Official MM Firearms Thread

[CaptainHenreh]

so in the "this is kind of cool" and "Rex continues to be pleasantly surprised" arena, peep this dope shit from Heckler und Koch:






Whoa momma, it's the Revenge of the XM8 and Rexy liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiike.

Lemme 'splain.

Way back before the GWOT, Uncle Sam was (as he always is in times of peace) trying to figure out how to make the individual soldier more deadly. This makes a lot of sense if you think about it, as at the time most of our engagements were small scale fires like Mogadishu, and the more effective each Individual Warfighter is, the less butter and fewer boots you gotta buy. One time cost vs recurring.

So they developed this program called the "OICW": Objective Individual Combat Weapon



It's a computer controlled 25MM grenade launcher with a 5.56 modified H&K G36 on the bottom. The idea was that you could have an airburst grenade programmed to explode after traveling a certain distance, so you could coldify Bad Hombres hiding behind barriers. Then, if they were too close, you just waxed them with the short 5.56 rifle attached at the bottom.

Then, this whole system became modular, then failed because it didn't work all that well and was hilariously expensive. BUT, the modified g36 at the bottom began to be looked at as a replacement for the M16 and M4, because you gotta remember this is the early 2000's, and the M4 isn't the Greatest Weapon Known To Man at this point. It doesn't fold so it's hard to use in a vehicle, and it's finicky when the barrel gets shorter than 12 inches and the magazines suck donkey tail.

So HK takes this modified G36 and makes some improvements and calls it the XM8:


Lots of modularity, lots of polymer, completely ambidextrous controls, integrated weapons sight, (with laser ranging! Thanks OICW program!) increased reliability, a Safe-1-3-FULLTILTBOOGY fire control group and a fancy new polymer magazine with a consistent curve that made feeding problems not problems. It was a really good rifle. It also cost what a really good rifle cost, and we had them dang ole WMD's from Saddam to deal with and no time for new toys! It languished, and what's worse, HundK was like "ok US Military, fool me once, shame on me, fool me like 30 fucking times and fuck you guys, seriously," and stopped submitting stuff for military trials.

Fast forward a few years and Magpul (pbut) creates this concept called the 'Masada' in an attempt to address what they saw as the shortcomings of the XM8:


If you've played any video game in the last 5 years, you know this rifle as the ACR. I owned one. It was pretty cool. But when Bushmaster bought the rights to produce the Masada, they screwed up a couple of key things and the rifle didn't really get the traction it should have.

Fast forward another couple of years and there's a huge scandal involving the Bundeswehr (the german army) and HK's G36. Namely, the G36 is a combat rifle NOT a light machine gun and when you treat it like a light machine gun trying to kill two or three dudes holed up in a hill-over-yonder in A-Stan, a design flaw rears it's ugly head and your sight-to-where-the-bullets-go relationship goes all to hell. German Army says "we're getting a new rifle!" and shit, they can afford it. France decides to get a new rifle too, because the FAMAS is a hot pile of garbage, and they adopt the HK416, which is just an M4 with the G36's gas system. But the German army doesn't want the 416, because it doesn't do well in the cold, and if they have to go to war with Russia ever again they want a rifle that works in the winter. (See also: Every war Russia's ever been in ever.)

So.

Here we are.

The HK433:

compared to the ACR:


It's very exciting because I thought both the G36 AND the ACR were very solid, usable designs that I was a big fan of. Each had their faults (the G36 used TOO much polymer while the ACR was overly heavy) but this looks like to potentially address the faults of both AND, HK claims, for a lower price.

Combine that with HK building a brandy shiney new weapons factory here in American (presumably to assist in the making great again thereof) and we might actually see this motherfucker on shelves, and I've never seen an HK product that wasn't quality. I've seen plenty I didn't like, but they were all quite well made.

Sorry for the wall of text, I just really like cool new design things, and this came out of NOWHERE. No rumors, no rumblings, just HK going "Hey I know we sell the 416 like gangbusters but here's this new rifle that fixes everything everyone hates about the G36, hope you like it."

I predict potential adoption of this rifle by the UK within 5 years.