The HKM4, and other wastes of time

[Thoran]

Originally posted by Illumina Drathiran'ar: Pfeh! "My gun is sooo cooler than your gun!" "I can kill so many people with this." "Look at this gun! It looks awesome." This is either an extention of the childhood desire to have bigger, better toys than the kid next door, or it's an extention of 'masculine insecurity.' Spending more money... TAXPAYER money... to upgrade a gun? Give me a break! It's pathetic! The last time I checked, the American military didn't have problems killing people. Do we need to look better when we do it? I'm ALL about appearance and aesthetics and looking good when you're fighting, but this is nonsense.

Hey... at least masculine insecurity leads to something functional... femanine insecurity leads to things like breast implants (Completely useless IMO)

[Illumina Drathiran'ar]

Functional? I thought it's been established that it does the same thing that other guns do, while looking neater.
And don't get me started on breast implants... The idea nauseates me.

[Oblivion437]

It's not about looks, at least not where the X-M8 is concerned. It was supposed to be a part of the X-M29 OICW program, but that shit got dumped like a bad Mexican dinner with 30 cups of 7-11 coffee.

The HK-M4 is about introducing a gas piston, fundamentally it's supposed to be much more reliable with much less maintenance, a noble aim I suppose, except it can't be THAT much more reliable, and HK would be better off selling their far superior 5.56 NATO rifle, the G-41.

The G-41 is an impressive and rather triumphant effort to produce a MORE than adequate design. It has everything we're looking for, plus some fancy extras... It utilizes all safety features popularized by the AR-15 series, includes slightly more takedown/module happy design, and is built on the energy conservative and INCREDIBLY reliable Roller-delayed Blowback action pioneered by Ludwig Vorgrimmler back in 1945. It was later adapted as the Spanish CETME Modelo A by Vorgrimmler himself, who was working at the CETME plant in Madrid. The Germans then re-acquired the design and released it as the G-3, then refined it quite a bit and produced one of, if not the finest 7.62 NATO battle Rifle ever made, the G-3A3. It weighed in at 1/2 a pound more than the M-14 and 1/4 a pound more than the more popular FN-FAL, but it produced far less felt recoil due to its radical and unique action. HK then adapted it to submachineguns, producing the famous MP5 series. They also accurized it into the G3-SG/1 and PSG1 rifles, as well as the later MSG90A1. Altogether, this family of rifles was one of the most interesting ever made, and the only setup HK did that really shook things up in the arms community.

Ever since then, most of their designs have just been rehashes or clones (the G-36 series for example, is both) of earlier designs.

HK did come up with a couple other designs worth mentioning:

The ultimate in conventional, infantry deliverable "heavy stuff" in the form of the Grenade Machinegun, one of the most powerful and deadly heavy weapons ever crafted. Overall, if I were looking to form some sort of militia or Defense Force with a very real imminent danger of invasion on the horizon, with the equally clear and present danger of encountering a modern, mechanized military force, acquiring this weapon would be a top priority after outfitting the militiamen/freedom fighters with standard weapons and equipment.

The other, very interesting, very new age design was the G-11 series.

This was perhaps the future of arms design, in the form of a rifle that fired caseless ammunition and a lightmachinegun with a standard loadout of 600 rounds! Together, these two weapons and a pistol built around the same round would have been a serious revolution in firearms design. The rifle and machinegun were compact, light and could be loaded out with more ammunition than previously thought possible. Unfortunately, it didn't happen. Functionally superior to the M-16 and M-14, as well as the Kalashnikov series of rifles, the weapon COULD have been the next generation of standard arms. I think HK should have said, well, we'll do some re-fitting for your weapons systems, but we want it on the papers that you'll begin limited distribution of our G-11, LMG-11 and PDW-11 systems in with the package, at complete cost to us. If soldiers could get their hands on the weapons, I'm sure they'd have liked them enough to cause a turnaround.