New Stuff

Glock is an enigma.

The design of the G17 was undoubtedly brilliant. However, starting immediately with their beyond stupid numbering schema, their efforts have been slow, halting, and largely derivative.

But, with their glacial pace of innovation came a fortunate byproduct: commonality. Mags and other accessories could largely be used by any Glock, even across generations, given the pistols size and caliber. Now they're throwing even that away?

Here's hoping the unseen G44, 46, 47, etc will bring a bit of change and creativity to the moribund company. Being a Glock apologist is getting harder.

Right now the Army is stuck in a Glock kind of moment. They have (FINALLY) realized their little 5.56 round isn’t sufficient in all combat and that something bigger, faster, and longer is needed. Rumor has it they arre looking at something in the 6mm size (?because of best BC). BUT they are stuck with a huge dump of 5.56 lowers. Changing a barrel is a relatively easy prospect but if the cartridge doesn’t fit in the magwell, it’a. whole new ball game. I know 6.5 Creedmore is currently the rage, but am not sure it would perform as a military round, particularly penetrating Russian armor, which has most likely improved after looking at ours for the last 17 years. Should be interesting to watch and see what happens.

The Army's settled on a 6.8mm bullet. Don't know if it'll be my beloved 6.8 SPC II or not.

If I had to guess, it'd probably be their "Holy Grail", either a caseless round or a collapsible cartridge case. You know, just to make sure they're not as effective and 12 times the cost of a standard cartridge.

And yes, the Knavey has been annoying the shite out of me lately.

Interesting. ?Why the caseless round. Don’t know diddley about “collapsable” rounds.

Devereaux wrote:Interesting. ?Why the caseless round. Don’t know diddley about “collapsable” rounds.

When I worked on the C-17, an Air Force captain told me the Army believes the square is the perfect shape. A square is volumetricly efficient and intrinsically less prone to damage by their logisticians, shippers, grunts or enemies (often, one in the same.) Rectangles and short cylinders have many of the same advantages. Since the Army requires so much "stuff" to go to war, volume and shipping throughput are very important, so the square figures greatly in the Army's thinking. You can see this imperative in several of the Army's designs: Hummers, M113s, Conex containers, M109s, Generals, etc.  

For decades, the Army has been trying to transform the long, tapered cylinder of a cartridge into a squat, efficient shape. Just Because. This has led to cartridges where the bullets are within the powder in the case, or sometimes, even in powder formed without the case. The results have always been sub-par. However, that doesn't keep the the Army from throwing money and time (years) at the perceived problem.

As the good Captain was fond of saying: there's nothing so dense as the US Army. For air transport, of course.

The military is, overall, a good organization. It's strength is that it is highly disciplined. It's weakness is that it is highly disciplined. In many ways the Marine Corps has the best of the groups. It is dedicated, highly disciplined, BUT it drives authority and responsibility down to a much lower level that the other services. One should only look at SAC to see the total opposite approach.