Comment Re:Good Riddance (Score 5, Informative) 756
The army's supposedly coming out with the OICW in 2004, which has a bunch of new features, including a range of up to 1000 meters (the M16 has a max. range of 400, and thats with really good training)
Given that the M16 and the OICW are both chambered in .223/5.56NATO, there's no way it's going to be good for 1000 meters, as that's a limitation of the cartridge design not the gun. The OICW is also a bullpup design, but still has a short barrel, decreasing maximum effective lethal range. The OICW uses the same magazines as the M16. Even .308/7.62NATO isn't really good to 1000 meters because of it's vulnerability to wind interference.
The OICW is a waste. Give any soldier the choice between a set of combat gear or the scorpion suit, and he'll choose the combat gear. Give him a choice between the OICW or an M16, and he'll choose the M16. Why? Because when your life is on the line complex systems fail more often than simple systems and they can also get in the way. When you're on the battlefield and people are shooting at you, you want to be able to shoot back. When you have to reboot your gun or your combat helmet is on the frits, these are bad things. Moving to the latest new fangled gadgets does not make a successful armed force.
This is why smart guns will be a flop. The Glock firearm design is currently the most popular modern design on the market because it is a simple design that works. It has very few moving parts compared to other semi-auto pistols, and that means it tends to be much more reliable than other designs. When you start introducing computer controls, fingerprint scanners, and the like things get much more complicated much quicker and I personally would hate to lose my life because my smartgun crashed while someone was kicking down my door.
The most venerable machine gun designs were from guys who weren't working for the government. Guys like John Moses Browning who designed the majority of the military machine guns in US history and many still in use today. The .50 BMG (BMG = Browning Machine Gun) guns you saw mounted on those armored vehicles in Iraq were a Browning design. And it was Gene Stoner who developed the original AR-10 machine gun, which was redesigned into the M16. Now the US has outlawed the kind of work Browning and Stoner did, and given the excessive excise tax required to become a Class II manufacturer, it's unlikely that you'll ever have that kind of innovation again. Trying to build a machine gun makes you a federal felon with an instant 10 years at Club Fed, and we're talking the pound you in the butt prison, not some country club.
Today's combat weapons are made by large military contractors who move at a snails pace. Browning was turning out multiple designs per year. You'd think with all the backing these big defense contractors have, they could at least keep up.
Given that the M16 and the OICW are both chambered in
The OICW is a waste. Give any soldier the choice between a set of combat gear or the scorpion suit, and he'll choose the combat gear. Give him a choice between the OICW or an M16, and he'll choose the M16. Why? Because when your life is on the line complex systems fail more often than simple systems and they can also get in the way. When you're on the battlefield and people are shooting at you, you want to be able to shoot back. When you have to reboot your gun or your combat helmet is on the frits, these are bad things. Moving to the latest new fangled gadgets does not make a successful armed force.
This is why smart guns will be a flop. The Glock firearm design is currently the most popular modern design on the market because it is a simple design that works. It has very few moving parts compared to other semi-auto pistols, and that means it tends to be much more reliable than other designs. When you start introducing computer controls, fingerprint scanners, and the like things get much more complicated much quicker and I personally would hate to lose my life because my smartgun crashed while someone was kicking down my door.
The most venerable machine gun designs were from guys who weren't working for the government. Guys like John Moses Browning who designed the majority of the military machine guns in US history and many still in use today. The
Today's combat weapons are made by large military contractors who move at a snails pace. Browning was turning out multiple designs per year. You'd think with all the backing these big defense contractors have, they could at least keep up.
