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Notes -
Enlighten me on the massive performance boost we're getting with this hybrid-case blasty cartridge. You seem to be saying it's basically .308 from a shorter barrel.
Which, fine, but the line doesn't carry .308s. And they're not going to carry something twice as heavy as a 5.56 gun just so they can have .308 performance in a short gun, because soldiers don't need .308 performance in a short gun, we have it in big fuck-off machine guns, DMRs and sniper rifles. You don't WANT .308 performance clearing houses. You don't WANT power and range and penetration when your own guys are clearing the next apartment separated by third-world drywall. You also don't want something the length of an M-16, which turns itself into a flashbang grenade every time you shoot it in the short configuration.
Getting big-boy long range ballistics from a short barrel is not that hard. Thompson/Center was doing it in the seventies. The question is what trade-offs you're getting for that performance, and whether line troops can even use big-boy long range ballistics. All the tech and cartridges and range-finding scopes aren't going to fix bad marksmanship, you still have to be an excellent shot, and the average soldier is never going to be that.
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