As much as I would love to see the gopher round replaced, they aren't even considering it in reality. The only thing they are doing is considering it for urban warfare for special forces. Thus the SPC name...Special Purpose Cartridge. The normal grunt will never see it. I never saw anything wrong with the 7.62 NATO. If they wanted smaller then the 243 Win would work better than teh 223.

I wish they would stop screwing around with the mouse gun and now the rat gun and switch to a FN FAL/G3 platform like they should have in the first place instead of the AR crapola.

My brother in law completed basic a year ago and is about to come home from his first Iraq tour. He was told in the basic, that the 223 is junk and an unreliable man stopper, by his Drill Instructor towards the class.

Sounds like the DI thought out loud. Not the best for new troopies to hear. They have to work with what they have.

The M16. Fastest shooting squirrel rifle ever issued to a standing army.

I think it has tremendous potential as a hunting cartridge especially for slighter built people and kids coming into the sport.

@#$%@#%, some of you boys are hard on the old M-16. Just watched "Tales of the Gun" on the History Channel last week and part of it was about the development of the M-16. The M-14 was replaced because it was heavy and totally uncontrollable in automatic fire with all but the most highly trained riflemen. A soldier could carry almost 3 times the amount of ammo for an M-16 compared to an M-14.

As for the smaller caliber, the M-16 was revolutionary because of the Army's previous obsession with large caliber, long-range weapons. After studying the issue, the large majority of soldiers didn't engage targets until well under 200 yards, so there was no widespread need for a standard issue rifle to have the capability of shooting 200+ yards with accuarcy and "man-stopping" capability.

That's what I can remember from the episode. I think the old DI must have been hittin' the "sauce" that morning.


P.S. I read somewhere that the 6.8 was not going to be a standard issue round. As the SPC indicates, it's planned to be used for "special purposes" (long-range sniping?, special forces).