Cancellation of the XM8

en.wikipedia.org...

I was following the development of this weapon with whole hearted interest until I found out about three years ago that the Army canceled its production as a replacement for the M4 and M16, and I was dumbfounded. Everything I read about said that the M8 would out perform the M4 by milestones; I even read about a test where the M8 beat the M4 and a foreign weapon system in its performance; while the M4 did horrible.

I've had the chance to fire a G36 as well and I fell in love with that rifle as it was so much better then the M16 I am used to firing; it continues to baffle my why the Army loves the M4 and M16 series so much when there is better options out there...I thought about so much reasons that its because we produce those rifles was my top one. But with the interest they put into the XM8 I really thought that would be the replacement...then all of a sudden cancelled; and try as I might I can't figure out why they cancelled it.

Can anyone provide me any information on why this weapon replacement was cancelled because from everything I read it is cheaper to develop, outperforms and is all around better than what we use. I and many other soldiers fondly call our M16s Muskets and I can't figure out why we are still using these archaic weapon systems.

The only thing I can figure out is that the Army doesn't want to spend the time training new soldiers on a new weapon system during a time of war. Any information would be appreciated, thanks.

[edit on 30-4-2008 by Mcloud313]

That has me as well...

They (who knows realy) are working on upgrades for the M-16...

Heres one called the Grendel

Made by.. our favorite people, BlackWater...

But anyway, it was on Future Weapons, and the gun kicked butt...

Heres some action of it... Here

And a youtube video of someone with civilin version of the gun... Here

and more Here


But as far as a whole new firing system... not looking good...

IIRC, the main problem with the XM8 was the receiver had a tendency to melt slightly during heavy, sustained fire.

It was also linked to the OICW project which was, in my humble opinion, completely assanine. With the number of new rifles coming out as a possible replacement for the M16/M4, it seems natural that a weapon system with such questionable background would be scrapped.

This probably was for the best anyways, since plenty of veterans and civilians like to use semi-auto variants of what the military uses, and H&K does not have the best reputation for willingness to sell to civilians.

Just a reminder folks, the XM8 is not dead. HK has been upgrading the design ever since its humiliating melting problems a couple years ago. Unfortunately for HK Magpul has designed the rifle that the XM8 has been trying to be since its inception. Now that Bushmaster has picked up the production license it for now at least seems a shoe in to be the M-8 when Colts contract with the Pentagon is up in 2010.

Of course the Pentagon being the Pentagon well prbly end up with another match grade target rifle pushed into military service....

The whole teething process of the Stoner rifle in the US military was and still is just plain humiliating.....

Can you really blame our troops for going out on patrol with M-4/16s and coming back with the standard issue rifle slung across their backs and their carrying AKs instead?

The M-8 cant come soon enough.....

This is not a new gig for the the US military procurement arm.
They did some thing similar back in the early 1980's.

What happened was that they wanted all Army flight crews to carry
colt 38 police specials as this was deemed at the time to be a more
humane weapon.

In other words if I shot some one in the hand with the currently issued
colt 45 1911 they would not have the hand. Conversely if I had shot
the person with the newly issued colt 38 police special they would have a
hole in their hand but they would still have the hand.

There was a lot of infighting between the brass about this and the commanders of the air units and the aircrew's.
Turns out that the colt 38 police specials that were finally issued were designed for women the weapon that I was issued was so small that when
i held it the grips fit my palm 1/4 of the way done.

I finally could not stand it any more and turned it in and went and bought
my own colt 45 1911.

This is just my own perspective from beining down in the trenches
as it were.

Wing-Nut