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In more miscellaneous info, there's talk of the XM8, currently still chambered in the NATO standard 5.56mm caliber, to be the first mass-produced rifle to accept the up-and-coming 6.8mm caliber round, superior in every way to the 5.56mm round as well as the russian 5.45mm and 7.62mm rounds. Testing time will tell.
Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
Or in other words, "the Americans have come up with this new cartridge that now everyone will have to use if they want to stay in NATO, and by the time everyone has upgraded their small arms as needed, the Americans will want to introduce a new standard rifle with a new cartridge, and so on ad infinitum."
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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Lee: Actually, it was you brits who had come up with a superior new gun in the 1950's, with a better cartridge, which would've forced NATO to upgrade. It was to've been 7mm caliber, so you were onto something there.
Registered: Aug 1999
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Yes, Nimmy - we tried to play that game, but who still won? The 7.62mm, as found in the US M-14. Shortcut to 1967, and hey! This 5.56mm in the M-16 is really funky, everyone in NATO should share the love!
And thius OICW/SABR? Ugh. Mind you, someone will draw parallels between the XM8 and the French assault rifle, I forget what it's called, the 'bugle' with a pronounced carry-handle, and that'll be all she wrote. HK - German, too - not cool Stateside, either.
quote:Originally posted by Lee: Or in other words, "the Americans have come up with this new cartridge that now everyone will have to use if they want to stay in NATO, and by the time everyone has upgraded their small arms as needed, the Americans will want to introduce a new standard rifle with a new cartridge, and so on ad infinitum."
Yep. I love how my country owns the planet.
Registered: Aug 1999
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Far too many people know too many model codes for guns here to make me entirely confortable.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
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I believe the OICW is being introduced soon in the Marine Corp, but it's so damned expensive and complex that it's just going to be issued to one or two members of each squad, kinda like a support weapon rather than a standard issue rifle. The XM-8 is a standard German G36K made up to look different, and as far as I know it's not actually been accepted yet by the US Military. I think they just made it look different so that the Americans would think they didn't have the same gun as the Germans.
-------------------- www.kennyscrap.com - where I download crap I make.
Registered: Jun 2003
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-------------------- "The best defense is not a good offense. The best defense is a terrifyingly accurate and devastatingly powerful offense, with multiply-overlapping kill zones and time-on-target artillery strikes." -- Laurence, Archangel of the Sword
Registered: Mar 1999
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Lee: You mean the FAMAS, well that one is old. They will make all the XM8 components detachable, so you can use those Picatinny rails, for sundry addons.
Proteus: Actually, Fabrique Nationale and Heckler&Koch are two of the largest contributors to american military/law-enforcement small-arms, along with Beretta of course. And the coming 6.8mm round won't be produced just in the US.
Registered: Aug 1999
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Strange how the Pulse rifle looks more like a real weapon than the real thing itself. This new one looks like something you'd expect to find in Toys'R'Us, next to the moulded plastic walkie-talkies and the action-man play costumes.
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Well, if it keeps George happy, who's to say the US military can't have guns that look like his favourite toy?
-------------------- "I am an almost extinct breed, an old-fashioned gentleman, which means I can be a cast-iron son-of-a-bitch when it suits me." --Jubal Harshaw
Registered: Feb 2002
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