02-09-2013, 03:27 AM
stanc Wrote:I would agree (personally, I have long liked the bullpup concept), except that it has not been demonstrated that your "decent bullpup" can actually be made. Which means you are pushing a theoretical concept that may not be achievable in practice, as a preferred "solution" to the traditional design.
If I'm a little annoying on this, it's because I have grown weary of all the theoretical proposals that have been advanced with little or no hard data to support them.
Well, bullpups which match the M4's controls are in service. A bullpup which is fully ambidextrous is in service, and so are a couple of others which can be used left-handed if need be, plus the ARX-160 which has switchable-side ejection. The only aspect which has not been demonstrated in a service weapon is a variable-length stock (although the new version of the Austeyr which has been adopted for service, the EF-88, has a shortened stock to allow for body armour).
To allow space for a variable length stock requires a shorter action than usual, but those are hardly new - the Russians demonstrated in the early 1960s with the Korobov TKB-022 (pictured earlier in this thread) just how short an action can be, leaving loads of space for an adjustable stock. Nothing quite as drastic as that would be needed.
So I think that to claim that these features "may not be achievable in practice" really isn't justified; most of the elements are in service in different guns, and nothing radically new would be required to achieve a variable-length stock.