Mike (Garand Thumb) has gotten one of his dream guns. The FN FNC carbine was designed and produced in the 1970’s to compete against the emerging 5.56 rifles sweeping into NATO service. It came after the FN CAL which was FN’s first 5.56, and a market failure. They tried to capitalize on the success of the FAL but also tried to save money on production because the FAL was expensive to make. The CAL was also, it turned out in the end. The FN FNC was a proposed solution but it didn’t do well in trials.

The development continued and it was eventually adopted by Belgium in 1989 where it would serve until replaced by the SCAR in 2004. In many respects it was a refined AK design that took the AR magazine to compete against the AR. Longstroke rotating bolt gas piston with a folding stock option.

But.. it was heavy. 8.5 lbs slick. vs 6.4lbs for the M16. Nations weren’t interested. Many developed their own home grown solutions. The L85, the FAMAS, the AUG, etc. or they didn’t give up their FALs and G3’s at all.

But it’s an interesting, aesthetic, and well developed piece in late 20th century small arms. And where it was originally designed to undercut the price of AR-15’s they now go for many times the cost of a quality AR. Such is the way of the markets.

Fine!

I get it. Hell, I’ve been it. The AR-15 is a cookie cuttered platform that can get… stale. Like flat root beer or corn chips that didn’t have the bag rolled up right. You’re just kind of done with it.

The AR-15 is the most invested in platform of the firearms market here in the US. The AK might arguably be on the worldwide scale but that argument really doesn’t scale modernization into the equation, millions upon millions of the AKMs are still just as ‘Nyet! Rifle is Fine! Just add colored duct tape’ as they have been for decades.

So, what to look at if you don’t want another AR but you still want it AR~ish? Tim has a list in the video that he is liking and I have mine. Tim hits on a salient point that most rifles and carbines worth the time and resource to buy are more expensive than a comparable AR-15… that’s what happens when the whole of the market supports a single product.

Hell, even IWI makes an AR now. A pretty damn good one actually. And it’s because they, like others before them have and others after them will, are supporting the strong demand of the market for the one rifle that clearly everyone should support.

But that does get boring, I know.

That’s part of the reason I own so many ‘not ARs’ like I do ‘not a Glock’ handguns. It’s fun to see others take on the idea, especially when they do it well. Seeing the ‘million ways to build the mouse trap’ when they work well is just plain neat sometimes. It’s why we like rifles like the MCX, Bren 2, & HK433 despite them basically still just doing what the M4 does, it’s because they aren’t an M4 but they work well that we feel a sense of refreshment.

I’ll be doing a video on those 3 specifically in the near future, as I believe they represent what is essentially the edge of current service rifle tech at present in the 5.56 field.

One rifle I want to mention that Tim does not is the XCR.

If there was ever a little company that I am just damn straight impressed with for keeping on the grind its RA. Talking with Alex at SHOT this last year and ordering this little guy was a real treat. I know my buddy Mike, who writes for us every now and then, still loves his XCR-M but this L just reaffirms the work they’re doing.

This gun has never stopped evolving. In a way that is especially impressive due to the fact it was keeping up with the aforementioned AR-15 and was introduced as a competitor in the SCAR program but lost due to no BFA. Long stroke piston with adjustable gas port. Buyer selectable M-LOK or Keymod negative space rail systems which Alex implemented… and he didn’t have to. He could have said, “no, 1913 rails are fine and I’m just going to make sure the gas system and springs and all that are running.” He didn’t. He has kept this whole thing inline with emerging tech. 2-Stage trigger, check. Adjustable and folding stock with equivalent brace system, check. Negative space monolithic receiver rail systems, check. Freefloat barrel, check.

It’s a testament to the little shop doing big things. It’s a damn fine little truck gun. About the only two criticisms I have, and really it’s more like one and a half..

First, I want the industry to stop using muzzle breaks, enough, no more, especially on short barrels. Someone orders an 18″ competition gun, fine. Everything else needs to run flash hiders and/or close proximity compensators. Breaks are dumb on anything that isn’t a gamer gun, or a precision rig (usually magnum caliber too), or a suppressor host. Comps and flash hiders, folks.. Comps and flash hiders.

And the other is an A2 grip.. C’mon.. 1985 called and said they made a mistake. Start using K2’s or B5’s or Mod 3’s as the standard already. This is the half criticism because it’s such a small easy thing to change out. A2’s are the ‘Glock Iron Sights’ of AR type platforms and its essentially just a stand-in until you add your preferred grip. It isn’t meant to stay there.

Watching Forgotten Weapons and listening to the soothing educational tones of Ian’s voice should be a COVID-19 lockdown staple at this point. And this video is no different. This time around he is taking a look at “The Scout Rifle Study” and giving some thoughts.

For anyone who doesn’t have the 20 minutes to enjoy the whole discussion, here is a quick version of what Ian’s looking at so you can come back later.

The Scout Rifle was/is an International Universal Rifle concept born in the mind of Colonel Jeff Cooper, the man who pioneered and gave us much of what we consider foundational in modern shooting and training setups.

This rifle needed to be light, capable against medium to dangerous game, easy to reload, and about as internationally legal as it could get. It’s all well and good that here in the states I can use any of my .308 battle rifles, with a 5 round magazine, to hunt and that in most locales I don’t have a capacity limit for defense purposes, but that is far from the standard internationally.

That means bolt action. And bolt action, in the era before detachable box magazines became standard, meant top loading. This, combined with a couple other factors Cooper outlined, like balance and peripheral vision retention, give ‘Scout Rifles’ their distinctive forward mounted optical suites, usually a long eye relief lightweight LPVO called a scout scope. These were similar in design to handgun scopes where the shooters eye was expected to be quite a distance from the optic, not the 2-4″ we’re used to on modern carbines.

Ian goes into this very nicely in the video (seriously, hit play) but I’ll touch on it too.

The ‘Scout Rifle Concept’ feels… overthought.. and in modern times probably obsolescent at best. With the exception of international legality for hunting and the small market that covers, most of whom can probably afford more than one ‘universal rifle’, a shooter’s need for a rifle are probably best served by a box magazine fed carbine in auto-loading or manual loading format in an intermediate caliber.

In other words… an AR-15, and its peer group of rifles, with a lightweight optic. Maybe a .308 or 6.5 variant for more terminal performance against larger/dangerous game. But in the modern era of 10, 20, and 30 round box magazines we don’t need a clear space over the action even on a bolt gun. In the modern era of ever more improved field of view LPVO options and offset sights we don’t need the periphery visuals claimed by a scout scope.

I think these concepts are most evident in what we are using in weapon systems like the M110A1 DMR/CSASS, the Mk20 SSR, and their predecessor in the Mk12. These were and are reasonably light and mobile scout platforms. The Steyr Scout rifle, the rifle that is the epitome of the concept with the added flexibility of detachable magazine and conventional optic mounting, is a 6.6lb gun slick. A SCAR is only 8lb. The new 716i from SIG is 8.5lb. So if we assume they’re all .308’s and we add the same optic to each of them, your 1.5-1.9lb additional weight is allowing you to quadruple your magazine capacity, shorten the rifle by 2-3″, and adds incredible follow up shot capability in semi-auto, and are still quick as ‘bolt guns’ with disabled gas systems if locality requires it. As universal rifles you can hunt and fight, with there is really no comparison.

The Scout was a good thought experiment, it critically tackled a series of criteria in a functional way that fit its design era. It has been surpassed however, just as many firearms before it have and the rifles of today will one day be also. Even my beloved SCAR is falling into a ‘generation behind’ slot as we move into the 2020’s. This doesn’t invalidate any of them as loveable firearms to own, shoot, and enjoy. It simply means that progress and hard use test concepts and sometimes concepts fall short.