Daewoo rifles are cool.

I hate how a lot of NATO countries are trying those airburst rifles. They are almost as retarded as those Future Soldier bullshit that a lot of countries are trying to make.

Alot of NATO countries are trying them because once they get it right, it'll be a huge tactical advantage, and whoever has it in service first will not only have that advantage, they'll be in a position to make alot of money off of it.

Haven't exactly fired it extensively under field conditions, but I've certainly handled them and I wasn't overly impressed.

The XM29 is hardly the biggest waste of taxpayer dollars by the U.S. military. Off the top of my head, I can think of a dozen DoD contracts that should have never been awarded, and idiotic prototypes that were doomed to fail from the beginning and cost WAY more, but that's another story.

The main problem with the OICW/SABR program was that it was based on a flawed idea originating back to the 1980s. The DoD's analysts back then issued a report called the SAMP (Small Arms Master Plan), which basically said that the trend in small arms for the future was going to be integrating computer technology into them to make them more accurate. By the late-1990s, when R.I.S. was introduced for the M4, it became pretty obvious that the trend of the future was going to be modularity, not "Fifth Element"/"Starship Troopers"-type bullshit.

It seems ridiculous to us in retrospect, given how absurdly huge and expensive the XM29 turned out to be, but U.S. military thinking in the 1990s was still rooted in the Cold War era - which was basically to anticipate and plan for any future trends in weaponry so that the Russians or Chinese didn't beat us to the punch, and then invest a shitload of money into this new trend. Now that the DoD has begun to think in terms of "4th generation"/asymmetrical warfare (meaning, they expect to fight ragtag Islamic militias armed with old AKs and RPGs, rather than well-equipped Commie states on a nearly-equal technological footing), they no longer see the need to have the latest, greatest weaponry that money can buy. That's why the DoD is now in no hurry to replace the direct impingement M16 series rifles, despite all the people who insist that we urgently need the 416 or the SCAR or whatever else.

See that men, guys? He knows shit.

Thank you Matt for such a imformative post. Also, could you talk about those DoD contracts? I'm sure the Future Soldier bullshit will be part of it.

That's the same logic they're finally applying across the board. Most US technology now in service or about to be was designed for large scale armored engagements when the Soviets finally crossed the Fulda gap.

You want to talk about wastes of money, what about the F-22 (which they're finally getting rid of)? Yeah, it's the most capable fighter aircraft ever made. It's also the most expensive. The F-15 and new F/A-18s are already superior to or at least competetive with anything they're likely to come up against, and the F-35 is more than good enough for a next step and alot cheaper.

Or the gas turbine engine on the Abrams. Makes it pretty much the worst gas guzzler ever made, and hard as hell for infantry to operate with for fear of getting cooked by the exhaust. Add to that the fact that the thing is basically useless inside narrow city streets, and whats the point? Sure, it's probably the most effective tank around for armor-on-armor engagement, and the most effective enemy tank its ever engaged were Iraqi T-72 knock-offs. That's why the vehicle of the future is the Striker (which has its own issues, but that's another story).

I like some of the elements of the Future Soldier program more than I like the program itself.

I think the adoption of the F/A-18 by the Navy to be a huge waste of money. Mostly because it was quite obviously inferior to the F-16, its competitor in the Lightweight Fighter Program (which, most people forget, was supposed to select a fighter that would be standardized in both the USAF and Navy). I also have an extremely negative attitude towards the AH-64 Apache.

I agree with the F-22 thing. The F-35 is much better. The US Govt. and the Russian Goverment should team up and make tanks together. The Russians make effective and cheap tanks.

Yeah, I personally didn't shed a tear when Obama's administration announced they weren't going to fund any more F-22s. Obama may be a liberal who thinks the DoD's budget is better used in his bullshit stimulus and healthcare plans, but he's basically right about the F-22 - even if it's for the wrong reasons.

The Abrams is an excellent tank. But driving it into urban areas (where it moves much slower due to the inherent obstacles) is the dumbest thing you can do. The Russians learned the hard way in Chechnya that bringing tanks into cities makes them vulnerable to RPG gunners hiding on rooftops, and that's why our Abrams tanks became RPG magnets early in the war.

Anyway, U.S. military thinking has improved a LOT in the past five years, since Rumsfeld's tenure (which I thought was disastrous). But unfortunately for those of us who are big into hardware, it's not quite the same as the Cold War. The kind of wars we fight nowadays are wars where it doesn't matter if an M1-A2 is better than a T-90, or if the SCAR is a better choice than an M4. Today's wars are more about ground-level intelligence than weaponry.

Talk more about the Future Soldier project. Please.

Not sure what I can tell you about it that you don't already know. But it is important to remember that the Land Warrior program, like the OICW program, dates back to the late-80s, early-90s, so it's a product of Cold War era thinking. That by itself should be a red flag.

It's designed to improve soldier's abilities in urban warfare, which by itself isn't a bad idea (in Iraq, we've done lots of fighting in cities). But it's also based mostly on the assumption that our soldiers will be encountering enemies who are well-equipped, well-trained, and who will actually attempt to engage them in CQB. The jihadists just aren't like that - they're poorly armed and even more poorly trained, so their style is to avoid fighting as much as possible (which is why IEDs are so popular).

As I've said, street-level intelligence and winning hearts and minds are the main ingredients in successful counter-insurgency warfare. Technology just doesn't matter, because you can expect that your opponents will have nothing but the same rusty old AKs and RPGs that your dad (or even his dad) encountered in combat decades ago. In that kind of warfare, using high-tech equipment is like using an axe to do triple-bypass surgery.