I'm going to attempt to temper your enthusiasm a bit. While I agree that the rifle is not the wunderwaffe the Army wants it to be and their procurement practices are, in typical bureaucratic fashion, utter garbage, I think this article is overreaching for a clear cut conclusion. It would be nice and easy if the rifle was just terrible and we could dismiss it as another M-14, but I think the reality is not so simple.
Going point by point: the mud test he cites is, as stressed by it's creator, extremely intensive, and should not be taken as a standard measure of reliability. Notably, the HK-416 performs the same as the XM-5 did, but this has not stopped the 416 from being adopted by many of the world's largest armies, including the US Marines (though I admit the USMC plan make the M-17 standard issue is half baked at best). The author also mentions the issue of carcinogenic gas but dismisses it without properly addressing it; alarmingly, this could be interpreted as stating that giving soldiers cancer is worth a marginal increase in reliability. I don't think that was his intention, but the result of cherry picking evidence to over emphasize the rifle's worst qualities.
On the armor piercing capabilities, he acknowledges that defeating level IV plates "unassisted" (which I take to mean with lead core ball ammunition) is not in the spec, so from my perspective we should assume it doesn't exist. Criticizing the Army for saying otherwise is completely fair. A notable issue with citing civilian testing is that civilians do not have access to the high pressure ammunition, which is specified. Every commentator I've seen has raised their eyebrows at the promised 50k PSI (iirc) of this cartridge, so the feasibility is fair game for discussion and criticism. But if that was the author's intent then he should have addressed it directly, instead of deflecting to an Alabamian shooting the civilian loading.
I won't try to rebut issues with the supply chain, I am also concerned about how intertwined the military industrial complex is with the global supply chain (I have a personal conspiracy theory that government support for environmentalism is at least partially driven by a desire to preserve the natural resources of the USA for a potential war... but I digress). Again, the author glosses over a fix in the form of steel penetrators by simply stating that they are also hard to make, but wouldn't they be easier than tungsten? I assume the reason for tungsten he alludes to is because it has better penetration, but is it necessary for the 6.8 cartridge to achieve penetration or is steel sufficient? These are things I think would be worth investigating, but they are glossed over in service of snappy quotes for detractors to cite.
I'm not sure what point he is trying to make about the ballistics. I thought he was trying to say the high pressure as specified isn't possible, but then weakly praises the increased case pressure technology. If his criticism is that this is just higher pressure 7.62, then it's still an improvement. Competition shooters and hunters already benefit from cartridges like 6.5mm Creedmoor, another 7.62 case necked down to a 6mm-class bullet, achieving flatter trajectories with little loss of terminal performance. The even higher pressure of the military spec cartridge should push these benefits further.
The supply chain criticisms for the XM-157 sight are again valid, though I wonder if they also apply to existing sights like Aimpoints. I have never seen any claim that the XM-157 was supposed to be "auto aiming." Those "usable seconds" that the shooter needs to range the target would otherwise be spent wasting one or more shots missing as they walk in their fire, and if those seconds are critical then the shooter can still fire without ranging. The bigger benefit of the sight which is glossed over, in my opinion, is how it integrates the IR laser that every infantryman straps to his rifle anyway, saving space and weight. The rangefinder also has uses in target identification, for reporting positions and calling in fire support. I fail to see many downsides here.
This is a typical watered down hit piece, the same kind of thing that was leveled at the M-16 or the Maxim gun by curmudgeons who fail to see the benefits of technological progress. There are legitimate criticisms of the NGSW program: increased weight while shrinking ammunition capacity, introducing a new cartridge to the supply chain, and yes, terminal effectiveness of the cartridge. Only the latter is addressed here, and poorly. Notably he does not even mention the XM-250 machine gun, which by all accounts is f**king fantastic.
All of that said, I agree the XM-5 will not be the next standard service weapon. I think it has potential though, in a DMR or specialist role. The XM-157 should be mass issued now, and I hope the XM-250 also sees wide adoption, perhaps chambered for 7.62 or 5.56.
Edit: I do like the memes though https://ifunny.co/picture/bApDQZJa9
scitodor
1yr ago
wow, Karl did videos with one of the murderers in the CHAZ militia, that's way worse than I was expecting.
Are you repeating a statement from the ARFCOM thread/other socials or is that your assessment? Genuinely curious.
I ask because the escalation of rhetoric throughout this ordeal has been really bothering me. The first one that stuck out at me was how Karl and all of his supporters are now "groomers." It's easy to see how his detractors arrived here: he allegedly made comments supporting "drag queen story hour," and drag queens have been reported making sexual comments to children. But is implicitly, nay, explicitly accusing Karl of grooming children helping? As far as the "antifa CHAZ murder" claim goes, to my knowledge this has been leveled at Tacticool Girlfriend, an openly trans gun YouTuber. I have never seen this claim made with evidence, though I haven't made any effort to confirm or deny it myself. But again, it's now more often than not that I see this person referred to as "the CHAZ killer" as if it is hard fact.
scitodor
1yr ago
I have followed Karl for quite a while and I still don't know what he was thinking with that post. He is far enough left where it is not beyond the pale that those are his true feelings, though more extreme than anything he'd publicly expressed before. However, he is also a troll, and an explicit part of his mission statement is to "slay sacred cows." He even made an emblem of a silhouetted cow with a sword through it to represent this idea for his channel.
Personally, I have decided to walk away from his content. Regardless of his true beliefs I cannot support someone who makes such agitating statements. It's not a decision I made lightly.
scitodor
1yr ago
They were friendly until the most recent drama. Nwallins glossed over it, perhaps for the better as the details are buried in long forum threads and private Discord servers. Both previously maintained the story that Ian was too busy with his own channel, so Karl took over InRange in a mutually amicable split and the there was no bad blood between them. However, when Brownells decided to back out of their deal, they put their remaining stock of WWSD rifles on liquidation sale, and Ian promoted it on his social media. He all but confirmed this was him choosing a side, stating that he wants to continue working with Brownells in the future. For this, Karl called Ian a backstabber and a coward.
I've been following these men for many years, and when this exploded a weeks ago I was pretty torn up. I imagine it was like witnessing the break-up of the Beatles.
scitodor
1yr ago
I actually think there is a good reason for doctors to wear masks: spit. Quite often, saliva just gets ejected from the mouth, whether it's from coughing or merely speaking. It doesn't really matter if masks prevents spread of disease via spit, it's just gross to get spat on, and this is a situation where I'm comfortable saying that it "just makes sense" that masks will block ejecta from the mouth. It goes both directions, people don't want to be spat on by doctors, and doctors don't want to get their patients' spit in their mouths.
Anecdote: my mother noticed a cashier at her local grocery store had briefly stopped masking when the mandates lifted, but went back to wearing one. When asked, the cashier said she wasn't worried about COVID, but she had realized that the mask prevented her from getting customers' spit in her mouth. And cashiers don't have to get right up in their customers' faces.
Agree on all accounts. There is so much we still don't know, especially about the cartridges. The Army could be hiding this information because it's embarrassing... or that could be SOP. I don't have the experience to say, and I doubt many of the detractors do.
I wonder, if one looked at everything the Army ever adopted and counted up the number of items with performance claims that turned out to be false, how many times it actually happened. People point to failed programs saying "look at all the stupid stuff they tried to make!" but the vast majority failed before adoption... which is how the system is supposed to work! And don't even mention The Pentagon Wars, that book is full of stupidity and lies.
I remember reading discussions on the plastic ammunition before the NGSW was awarded. Some (most?) of the commentators had the Sig entry in distant third because it was barely any different than existing platforms and we're talking up the supply chain benefits of the GD and Textron entries. Honestly, the seethe when Sig won was pretty funny. I take it to mean that the other systems just didn't work very well. At least True Velocity is continuing to develop their ammunition, so maybe even.277 Fury will come in plastic someday.
Nice reference on the Trounds too, the Dardick makes a lot more sense when you look at it as a platform for the Trounds instead of a serious pistol design. I think they also had an auto cannon design that used the Trounds to achieve some ungodly fire rate.
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