they are so successful, they put themselves out of business

need drives innovation

You guys are like "der wuz no need" and I fucking get that, but my point is they have this thing, which is very useful, and they've never tried to recoup the cost of inventing it

The round itself is spectacular

as an arms company now, you either cater to the military first or the civilian shooting sports

It's small, light, and mimics 5.56 NATO

I can;'t imagine it would be difficult to make a more conventional firearm that uses 4.73

right, but the logistics and cost for anyone to replace all conventional small arms with it is enormous

Nobody said replace

great, now you're the french

I'm talking some shit like an AR-15 kit for 4.73 so you can meme it up

Oof

IIRC, the ammo is also actually really fragile and even minor imperfections could ruin the entire round

^

Calling someone the french is a low blow

That was pre-modification Squid

lol

HK designed an entirely new explosive just for 4.73

I mean that in a "we have 8 different calibers and rifles because we kept everything from a century ago"

french

It set hard, had a stupidly high heat tolerance, and was difficult to break.

Oh no, I get it, I still find it funny

caseless is being developed right now with polymer

Like post-redesign the 4.73 round was actually harder to set off than conventional brass

less worry about the HK style of caseless

Polymer semi-caseless has been done for almost 40 years now

"done"

MAC, do you know how NATO 120mm tank shells work?

yes, it's nitrocellulose with a baseplate

It's a semi-caseless polymer round with a metal abseplate.

I'm saying for small arms

It's the same difference, you're just caught up in scale.

different problems

I don't think the tech works that way

The only problem with nitro is IIRC water resistance

It melts like butter if you get it too wet

Which can be solved by using a thin layer of thermoset that's below the adiabatic flame temp of the propellant

read all three parts of this interview

https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2017/03/11/interview-kori-phillips-program-officer-lsat-ctsas-part-1-program-history-ammunition-technical-discussion/

very interesting and enlightening

https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2017/03/18/interview-kori-phillips-program-officer-lsat-ctsas-part-2-ammunition-technical-discussion-contd/