Posted on 11/18/2010 11:16:23 PM PST by ErnstStavroBlofeld
Lt. Gen. George Flynn, who heads the Marine Corps Combat Development Command in Quantico, told reporters at a Washington, D.C. breakfast that the service plans to finish outfitting five battalions with the new M-27 Infantry Automatic Rifle next month and then will observe how those Marines use it on deployment before changing the organization, training, and tactics of infantry units around the new weapon.
But Flynn pushed back at critics of the M-27, saying the improved accuracy of the Heckler and Koch-made automatic rifle makes up for a lower rate of fire compared to the M-249 Squad Automatic Weapon it's being fielded to replace.
"The initial feedback was that the IAR performed pretty well," Flynn said of early evaluations of the M-27. "Accuracy has a suppressive power all by itself."
(Excerpt) Read more at military.com ...
Why the hell are we buying kraut firearms?
He’s certainly near the top of my list
Well, the Krauts make some good stuff, but we have a history of making some mighty fine firearms ourselves.
Ping
Tough to be an HK anything. They make superb firearms. I have a USP45 Tactical. Best automatic I own, though a little ‘big’.
It’s a ludicrous ‘replacement’ for the 249
We should make our own military rifles. This is beyond stupid.
The “outsourcing” of EVERYTHING has got to stop!
I agree. I do not like it at all.
The one you own is primo, however.
maybe because they make them better than us?
most likely it will be manufactured here under license to HK. We fielded the Krag because it beat anything we had.
When guns cease to be evil, we will design better ones. We
have the Barrett, the LWRC, etc..
They don’t.
Here’s an interesting vid clip on the IAR:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YzGzeLh3mc
It kind of sounds like a modern equivalent of the BAR.
Because we’ve pissed away our manufacturing base. We no longer make much of the tooling required to make products like weapons...
Germany, however, still makes a lot of machine tooling.
Because we buy the best weapon whether it's American or not?
FWIW, the weapon it replaces, the M249 SAW? It's manufactured by FN Herstal, a Belgian arms company.
Well said General!
Actually, we now have more weapon manufacturers, especially of Stoner-patterned guns like this IAR, than we have ever had before. Raising demand in the face of import restrictions (try getting one of those dirt cheap Norinco AR15s) has created an environment in which every other machine shop is churning out their own receiver sets and bolt carriers groups. Anyone with even the most basic milling machine can purchase forged receiver blanks from suppliers like DSArms and produce serialized firearms faster than a custom wheel shop can turn out tire rims. Our domestic small arms industry is booming.
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