UPDATE: We may be splitting hairs, but the Marines have chosen H&K for the IAR program and not actually awarded a contract.
Marine Corps Times is reporting that the Marines have chosen a variant of Heckler & Koch's HK416 gas-operated, piston-driven rifle to replace the M249 SAW.
There are still a lot of questions surrounding the contract, like why the Marines still haven't made a formal announcement about the award. Near as we can tell, FN Herstal submitted a couple of protests to the GAO last month that line up with the timing of the Corps' intended announcement date. Maybe the protests have SYSCOM spooked, but Chief Warrant Officer 5 Jeffrey Eby, the Corps' senior gunner, isn't playing politics on this. Within a day of MCT reporter Dan Lamothe's e-mail asking what was up with the program, Gunner Eby matter-of-factly replied that the Corps had chosen the H&K on schedule.
So, there it is. A piston has made it onto the line. We've heard folks in SOCom and industry rave and rant about the HK416, but nobody's been able to separate the truth from the politics because the gun has seen combat only with the most secretive U.S. military units. Now that it's headed for the line, we are going to find out whether there's any truth to the rumors of bent operating rods and cracked upper receivers.
But what about that dinky 30-round magazine? At a cyclic rate of 700 rpm, the IAR gunner won't make it past 1MFer, 2MFer without having to reload. The Marines are going to have to find a high-capacity magazine if they hope to replicate the firepower of the SAW while reducing weight.
We're guessing the inital order is going to be for about 6,000 rifles, but because the contract hasn't been released, that's just a guess based on fielding two per squad.
