Kit-up has an excellent article on SOCOM dropping the MK16 and procuring only MK17's instead. This part of the article is what caught my eye...
“The Mk-16 does not provide enough of a performance advantage over the M-4 to justify spending USSOCOM’s limited … funds when competing priorities are taken into consideration,” officials at USSOCOM said in an email response to questions from Military.com. “Currently, three of USSOCOM’s four components receive the 5.56 mm M-4 from their parent service as a service common equipment item.”Kit-up specializes in gear--hence the focus on the procurement part of the story, what caught my eye in that article is the performance factor of piston driven weapons...and the misplaced idea that they're more reliable than their gas impingement cousins.
SOCOM just put a controversy to rest (I don't think that was the intention but that's the result of the statement)...Gas Impingement is as reliable as Pistons...or to be more precise, they don't provide a performance advantage big enough to justify the additional cost.
Civilian shooters, survivalist and Police/Security agencies take notice.
