![Discussion Forums](/images/2016/spacer.gif)
Quote HistoryQuoted:
Another waste. We need to constantly keep innovating, but right now, pulling the trigger and making lead spit out at high velocity is about the extent of it no matter how you slice it.
IMO, gun companies should be doing this on their own and then coming to the military and saying "look what we can do now!"
View Quote
The Textron gun is some 10yrs old now. Its not really that no one is innovating, its that no one is buying.
There is no market to support machine gun development outside of the military, and they haven't strayed from the M249/M240 for 40yrs. Part of this problem is that making a better gun is not going to convince the military to move on, they want a significant performance boost too, which means new ammo. Until the military decides 5.56/7.62 are not good enough, they are not going to buy something else.
At least with the NGSW project, the military is providing their own new bullet and power specs. So people can now develop something that the military thinks is a worthwhile upgrade. Of course the military is asking for .300winmag that feels like 5.56, so you get some weird guns with complex operating systems that make the AN-94 look simple.