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A lot of individuals seem to give high praise to the 416. I've never had the pleasure of putting it through the paces. How does that piston handle under repeated periods of burst fire?
Just about the single best AR rifle I have ever used in a real world environment. On the short list for best rifles I have ever handled. I don't particularly care for the 10.5" barrels in 5.56 but you get what you get I guess. The longer barreled variants are prefered by me, but that will depend on user and use case. France moving to outside production for their military arms is an interesting note. I can't say that it is unexpected. They have effectively gutted their arms industry over the years by killing anything resembling a civilian market and the military hasn't exactly been pushing for a lot of arms contracts. Well what did they expect. Industries don't last with no business.
Since France doesn't have the industrial capabilities to create any more FAMAS rifles, they had put out a bid for foreign Arms companies to compete. I think only one or two companies submitted bullpup designs, the rest were conventional designs. The runner up was FNH's SCAR-L rifle, so I guess France didn't have much of a choice even if they wanted bullpup. The only major issues with bullpups is they trade short overall length with a mushy trigger. Most (Tavor, FS2000, AUG, etc) aren't that good compared to their standard counterparts.
What's wrong with a bullpup design? I thought the compact design of a bullpup was more suited for urban warfare but did not compromise accuracy and velocity of the bullet by not reducing barrel length. I guess I'm wrong.
agree. I used the 416 as my primary issued weapon from 2008 until late 2014. Apart from some minor customer service issues with HK early on that were eventually smoothed over I have ZERO complaints. Much prefer it over the M4/AR-15. That's my personal opinion though.