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Have any of the non-AR successor platforms taken off? Last news I heard was Germany (partially?) ditching their replacement to go AR. Did the IAR project for the Marines ever happen, or did it get shelved to buy them more anti-ship missiles?
As far as AR alternatives out on the market, I think most only have any success in their country of manufacture (examples: VHS-2, Howa Type 20, MSBS), and any country without enough of a home industry to draw on (e.g. France) will probably just buy AR-15s, HK 416s, or maybe CZ Bren 2s.
Yeah, because they're hilariously overpriced. When you can buy 6 ARs for the cost of one (in the VHS-2's case) and it's only marginally better it's not a surprise they aren't flying off the shelves.
People give HK shit all the time for this but all the European manufacturers do it with their military rifles (Beretta and CZ are better than average, or at least Beretta would be if they actually still sold the ARX-160). Sure, that strategy works in Europe where AR-15s cost just as much or more than the indigenous options, but expecting that to apply everywhere?
Oh, Beretta abandoned the ARX? I know they have the NARP now (surprise, it's an AR!), I didn't realize they had given up on the ARX.
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Not to my knowledge. I think the Army is still claiming they're gonna retire the m4 and standardize on Spears, but I'll believe it when I see it. There was a really good writeup I found once, talking about the "Glockpocalypse" that wiped out like 90% of variation in the handgun market, as everyone gave up on their bespoke designs in favor of various flavors of Glock clone. The Glock 17 was just straight-up better, cheaper, more durable, more reliable, and most previous designs simply couldn't compete. The AR15 has done pretty much the same thing, both because it's an amazingly good design, and because it hit critical mass such that the design has been perfected to an absurd degree as a result of network effects. At this point, it's hard to imagine it ever going away, or why there would even be competing designs in another few decades.
Last I heard they were still gonna get IARs, but those were going to be piston AR derivatives from H&K.
The only real thing wrong with the AR is that it doesn't lend itself as well to mass production (read: aluminum/plastic extruded upper, polymer lower) as the AR-18-based designs, and that if you're on a rifle replacement schedule that exceeds 50 years, you want a gun with slightly-beefed-up parts whose wear surfaces you can change out so that you don't have to do what the US does and replace bolts every 10,000 rounds because getting any kind of military spending in most Western countries is like pulling teeth.
Which is why all the modern rifles that kind-of-but-not-really compete with the AR all do the things that you'd do to an AR if you weren't constrained by its existing design, like:
And then the tactical considerations, which is that because these guns are a bit heavier up front, they can stand up to more use as ersatz automatic rifles; as far as I'm aware, you can dump your entire combat load in one sitting without destroying the gun or making it catch on fire (it'll sure cook your hands, though; hope you brought gloves!). If your nation is small, why not just give everyone slightly heavier RPK-equivalents so they're still perfectly serviceable in 50 years?
The HK416 is notable in that it does literally none of these things. Granted, it was the first real attempt to make the AR-15 a serious automatic rifle, but it fails to improve in any way on the original design and even makes some problems worse (it's heavier and the carrier tilts; contrast the MCX, which is a significantly better design).
Oh yeah: foreign manufacturers could always get development on their rifle platforms too, if they felt like passing the savings onto the customer (and actually commit- Beretta actually sold the ARX-160 at a very reasonable price, and that was even before hyper-light rifles were made cool again, but none of the other promised features materialized). But they won't.
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