The XM8

[commando552]

Originally Posted by Mandolin

Except using a BAR to support other BARs doesn't make sense, and that's what using the M27 and M4 together is.

That isn't really fair, the M27 is far more suitable to automatic fire than an M4 due to the piston gas system and longer barrel with heavier profile. An M4 would overheat much more quickly than an M27.

As for comparing the M27 to L86, one of the differences here is that the M27 is intended to replace some SAWs which IMHO it is totally unsuitable for. With the L86 on the other hand, it was not actually replacing a machine gun, in fact it was replacing some rifles to augment the GPMGs which were still there. The problem is though that what you generally want a squad machine gun for is suppression, and both of the weapons in question are too accurate with too small a magazine to do this very well.

I think the L86A2 is actually a pretty good weapon, it just needs to be used correctly, in that it is really more of a DMR or for doing more targeted suppression of a firing point or something like that. In recent testing the army is actually tending to veer back towards using a DMR optimised version of the L86A2 rather than the L129A1 which hasn't performed as well as was initially hoped.