Well, the guys are 'Almost' accurate on both counts...
The show has been around for a while,
AND,
H&K developments are being incorporated into the new Infantry weapon designs.
AND,
No it's not a 'Gimmick', even though it's being sold with some 'Gimmick' features that will appeal to the 'Tacti-Cool, mall crawler types.
IE: All those silly 'Tactical' mounting rails and such...
The XM-8 has been a steadily evolving Infantry weapon TEST BED for everything that has come down the pike for years.
Will the XM-8 ever be issued to troops?
Not as it stands now, since it's just a 'Testing Prototype' right now and is steadily being changed....
Will the next infantry weapon be a short stroke gas piston weapon. COUNT ON IT!
As of late, there are 131 versions of short stroke piston infantry weapons in testing, and ZERO '0' direct gas impingement versions submitted.
So the gas bolt is a thing of the past...
It's just a matter of time before it's just used by 'Poodle Shooters' and 'End Of The World' nuts...
Personally, I've been using several gas pistons since the 'Rhino' came out 15 or 20 years ago, and I like them!
I've probably got 30,000 or so rounds through that old Rhino system and it still works as good as the day I got it!
Saves a BUNCH of cleaning and heat/carbon wear and tear on the bolt parts too!
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One thing you will have to keep in mind,
Our military will ALWAYS have to cater to the 'Low Forehead' bunch....
Guys that can't keep a job at McDonalds and do part time community collage to keep from getting drafted...
In the event of an all out war, the draft (Conscription) WILL happen again, and you have to make allowances for the guys with an IQ of about 85 or even lower...
SO!
Any infantry weapon MUST be fairly SLEEK,
So burger flipping moron doesn't catch it on everything in sight,
It must be SIMPLE to operate,
So gas station moron can figure out how to make it go 'Boom',
IT must be reasonably reliable,
Because you are never going to get 'Rap Music Boy' to muster enough brain cells to do a failure analysis, correct the problem, and get back in the fight if you don't.
Remember, many of the combat fatalities right now are because our Felony wavered, Gang banging, Highschool dropout, MTV idiots are unable to tap the mag, cycle the bolt, use the forward assist to clean/complete cycle the bolt right now....
No failure analysis or correction training will help these guys, they simply don't have the IQ points to get the procedures right and stay alive...
And until the 'NEVER CLEAN/NEVER JAM' infantry combat weapon magically appears, we aren't going to keep that percentage of the population alive!
A more complicated firearm will simply result in more deaths...
The military is even looking into magazines that have a display that shows the number of rounds left...
NO, I don't mean holes drilled in the mag,
but an actual display that turns Green when you have 20 to 30 rounds, Yellow when you have 10 to 20 rounds, and RED when you have under 10 rounds...
Mostly because the current crop of 'Volunteers'
(mostly supplied by Judges in local felony court districts)
can't remember if they fired any out of the current mag or not!
Anyway, the newer version of infantry combat weapon will need to be nurse maid and mother figure to the 'Average Recruit' or they will just be cannon fodder like in generations past...
