[Sent this morning, 1/11, to algebra.com address. Not received as of 11 hours later. So am sending out to cyberpass.net address.] At 1:12 PM +0100 1/11/01, Tom wrote:
Jim Choate wrote:
Up until then I thought I did too...I"m not so sure any more.
It's not a clone of the HK G3 as it was explained to me, it was apparently used as an interim weapon when the German Army dropped the HK G3 as a standard issue weapon a few years ago (ala G11). Maybe FAL, they're selling a 'G1' rifle that uses caseless ammo? Though I can't find a reference to any such rifle. Maybe it was CETME you do see their gun pushed as the 'G3' (the HK is a 'clone' or derived weapon from the Spanish gun).
a friend of mine was an officer in the german army until very recently (he decided to get a real job :) ) - give me 24 hours and I'll tell you exactly what the past and current standard issue weapons are and what kind of ammo they fire.
On Choate's point above, it is not FAL (a rifle, but I assume Choate must mean the maker of the FAL, Fabrique Nationale, now owned by another company, IIRC) who are making a caseless ammo rifle. Rather, it is in fact H-K. The G11 has been in development for close to 30 years now. (H-K are _also_ owned by another company. Last I heard, a British company bought H-K, though the factories and design groups remain in Germany.) Most NATO countries have now adopted some variant of the 5.56 mm cartridge, in either M-16-type variants or in bullpup designs like the excellent Steyr AUG or the newer HK G36 (with a civilian model, the SL8). Neither the caseless ammo of the H-K G11 not the flechette-firing prototypes are getting wide acceptance. And as relates to Choate's "I was right" point, repeated again recently, the G3 in use by the German army was most definitely a 7.62 mm, i.e., a .308 Winchester. It was _not_ the 5.56 mm variant, at least not for wide use. (I say this because quibblers like Choate like to find examples where _someone_ used a 5.56 mm and then say "See, I was RIGHT!") --Tim May -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns