an explosive device with simple smarts launched from the shoulder to a range of 250 - 500 meters.  The French make this work by having a recoiless gun and a huge number of rifle grenades in each unit, but tests of the 20mm grenade from the OICW and even the 40mm grenade show that the blast radius for each weapon is too low - the M203 has a larger miss circle at 200 meters than the blast radius x2 of the weapon.

 

However we know from lots of AARs that weapons like the old British 50mm mortar carried a big percentage of an infantry unit's firepower.

 

So how about finding a way to take the AC58 and boost its effectiveness then hand three to everyone in a squad but the GP and DM gunners.  All of the effort to reach a perfect rifle seems like all the efforts people made to reach the perfect bayonet in WW1.  Dump the 20mm OICW - they cost too much and are too heavy and not effective enough, and throw the 40mm grenades down after them.  Having a rifle squad with 30 weapons that have 4-7 times the explosive power of a 40mm would represent the initial fire power of the unit, allowing the close in battle to be accomplished during the time that on call artillery is getting its act together. The soldiers would still have their rifles after that.  

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Funnily enough, You'll note that on the topic of OICWs, I didn't even write about the ZH-05 in that article because, much like other attempts at OICW type weapons from other militaries in the past, It's actually a massively unpopular and/or problematic weapon with the PLA that's undergone alot of changes and yet ultimately might just get dropped at this point.

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