The Glory Might of the XM29.

[MT2008]

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.