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Originally Posted by LurpyGeek
Yes, make sure you read the article, people. The XM8 died in 2005. There has been talk of selling the design to South Africa, but not much else.
Not so impressed with the FN SCAR myself. Reports of the stock breaking were the first dash against it. I don't understand the logic of the open gas system. Seems like it would be really easy to get dust and all kinds of other garbage in there.
They haven't decided to go with anything. The HK 416 is being tested, but I haven't heard any reports of it being adopted or fielded.
The FN SCAR-L is being fielded in limited quantities by special forces only.
A lot of eyes are turned to the Bushmaster/Remington ACR (formerly Magpul Masada), but it's beginning to be doubtful that it will ever see the light of day and it looks like it would have a lot of the same problems the SCAR has had.
I'm pretty partial to the Robinson XCR myself (enough to actually purchase one) but I don't need to get into the politics of that right now.
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416 has several years fielded with the organization that designed it, as well as a few others.
The Navy and part of the Army side of SOCOM are using all the SCAR's right now. This time it's the Navy side of the house that will hold the most validation responsibilities, inside SOCOM. (The Army already had a shot and just had the .45 project too.)
SCAR came in and took a big lead real quick; first in its performance, next in the package. It raised eyebrows when the entire package, I mean entire, shared more commonality than 416, 417, M8 etc.
Plastic issues? Assume they'll be fixed when the engineers get to do it again.
The Army is looking at getting a plastic helmet too, by the way. I don't mean kevlar either, like ACH/MICH/PASGT. Polymers have finally got that much stronger than steel; I mean a real molded plastic.