Quote:
Originally Posted by waiting4something
Yes, I remember something about the G11 ammo being a major probelm, which is another reason I find it hard to believe that this weapon would have been fielded. It wouldn't be a good idea at the height of the cold war to try to produce a ammunition that only one or two company's made. It's not a great idea that both those company's are in Germany eithier, which could have red tanks pulling up in the parking lot in a short amount of time.
But, still why do all that research and development to just throw something away? Why not sell your product to law enforcement? HK just does dumb shit sometimes. They tend to snub the civil American market, which doesn't make sense eithier. I think they just have a history of bad marketing. HK may have thought they were going sell their gun, but that doesn't mean the military really thought they where gonna buy it.
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Your first point is the same one I was trying to make towards the beginning of this thread, about why I don't think the G-11 would have been fielded even in the T2K timeline. The ammo's the problem, and there's just too much 5.56mm NATO and 7.62mm NATO ammunition already on hand to make adoption of a weapon with totally different ammunition worth it. It's the same strike that the US military had against the G-11 during the ACR competition. It's the primary obstacle against adoption of a cartridge like 6.8mm SPC or 6.5mm Grendel weapons for the US military now.
However, I think HK stuck with the development of the G-11 for as long as they did because...damnit, it
is a good idea! It's a revolutionary weapon that promised to greatly reduce the weight of ammunition that a soldier would have to carry, as well as greatly reducing the amount of dirt that got into the mechanism of the weapon. It's a very compact rifle that has accuracy on par with most other designs of its time, and the 4.7mm Caseless round had damage potential almost on par with the 5.56mm NATO round while having better penetration. The damn thing even floats, from some descriptions I've heard! It was tested extensively by US and NATO special operations units (including, it is rumored, under combat conditions by US special ops units and the SAS), and they loved it. The shooters and armorers in the US ACR competition had a lot of praise for it. Getting past the adoption of radically-different ammunition and figuring out what to do with tens of millions of rounds of your old ammo is the problem!