I have no idea whether XYZ is more effective and even if so, how much more, nor do I know what if any drawbacks it presents.
What I do know is that it costs taxpayers multi-billions of dollars to run these tests for several years on testing the next 'widget' and more times than not the next 'widget' comes up short. Tanks, planes, weapon systems, etc. At some point we need to just say 'enough,' what we have works fine. And by the way, current events and suggested future events mean we are not fighting conventional standing militaries wearing hard body armor. Hence why the arguments to cut back on tanks and jets. Instead, we are fighting insurgents dressed in civilian clothing. In my multiple Iraq deployments, I never saw a dead insurgent wearing any armor. So the need for a 'better bullet' is almost zero. And consider IF we did switch. We have probably millions of 5.56 uppers that we would need to replace, and a huge infrastructure of contracts for bullets and inventory and such. Seems with the lack of efficiency such a change over would cost tens of billions of dollars, in a time we cannot afford it. And now there's news about spending millions changing the Marine Corp cap. Unbelievable waste. These people need to be fired for being totally financially irresponsible. Officers and leaders are charged with guarding the taxpayers money to prevent fraud, waste and abuse.
I also understand intimately the concept of training to fight future wars not past wars. Our biggest enemy is not a person or entity; it's our debt. We must stop hemoraging money on silly pet projects like the XM8. How many billions did we waste on a weapon that was never fielded? Or the SCAR? Or heck even stupid uniforms that were 10 steps backward like the $5 BILLION we wasted on the ACU. So, unless we fix our debt, which is our biggest threat to national security, 5.56 vs. XYZ will be irrelevant when we can't produce them or pay our Soldiers.
Coming from the perspective where units don't have the money to effectively train Soldiers on the M4 and 5.56 more than once or twice per year, I'd say that money would be better spent training with our spears, rather than spending money testing a marginally better spear. Skills trump equipment. The reason we've been getting our butts kicked (yes, we have) in the last 4 conflicts isn't because of our lack of better equipment; it's the fact we aren't effective with what we have. An honest appraisal summary of Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan - we were better equipped and killed more of them, the wars were largely unpopular, we spent money we didn't have, the wars changed us for the worse as a nation, and while we may have won various battles, we did not decisively win these wars. North Korea is still there. Vietnam was a loss. Iraq was a tie at best, we left because we overstayed our welcome, and we accomplished little in terms of long term victory for Iraq after 8 years of war and treasure there (that couldn't have been done with a bombing campaign). And Afghanistan is a crawl to defeat, having accomplished almost nothing there in 12 years.
The search for the next magic bullet, plane, bomb, etc. should instead be re-focused on actually figuring out how to fight like real warriors. I read a stat somewhere that we are a military of 9 Admin people for every 1 infantryman. And anyone with modern military experience can tell you that we spent a disproportional amount of time on dumb regulations, paperwork, uniform nonsense, details etc. when we should be learning TTPs and how to kill people with our bare hands. We are less 'warriors' and more 'people standing around getting safety briefs on sex assault and drunk driving.'
You know that Soldiers today get significantly more time being briefed on safe sex and sex assault than they get training with their weapons. Most Soldiers get almost zero combatives training, and get to the range 2 times in a year, and never get any training to fight with a knife or bayonet. Yet, we spend HOURS or DAYS on retarded online or classes that teach you not to rape someone, not to drink and drive, filling our leave forms and the 5 pages associated with that, vehicle inspections, room inspections, and on and on and on.... we are a broken mis-prioritized military. The 5.56 is the LEAST of our problems, and frankly among the few things that actually works in the military.
I have seen and read about the most incompetent Soldiers and leaders at all levels. Asinine decisions that get people killed or are counter productive. Things that are total wastes of time. Terrible leadership with messed up priorities that literally get men dead. Until we fix these priorities, again the 5.56 vs. XYZ is meaningless.
). In all seriousness, someone will soon be getting a very large contract to service that country's needs. AUG, SCAR, ARX, M4, or Tavor; one of them will be getting a big leg up, soon.
