Current status on military M4/M16

[Ole Cowboy]

There's four versions that I know of, but the second one (SPCII) is the most popular. I can definitely understand why the military chose not to switch to it. The 5.56 isn't "broken" by any means, so there's no real reason to switch from it. I think the 6.8 still has merit for individual riflemen and hunters.

WOW, up to 4, in my world that tells me a lot.

I love the .270 of which the 6.8 is based upon. I truly believe had they done better engineering or perhaps gone to Win and say hey, lets redesign the .270 rd into a more modern form factor while keeping the bullet diameter I think it could have worked. But instead we had a handful of folks who had sugar plum dreams of getting Uber wealthy by selling a new rd to the govt and as the govt goes so goes the rest of the world. Greed and stupidity might very well have snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory...I personally was taken back as I thought the one weakness of the 5.56 was its stopping power when facing an drugged up enemy on the battlefield.

 

[TX69]

Dang, someone should have told me it was dead before I bought a 6.8 upper

I thought 6.8 was an open standard... Lots of people making barrels and ammo for it, unlike the Grendal which had been proprietary for so long.

I think it is. I looked at the 6.8 and th 6.5 five years ago and couldn't make it happen. From what I had read (no experience) the 6.8 was not as good at long range as the 6.5 Grendel and there were other concerns about accuracy I think. I had a AA Grendel on order but got all kinds of run around after they got my CC number. The backlog of orders, excessive time waiting for fulfillment (first Ophucho scare), ammo prices and lack thereof, no mags, all was becoming endless at the time to get into that platform. Stayed with the 5.56 16" and have been satisfied.

 

[Ole Cowboy]

The 6.8 as proposed to the military was a developed rd by some folks who owned the rights to it. I have no idea where or what the status of any of that is now. That said this does not stop anyone from building weapons or selling components that would use it anymore than than me starting a company to build cars that use a Chev engine, I would not have to pay money to GM for the rights.

However in order to make money you have to have platforms that use your developed rd, you also need to convince Win, Federal etc to manuf the rd because there is a market for it. The hype on the 6.8 was that SOCOM was looking at it and we are former Spec Ops players and we got the inside track to SOCOM, who if they adopt it then they will also adopt it for the rest of the military. Now we are talking BILLIONS and BILLIONS of rds worldwide. My former employee and good friend (we still are in contact almost daily) told me every guy who sees himself as some kind of a gun genius and has a reloading setup shows up or ships his magic bullet that will win wars and solve all the military's problems. Then when he get turned down he contacts his Congress guy and asks for an investigation 'cause he is _____________ (fill in the blank) and being discriminated against. He told me they get so much of this that they started firing off a letter the moment it showed up in a box and the letter said something like this: 'we are looking at your .47 cal Butt Buster and would like 100,000 rounds for further testing and if approved in stage 1 tests we would need an additional million rds for testing.'

He said they rarely heard another word unless it was the guy calling up to see if the Army would pay for it...LOL

The stories my friend would tell me, some guys just showing up with a shoe box of ammo under their arm and demanding the Army look at now, it would end the war as we know it.

 

[IXLR8]

Great article! Kudos to someone that actually has used the discussed items in combat situations.