As a former user of the G36 i will just say it has its share of problems. Given a little familiarization I could see myself taking an HK416 over it and I am pretty confident the majority of active G36 users, of whom i know quite a few, would agree. Sig i have no idea. I bet you have years of experience with all of them right?
Concerning the Fedorov: the prototype cartridge was even stronger at over 3000 joules (compared to 2500 of the Arisaka), or in other words 7.62 NATO level. So there.
I've screwed around with an SL-8 before. I thought it felt flimsy and with a poor fit and finish. Left a bad taste in my mouth; I like a gun that can be used confidently.
If i had a dollar for every AK vs M16 agrument i stumbled on id be able to afford both of them and provide myself with a first hand evaluation...
Tell me about it. I've lost 10 IQ points reading this thread alone.
AK wins for me. accuracy, weight, reliability, noise and cost aside, it wins for me because i like the idea of having a gun you can bash someone thats trying to kill you to death with it. Hardly a nice image. But it could happen one day... Bashing ability is important.
Wait, so you ignore
every aspect of performance except one in your evaluation? You can bash people to people with tons of guns. Ones with proper sights, a bolt hold-open device, the ability to be fired from a low prone position, light ammunition, good accuracy...
To ignore all that stuff in favour of ONE advantage is kind of illogical. A good gun would do all things well, not one thing well and the rest so-so.
The real problem is that current AR's are too wimpy (5.56x45 or 5.45x39), they get good accuracy at range, but they have no real force left in them at ranges past 300~500 meters, so it's not really usefull.
That's what we have DMs for; most firefights are well within 300-500 meters, so it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to use a larger round that is a bit wasted.
The russians dealt with this using an SVD in each squad, so they could reach out past 300m if need be.
What's really needed is a mix between the 7.62x39 and the 5.56x45, something with the more penetrating power of the 7mm and the better accuracy of the 5mm, so probably something in 6mm point something or other..
It's not the caliber that's accurate, it's the cartridge. 7.62x39 is just poorly-designed all around, with an only slightly-angled shoulder and a bullet that is only useful if traveling at about 50% higher velocity than it would out of an AK. It's about as twice as heavy as it needs to be; it manages to cut the performance of a full-sized 7.62mm rifle cartridge in half while weighing only a little less.
5.56 wounds more violently (up to about 150-250m, depending on barrel length), and still penetrates quite well, thanks to the magic of the SS109 and its steel penetrator. It penetrates even better at longer ranges; at that distance, it travels too slow to fragment, and thus retains velocity better when it hits it's target.
5.56 could use a bit of beefing up, but it's a good cartridge for ARs to begin with, being light, low-recoiling, accurate, and optimal for close to medium range.
That's exactly what i was talking about, a caliber somewhere between 6-7mm which can offer better stopping power and performance at range while still being light and handy to use.
It's more-or-less one or the other, thanks to those dastardly laws of physics. You can't push a bullet faster without accelerated barrel wear and more recoil, and you can't just upscale it without increasing weight (and, again, recoil).
Infantry doctrine revolves around engaging enemies well within effective range (around 300m usually) and using artillery/CAS/snipers/vehicle-mounted weapons to take care of enemies outside of it. It's the most efficient way; they did that more or less in WWII, and realized therein that the half-kilometer effective ranges of full-sized rifles were pretty much always wasted, and that guns that could put out a lot of fire and cartridges light enough that soldiers can carry a huge amount would be better. In other words, the design philosophy ARs today are pretty much optimized for current warfare.
Having a medium machine gun or two in your squad is all good, but it's putting all your eggs in one basket one they are exhausted of ammunition or taken out of action.
I remember seeing a clip from Future Weapons with that moron Mack talking about how awful squad support weapons were. He went around like an idiot with a loose belt slung over his shoulder like Rambo then complained afterward that SAWs suck because the belt can get caught and break (
that's why you keep it in the poly box you fool). He then completely invalidated all of his opinions when he said that SAWs can't use STANAG magazines, meaning you can't "bum mags off your buddies".
He then brought out an AR-15 that had a TOTALLY REVOLUTIONARY feature that made it fire in open-bolt in full-auto and closed-bolt in semi-auto, meaning it would keep cool if laying down rapid fire and would still be accurate in semi-auto. He said it would be perfect to arm entire squads with instead of SAWs, carbines, and rifles, because it can DO BOTH.
Never mind that you can't lay down a curtain of fire very long with 30-round magazines, or that AR-15s are so light that they're not acceptably controllable in full-auto for supporting fire use, or that overheating mitigation sucks on them, no, a gun that can accomplish both tasks to a mediocre degree is perfectly good.
Point is, you simply cannot have a weapon that's good, or even decent, at every task. I would rather have a squad of weapons that each do their job well than a squad of weapons that each do all jobs terribly.
My opinion on the "best assault rifle", you hypothetically ask? There is no "best assault rifle". My
favourite AR is, however, the AR-18. Beautiful in a purely utilitarian way, hellfire-accurate, very reliable, and lighter than your average AR-15. Also folding stock-capable, unlike most AR-15s. Such a shame it never caught on, though it was tarted up with a bunch of plastic and HK logos and made into the G36 after being ****ted up and turned into an extremely heavy bullpup by the name of SA-80. Both are inferior weapons, in my opinion.
Plus it was used extensively by the IRA, which is all the badass cred it needs.