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Heh, that reminds me of something one of my buddies once said: "Uniformity may be the death of adaptability... but, damn, adaptability sure weighs a lot."
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I completely agree with what you've laid out here. Even the guys with two braincells in my shitbag outfit used to have the same argument all the time. What it should be vs. what it is will always remain a huge problem. Weapons are all about money and politics, not the product. Everybody in Pope's Ghetto has a M4, a M249, or a M240B. That's what you get to work with... so you have to blunt force 'em into your mission requirements. The nearly-too-rare-to-mention (and often busted up) M14 "DMR" is often used like some kind of junior NCO trophy instead of being put to a useful purpose. If you wanted to do better, you spent your paycheck buying and fielding as much as you could get away with... parts, mags, optics, etc.
Oh, yessir, Uncle Sam is real big on the junk. I look at the huge push of M249 "Para" kits in 200X. Everybody wanted those stubby barrels and those craptacular plastic twist stocks. And those Elcan machine gun optics. They're so COOL. Forget that your most important fire team weapon just became less useful and yet still weighs just as much if not more. Forget that you don't even have a good place to put the fuckin' sling anymore. Ugh. Painful.
I feel the the FN SCAR is a big step back for the reasons you illustrated above as well as others. I believe the H&K 416 (hell, even a LWRC-style upper) would be a step forward in the goal of producing a more shootable personal weapon, the real goal of military weapon procurement.
Today's soldiers would really benefit from an upper receiver and magazine product improvement program. Off the shelf stuff. No bullshit.
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Of course neither of those systems would have made a lick of difference to the numbnuts in the OP article.
Last edited by Plan9; 10-19-2009 at 07:41 PM..
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