Riddle me this

[LRRPF52]

With the service rifle, nobody has designed and developed a superior operating system to the Stoner Internal Expansion Sleeved Piston design, when looking at weight, off-axis reciprocating mass, accuracy, and reliability.

There just isn’t anything else that allows for a more lightweight weapon, so the design has stood the test of time this long.

The Army also prioritizes its really smart people into places where you can’t afford to have as many failures, especially Aviation, Artillery, Air Defense, Armor, Medical, and SF.

If an Infantry Lieutenant craps the bed with his radio call and gets some soldiers injured or killed, it isn’t as bad as when a Patriot fails to intercept an incoming Theater Ballistic Missile targeting US barracks and installations.

The Army can’t afford to put much of its brains in the Infantry weapons development, and this trickles up into PEOs who are tasked with small arms vs Aviation, Missiles, Radars, Net-centric comms, etc.

The main thing that has driven Infantry Weapons and systems development over the past few decades has really started in JSOC, trickled down into SOCOM, then some of those things into big green pickle machine Army.

None of the successful advancements are really being driven by the conventional Army when it comes to weapons and ancillary systems.

NGSW is an attempt to break that trend, whether they realize it or not. Every attempt prior to this, from SPIW to ACR to XM8, to ICSR has been a failure that saw only a few ancillary items get brought into the M16 family of weapons after Special Operations units saw them and ran with them early.

SPIW brought forth the XM148 and M203.



ACR brought in the flat top upper receiver, Elcan optics, ACOG, as well as the Colt ACR stock evolving into the LMT SOPMOD stock.



XM8 brought in that stupid grenade launcher that replaced the M203, making the system bulkier and cumbersome.