ORIGINAL: cma3366a

the POS M16

I think what it comes down to is, although it had teething trouble, the M16 has been massaged into a pretty decent weapon. When in trained hand its very accurate, pretty reliable, and has about the right balance of power to ammunition weight. When the US military made it's great weapons changes in the past, It was because there was some great technological leap on the horizon, one that would give us an edge over our enemies. In current times however, there are no such great leaps being made in small arms, all we'd be doing is trading one select fire rifle firing an intermediate cartridge, who's been in the system long enough to have had its bugs worked out,for another select fire rifle chambered for an intermediate cartridge, with unknown problems waiting to be worked out.