the MP7 and its older rival the P90 are being touted as the next generation of firepower
No they are not.
They fill the intended niche. That is a very compact firearm for individuals not on the front lines. Support personnel, logistics, etc
The round can penetrate some armor like most soldiers will be wearing, and has very little recoil on full auto meaning even the unskilled can spray the target.
The individual rounds are less effective than desired, but they are accurately fired at 900 rounds a minute from something like the P90. Or 15 per second.
While having less recoil and requiring less recoil management or trigger discipline than traditional submachineguns. The 5.7 has 2/3 the recoil of the 9mm, making it even easier to fire than the already easy Mp5.
With 50 rounds of capacity it also can deliver such full auto fire for a few seconds.
The concept is deserving. It simply sucks for civilians limited to semi-auto because per round effectiveness is not what the gun or the round was designed for.
The gun was designed to be effective spraying large quantities of rounds with almost no recoil and still defeating enemy armor and creating mediocre wounding per round.
It gives up per round effectiveness, bumps up the rate of fire, and adds light armor penetration over a traditional submachinegun. The increased rate of fire and adequate penetration while remaining extremely controllable for even the minimally trained compensates for reduced per round effectiveness.
As soon as you take out the extremely controllable high rate of fire the platform takes a major nosedive in overall effectiveness.
A lot is sacrificed to achieve that, so once that is removed from the equation you are left with few pros and all of the cons.
(Add to that not even selling the rounds as designed for the application to civilians, which would still suck in semi-auto, and you lose the only remaining attribute the round and firearm was designed around.)
It becomes complete junk, and those limited to semi-auto platforms benefit from greater per round effectiveness, because the amount of reduced recoil achieved is only seriously significant or important on full auto.
So people limited to semi-auto should be calling it crap, because in semi-auto it is.
At 15 rounds per second easily aimed with no recoil from 50 round magazines it is decent.
It allows someone to spray a target with adequate penetration almost as effortlessly as one would operate a water hose for over 3 seconds of fire.
The reason the military is not enthusiastic about it is that such weapons arm people that are generally not engaging the enemy in decisive ways with such weapons.
Such a weapon has far too short of an effective range to be considered for front line troops that actually will have to engage enemy at a wide range of distances.
Investment and extra costs to purchase, maintain, and provide ammo for yet another platform that has little effect on the outcome of a conflict does not appeal to them.
It is like throwing money at a feel good measure for people that shouldn't have to do any shooting.
They can just give such people other weapons that don't require their own special ammunition, weapons which are already in circulation and held in armories.
