Interesting Article About Germany Army's HK416 Not Being Up To Snuff

[tacticalcity]

This article from the Telegraph makes it sound like the G95A1 is garbage and doing poorly during field testing with "military grade ammunition".

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/germany-s-new-rifle-inaccurate-in-battle/ar-BB1hjnQ1?ocid=msedgntp&pc=U531&cvid=0e00f5b8f4a94ef080b4c2263899548c&ei=52

But this rifle is basically just an HK416. Which the US Army and plenty of others have been using successfully in combat for decades.

Which leaves me to ponder two questions? Is the German Army using crap ammunition? Or did they put some sort of goofy design requirements on HK that somehow screwed up an otherwise excellent combat rifle? Sure, over gassed like all piston driven rifles. But excellent and accurate in combat conditions, unlike the results from this report.

[Quiet]

It could be a hit piece on H&K, due to all of the politics and Gov dealings with the German Military adoptions of a new service rifle.

AFAIK...
2016 = German Gov sued H&K over reliability, durability, and accuracy issues with the H&K G36. H&K ended up winning the lawsuit.
2020 = German Gov rejected the H&K HK416 and HK433 as replacements for the G36 and selected the Haenel MK556 (HK416 clone) as the new replacement for the G36.
2021 = H&K sued the German Gov over the selection process and Haenel over patent infringement (HK416).
2022 = German Special Operations Units adopted the H&K HK416A7 as the G95 as replacements for their G36.
2022 = Due to the lawsuits, the German Military was forced to conduct new rifle trials.
2023 = The H&K HK416A8 won the military trials and was adopted as the G95A1 rifle and G95KA1 carbine.


About the H&K vs Haenel lawsuit...
Haenel stated their MK556 was a licensed copy of the Caracal CAR816 and not a copy of the H&K HK416.
Caracal hired former H&K engineers that worked on the HK416 and former SIG engineers that worked on the MCX to make the Caracal CAR816.
The lawsuit was settled out of court around the time the German Military announced their new rifle trials.

[tacticalcity]

What a mess.

[k1dude]

IIRC, the German Army also recently crapped all over the Sig P320 and are dumping it as well.

[tacticalcity]

IIRC, the German Army also recently crapped all over the Sig P320 and are dumping it as well.

In fairness, the P320 has had major issues. I am not a fan. Then again, I never was a fan. I have yet to find a "Glock killer" that has lived up to the hype. The modularity of it was cool. Our military made a big mistake adopting it. Or at least a variation of it. Sig being a German company, their adoption of it makes a little more sense. But for us to adopt the M18 makes little to no sense to me. Except when you factor in politics.

There was a lot of backlash in Washington when our military started awarding Glock small batch contracts. Most of us are too young to remember, but the talking heads and antigunners demonized Glock far worse than they are demonizing the AR15 now back in the day. Said it was a gun for gangsters and terrorists and that the company was marketing it as such. Many if not most of those politicians are still in office, and the bad blood and stigma still exists for those folks despite the fact that the Glock is the law enforcement gun of choice, and was well on the way of becoming so back then. Despite being a superior (we can argue about that later) and better proven gun, Glock never stood a chance at becoming the gun of choice to replace the Beretta M9. Our military was lucky to get the small runs they did.

If they had insisted on keeping the M9 that would have made more sense. The Beretta 92 is a lawyer's wet dream. The M9's external safety and de-cocker combined with a massively heavy first DA pull make it a much safer option among a force that gets the bare minimum of pistol training and did not grow up with guns. This cuts down on the number of negligent discharges and associated injuries and deaths. Bearing in mind, and I speak from experience, our forces are woefully under trained. Especially when it comes to handguns. Most of what they know about guns, like the rest of society, came from movies and video games. The small amount of training the military provides for all but the most elite units is far from enough. Worse, most think they know what they are doing. Which again, used to be me as well.

That said, I am not saying I would never own a P320, MK19 or M9. As part of a collection they are damn fine guns. I am just saying they would not be my first choice if I were headed into combat. That said, they would more than do if you had to make do with what was handed to you. They certainly best a plethora of other options.

In truth I feel somewhat the same way about the HK416. To my mind, it was a solution to a problem that did not exist. At the time many people still believed the M16 platform to be unreliable. Holdover from the Vietnam days when bean counters supplied ammo with old style dirty gunpowder the system was not designed for. Something long since resolved and worked out. It took a 20+ year war in the middle east to purge that reliablity myth from most people's minds, and yet many still hold it to be true. Just ask the AKs are better than ARs crowd. The HK416 is heavy and over gassed. Which means slower and somewhat less effective than it could otherwise be. That said, it is still a damn fine weapon. Proven to be reliable and combat effective.

[Quiet]

In truth I feel somewhat the same way about the HK416. To my mind, it was a solution to a problem that did not exist. At the time many people still believed the M16 platform to be unreliable. Holdover from the Vietnam days when bean counters supplied ammo with old style dirty gunpowder the system was not designed for. Something long since resolved and worked out. It took a 20+ year war in the middle east to purge that reliablity myth from most people's minds, and yet many still hold it to be true. Just ask the AKs are better than ARs crowd. The HK416 is heavy and over gassed. Which means slower and somewhat less effective than it could otherwise be. That said, it is still a damn fine weapon. Proven to be reliable and combat effective.

I believe Larry Vickers said this about the HK416...
... If you need to run short barrel, suppressed, on full auto; then gas-piston guns (HK416) are the best for reliability. If you do not need those requirements, then current iterations of the AR15 platform (Mk 18 Mod 1) is best.

[tacticalcity]

Being Delta from a certain era it makes sense Vickers would be a fan of it. Those guys pioneered its development and were the first to use it. Lots of folks running suppressed still complain about the weight and recoil from being over gassed. Same folks complain about Daniel Defense being over gassed. Since many if not most MK18s had Daniel Defense gas blocks I would assume they are over gassed as well. This was about making sure it could not only run flawlessly in adverse conditions but also making sure it could run whatever crap ammo someone tried to run through it. As in make sure it could eat anything. Reliability was the point and they were going to make damn sure it was reliable no matter what. All that said I cannot speak to firsthand knowledge. My military days were long over by the time it came out and being from California I do not have the privilege of being able to run my guns suppressed. All that said, I would still love to own an HK416 despite its weight and gassiness. The main thing keeping me from buying one is the price. That and the multitude of differences between the civilian version and military versions beyond just lack of the fun switch. But I do get tempted often to buy either an MR556 or MR762 all the time. The price is pretty much the only thing that has stopped me thus far, and I say that thinking both are a solution to a non-existent problem. They're just so darn cool.