The Marines Are Fielding a New Assault Rifle

Always up for good upgraded weapons for our military.

I'm jealous....That 416 is a nice rifle, real nice.

What's old is new again. Back in the day we used to have fully automatic M-16's (M-16A1). Then the Marines decided they wasted too much ammo and requested a 3 round burst version (plus other changes) and the M-16A2 was born. Eventually the other branches followed suit and no more full auto for anyone. The 3 round burst is terribly inaccurate and useless in combat. Then we all went to the shortened M-4 (basically a non-full auto version of the old XM-177). Now we are coming full circle back to a new version of the M-16A1.

At least in the Air Force we kept our GAU-5A's (similar to the Army's XM-177) that were full auto.