The HKM4 is little more than a pricey rip-off of several private designs made in previous years. Various individuals have successfully built piston-driven designs on AR-15 frames, but none attempted to market their ideas. The US Army is possibly considering this system, much to my (and others') dismay. It is basically a piston in the AR-15 design, being touted as revolutionary and ground-breaking.
This is among several useless designs on the table for adoption by the US Army, including the X-M8.
This similarly expensive use of funding merely adds minor changes to the existing soldier loadout. Functionally only slightly different from the M4A1, A2 or A3, and in no way compatable with existing parts (it completely fails to meet the STANAG and can't use standard magazines used in M-16, M4 and M-249 weapon systems) in storage. Considering that the Army still has M-1903 Springfield and Krag-Jorgensen rifles waiting to be unpacked at various warehouses, yet another new weapon is hardly a logical choice. The key here is expense. It's going to cost a considerable sum of money to purchase all the rifles, and then a considerable sum more to get rid of the existing weapons (unlike the days of yore, the military can't just sell off old stock, if they could, expense would be a non-issue) as well as the fact that this rifle, in addition to having recoil problems offers NO new functionality over the M-4, M-16 and other weapon systems already in use. Taken altogether, it's a complete waste of money, but the military is taking a serious interest. I feel that this is a rather lousy choice, and that if any money is to be laid down on a new rifle, several other options available would be far better, including the Steyr ACR and the H&K G-11, both revolutionary projects that produced amazing results, but were ultimately rejected... I just hope they don't open the pork barrel any further...
I ask you all, how do you feel about this silly free-wheeling of tax payer money?
[ 03-21-2004, 03:29 PM: Message edited by: Oblivion437 ]