The grunt sees that an MG is heavy but good

He won’t often see a use for a battle rifle, because of the whole 400 yards and in thing

Except for the growing range of combat engagements going out to 800m routinely, making even the notoriously slow and detached command structures of the military already begin looking at phasing battle rifles back in to service.

And Infantry always bitch about gear

The range thing is almost exclusive to the Middle East

look at the Philippines fight, or Ukraine’s

"I don't have enough gear" when they strip their packs, "I have too much gear" when they don't, "My gun is too heavy" when they have a battle rifle, "my gun can't engage targets beyond 300m effectively" when they have carbines, "I can't get in to CQC" when they have an M16 model, "I need multiple shots to down a target" when they have an M4 that can't properly fire 5.56

Literally everything is a problem for infantry

Whiniest bunch of crayon eating retards ever

I bet the Romans had to deal with infantry bitching about carrying the javelin thingies

Pila

De ja vu

But you know what the Romans did? Told them to shut the fuck up and carry their god damn pila, because it gave each soldier the ability to down enemies at range.

So they carried their god damn pila

There wasn’t anything wrong with the M16 but people bitched

I get issuing the M4 fairly widespread, but not to everyone

As a Leaf™ we still have full length rifles with fixed optics

Well they need a new round if they're going to issue M4s

Something built for the M4's barrel length

And then a carbine that sees issue a lot just not to everyone

5.56 NATO was literally built for 20" M16 barrels

M4 is what, 16"?

Roughly

They’re looking into getting rifles chambered for 6.8

Which is stupid and will be beyond expensive

Or you could just bullpup the M16 and make it your carbine rather than having to make a new round

Though I admittedly don’t know much about that round

Literally change your bullet to one better suited for a short barrel, or adjust the rifling somehow.

Could still keep a decent amount of parts compatibility with a bullpup M16, but the barrel would be like 14" effective

Except it’s a bullpup

But still a 20" barrel

And worse than that it’s a bullpup *conversion*

There's nothing wrong with bullpups if you need a short gun and want to keep rounds made for a longer barrel

I mean most militaries are trying to get away from them

Including the early adopters

Honestly a mistake

Disagree

It's the only realistic way to maintain ammo compatibility between a rifle and a carbine

Without losing performance in one or the other ballistically

Or you could do what the US does and not care

Then spend millions on something dumb