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There are other rifles out there , some better , some worse than the DI AR15 type .
Me I would take a SIG550 or AUG , or maybe HK33/53 , or Galil , Stoner63A over most others in 5.56mm , .
HK 416/417 piston rifles used my more countries than you would at 1st think .
As to the M16/M4 or any other contender , so what , honestly it has some times little to do with how good a rifle is over another , most times it comes down to timing & marketing over reality , RE the Galil , most Isreali soldiers wanted to have the M16 instead of thier own home grown Galil .
Why is that , is it because the M16 is more reliable , better , stronger etc NO , all they want is the lightest rifle possible to carry to the coffee shops etc .
Some times the end user has no or little input as to what rifle is adopted or not adopted .
As to the great SCAR , meant to be driven by US SF , who where disatisifed the M16/M4 DI rifles , wanted more .
Interesting to see the SCAR lite issued for about 3 mths , and with then with drawn , nice , why , because the parts supply conflicted with the M16 ( you would think they knew that when the ordered them ) , and they did not offer enough over a std M4 to justify keeping them ? , that sounds like logistics talk and not end user talk to me .
What is kept is the SCAR heavy ( 7.62x51mm ) as this enough different & offers things the others donot ? , reah right , its not like the US uses ANY AR10/SR25 rifles do they .
Interesting that the HK33F won the French army trialls in mid 70s , against the M16 & FN CAL , by quite a margin , Opps , the French did not like the results , so decided they would not have any of the 3 trialled , but design a complete french rifle was the only right thing to do .
Later Chris
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What is also interesting is the rifle the Brit SAS specied from Diemco , they went with a heavier and longer barrel than the std M4 , for improved reliability & accuracy , maybe all those M203/HK320s where bending the lite M4 barrels .
For those that donot know the barrels made by Diemco , where coldhammer forged & cromelined , as such they last 2-3x longer than a std USA M4 barrel , so thats 10k for the US variants & 30k for the Canadian M16s , thats a bit of a difference .
The Dutch who brought a boat load of Canadian M16/M4 rifles , now re-arming with new HK416 variants .
At the moment , most Armies have a 7.62x51mm AR10 type rifle in service as a DMR , and its either a SR-25 , LMT or a HK417 , and at the moment the last 2 are the most used variants .
Later Chris
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You guys maybe interested to know that during the Vietnam war the US Seals used some HK33 rifles , most have seen the odd photo from the top of a rifle that looks like a HK , and have thought it was a G3 , just like I did .
The photo was looking down into a boat from above and you can see its a HK type cocking tube etc , you cannot see , side on to see the mag or any other detail .
It appears it was a limited number of German made HK33 rifles with 40rd mags , that where sent marked H&R T223 , as if they where made in the USA by H&R , they where not , they are German made , and where an entry in the early squad machinegun trialls in 1965 during the war .
Seems the seals liked them , and carried a few into battle with them in Nam .
The USMC did coy level trialls with the Stoner63 , they liked them and wanted them instead of the M16 , but the US wanted one rifle as standard rather than 2 .
The Stoner63 would have been maybe better for them than the M16 , as in the surf, beach area & salt water environment , maybe steel would hold up better than Aluminium .
It was certainly much more modular in design , rifle , carbine , belt & mag feed LMG versions etc .
Later Chris
