The problem I have with the Steyr ACR is the ammunition.
Flechettes are fantastic against personnel when you launch a few hundred of them at once.
As a single projectile, they are a complete waste of time and money. It was another example of how sometimes theory is all well and good in the laboratory but absolutely wrong in practice.
A single, tiny, very high speed projectile is almost certain to overpenetrate and cause minimal damage. Despite all the ideas both theoretical and practical about hydrostatic shock, a single flechette simply does not cause enough damage and at the end of the day, it's blood loss and physical damage to body systems that causes incapacitation or death.
The odds that the flechette would bend into the required fish hook shape and supposedly cause massive trauma are so small as to make it better sense to throw the ACR at the enemy than shoot them with it. That's assuming the flechette didn't actually get stuck in a bone with that sharply pointed nose it sported.
They should have chambered the ACR for 5.56mm, at least then you could still shoot at and kill the enemy with it.
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