The 9-Hole video on the Beretta AR 70/90 is an interesting one.
Thus why I am sharing it. But one of the reasons I find it most fascinating is in how far we’ve come in arms development from what we were looking at service rifle wise during the 5.56 adoption and what we are getting performance from of now.
We also don’t understand just how good we had it hear in the US, or just how good Kalashnikov had it given to the Russians with the 74. The M16A1 and A2, the AK74, and the M4 are all astonishingly good rifles in their eras. Reliable, accurate, and with significant creature comforts in serviceable triggers, sights, and accuracy exceeding bare minimums in many instances. They’d stay there too, until the rifles would get really worn.
We often forget just how progressive we are in small arms development here in the states, and that even foreign companies who have been doing this for centuries have a hard time grasping just how optimization crazed we are. Even domestic companies failed to notice, Colt was a classic example.
What I am getting at here is look at the performance of the AR70/90, a solid cold war era service rifle that Beretta developed and produced, and then compare it to what we had in the M16A2. Then look at what we’ve done in the A4/M4A1 era and the URG-I evolutions and compare that to the mundane mediocrity so many other services around the world accept. Basically amounting to crates of rifles that toss lead in the right direction.
We’ve got optics, active and passive nighttime aiming, suppression, upgraded ammunitions and more. Who else, even among our allies has even seriously stepped away from M855/SS109 5.56 NATO or M80 ball 7.62 NATO? Who have invested in modern optics? In modern slings even? Who have their kit looked at and optimized for a working loadout?
We have it good folks. We have it great actually. The standards we’ve continually pushed in small arms development, especially GWOT and post-GWOT have put us where we are today into efficiencies that other organizations don’t even understand.
Firearm science is cool.
