Quote:
Originally Posted by Roger Rambo
I'm not sure where you could downsize. The Army already abandoned the OICW part of the project since they found the 20mm grenades inadaquete. Certainly can't downsize the caliber here.
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I'm not surprised that they abandoned the project.
It's not the first time the Army has attempted this kind of thing.
Back in the 1950s they tried to develop a weapon dubbed the SPIW (Special Purpose Individual Weapon).
Ian Hogg wrote a book on it called
The Deadliest Weapon That Never Was: SPIW.
Here's a picture of it.
It looks like a similar concept to the OICW.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Renegade334
The other big reason is because the AN-94 uses a double-tap fast-track loading system, which "preloads" a second round beneath the bolt, allowing it to be chambered just after the first round is fired and the bolt slams back (guaranteeing a theoretical, non-continuous rate of fire of 1,800rpm if my memory serves me well). It's quite a complicated system and not that easy to maintain, which is why the Russians prefer to leave the AN-94 to the special forces instead of the regular army, which is more content with a simpler weapon.
They more or less succeeded with the XM29 SABR, but even that got shafted then broken down into multiple components (the targeting system, the XM25 and the ill-fated XM8). Budget cuts and a bevy of other issues (too short a barrel, etc) finally spelled its doom. Not to mention that the one system it was supposed to work with, the Land Warrior (which could have made use of the fire-behind-cover concept), was also cancelled right after it got fielded in Iraq...although now they're banking on the Future Force Warrior program, originally the follow-on to the Objective Force Warrior (the LW's projected successor), another prog that slipped into oblivion.
But the XM29's engineering issues didn't prevent South Korea from riding on the US Army's coattails with their new Daewoo K11:
 
And that one is just about to be issued to regular troops. |
Wow, kudos to South Korea.
That certainly looks a lot less cumbersome than the American version.
Very nice.