Superior HK XM8 Kicks M4's Ass

"Paul J. Adam" wrote in message
...
In message et, Evan
Williams writes
All the while you are looking through a tube that tends to take away your
peripheral vision.

I'd recommend trying a red-dot sight. My own experience of them is
limited to pistol ranges (static cardboard targets) and airsoft gaming
(mobile targets shooting back, but only with 6mm Tokyo Marui) but I've
found that a good RDS is much better for snap shots and moving targets
than iron sights.

I have a couple of red dot sights that I use for hunting. One on my T/C
Encore 45/70 barrel (the ultimate brush gun) and on on my T/C Encore
muzzleloading barrel I use when the weather is bad (if the weather is nice I
use my Pennsylvania flint lock). They hold very decent groups out to a
hundred yards.

Fortunately, I have never been in a fire fight, but it
seems to me that when there is one guy out there shooting at me there are
probably others out there as well.

So you want to be alert to the rest of the world, rather than focussing
on your front sight.

No, but when I am focusing on the front sight post I can still see movement
going on to either side.

I'm not absolutely convinced of the *execution* of the dual sight on the
H&K G36 (red-dot sight and 3.5x scope, both built into the carry handle)
but the concept's excellent: red-dot for closer quarters and the scope
for longer-range work. (The H&K uses a daylight-fed red dot, too)

In my opinion this is a perfect example
of fixing something that isn't broken. Good old iron sights with cammed
adjustments are the way to go.

How well do they work with NVDs? It's easier to have a switch on the
side of a red-dot scope - or an IR-only laser that only NVGs can see -
than to put Betalights on the iron sights.

It is true that iron sights don't work well with NVG's. That is why they
have IR aiming devices that attach to the to the barrrel in front of the
forstock on the M-16. The last armory inventory I had to do, I had to
verify the S/Ns on over 300 of them. They are light weight, small, simple,
easily removed when not needed, and they are not an integral part of the
weapon so the weapons performance is not effected by whether or not they
work.


The sights are the brain of the weapon. In
an extremely feeble attempt to get this thread on topic, it has been said
in
this NG many times a good pilot in an inferior A/C will beat an inferior
pilot in an excellent A/C. I would feel more confident shooting a
surplus
Mosin Nagant with a well mounted Leupold 10x Mk-4 than I would shooting a
M-40A1 with a $20 Wal-Mart special slapped on top.

I'll take a L85A2 with a SUSAT I zeroed over either. I'll take a
worn-out L1A1 with iron sights, and the key ingredient of 'lots and lots
of ammunition with range time to use it and someone who knows shooting
to coach me', over just about anything.

My point I was trying to make was importance of the sighting mechanism. I
guess I erred in using scopes to illustrate my belief in iron sights. It's
obvious that there are uses for scopes such as snipers and designated
marksmen et al. I just think that for that standard infantryman simple and
reliable iron sights are the way to go. The fact is that nowadays, the
military is not getting lots and lots of ammunition for practice. At least
in my experience. Keep in mind I was on the aviation side of the house, but
it is not uncommon to go years without firing a single round. During the
Reagan and Bush senior, years we fired all the time. Then for about eight
years of a different administration, we just weren't getting the training
assets that we needed. A couple of years ago we had 37 range quotas for a
squadron of 194. When young Marines need to get qualed in order to get
promoted it becomes a "leadership challenge". Basically, it boiled down to
the only people who got to go to the range were the ones that were close to
promotion. I had the opportunity to shoot a buddies FN FAL or copy, I can't
remember the exact manufacturer. I enjoyed it very much. It is a solid,
ergonomically comfortable, reliable rifle. It is robust enough to instill a
sense of confidence in it. Hey, can over 90 countries using "Freedoms Right
Arm" be wrong? Especially when the Warsaw Pact was dumping AK's on the rest
of the world. I have seen several different styles of sight on these
weapons. The one that I fired had a flipper type arrangement that gave me
four different sight options rotating in a horizontal axis. I did fine out
to the fifty yard line, but once I got to the hundred..., well let's just
say he would have been dead but it wasn't pretty. In my defense, I only
fired a total of fifty rounds. All in all, I was pleased with it.


This is a perfect
example of engineers going nuts in a lab and being out of touch with what
is
really needed in the field.


snip
(If it was an academic push, the troops in the field would be
firing 'salvo squeezebore bullets' or flechettes or some of the other
interesting concepts that fell by the wayside... the way to improve your
troops' marksmanship is less to buy them a new rifle, or even give them
a new sight, than to give them lots of practice)

In that, we are in total agreement.

Evan Williams

--
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
Julius Caesar I:2

Paul J. Adam MainBoxatjrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk