'Nuff said...for now...

[Alpha Sierra]

Tavor is really nifty, and I'd love to try one, but the price tag there is prohibitive.

Gunbroker is full of Tavors selling in the $1400 - $1600 range.  I seriously doubt that a US legal BREN rifle will be significantly less than that.

In fact, I think the only way CZ will get around the imported rifle sporting purposes BS is to make them here; which is what IWI did.  Just because of that I seriously doubt we will see them any time soon.

[RSR]

I think it depends on which part of the rifle is "the receiver" since that and the barrel are about the only parts that you have to make here...  The rest, excluding 922r parts, can ultimately be imported... 

If "the receiver" is just that polymer lower, then it should be relative easy to manufacture domestically and import the uppers and and other specially manufactured parts...

I'm pretty sure that's what IMI is doing with the Tavor actually... Could be mistaken though.

[Brian Ahearn]

The Tavor is a nice tight package , but essentially it's a plastic shell with  an alloy internal receiver block with and a steel bolt and barrel assembly. They hit the market at $2500 originally and have been dropping in price ever since. as someone who has coated a number of these I have had them completely torn down to the last piece. I would not spend the money on a Tavor until the price hit $700 cause that's about what I think it's really worth. I'd buy the new Bren 805 or the new polish rifle before spending $1400 to $1600 on Tavor not a whole lot of metal in that one.

[RSR]

Unfortunately the Tavor is the same, if not better, construction than all the most recent generation of battle rifles.  Governments want cheap and modular, which defaults to plastics...  And the modularity usually results in at least some reliability issues...  From what I understand, why the Bren remains in 5.56 only for the Czech Army...

Personally, I rank Tavors and SCARs together and everything else below them... 
The Bren is the same/similar type of action as these.  A derivative of the AR18... 

Personally, I like the steel in firearms (I also like driving older cars, and the experience with 20 year old plastics there makes me very hesitant with plastics in critical locations...), so the only AR18 variant that I'm seriously interested in is the 2nd Gen MPAR 18.  But for the price, I'm not sure that it's worth it when you look at piston ARs that have quite similar presumed reliability like the Adams Arms rifles...

That's why I stick with upgrading the previous generation all steel rifles as best meets my needs... Galils and VZ58s for the win! 

(Essentially, the argument here is the same as the precision/long range rifle folks have on the budget vs mid-range vs high end rifles and variances with prices...  Most military rifles these days are somewhere between budget and mid-range for manufacturing practices.  Only once we get to sniper/DMR packages does rifle manufacture exceed mid-range on the consumer market (military optics are almost entirely high end, but not the rifles for whatever reason...).

[mikec]

Although some plastics, such as AUG magazines (now what, about 30 years old?)>, Steyr AUG bullpup body, nylon sling, trigger pack housing, Sig 550 mags, seem to be INDESTRUCTIBLE, without any metal reinforcement.

Far better than plastics used on many US made mags.   Maybe pMags are now better, but the point is that these European mags have been around for decades!

[armoredman]

I handled the BEEN 805 today, both LR versions...me likee. Felt very good, no problem with controls. Can't wait for the civilian legal rifle!

[RSR]

I certainly understand the appeal of plastic weapons from both cost, weight and care perspectives...  But eventually plastics will fail...  All materials degrade.  Plastics and plastic polymers just do so in a way that's often not visible until it fails -- and they're constantly being degraded by stuff like ozone that there's no way to protect them against.  With metals, I feel like you can 1) see the corrosion and 2) do a lot more in preventative maintenance to protect your gun...  Stuff like the beaver barf -- IMO a big part of its durability is due to the wood chips, today there's fiber glass impregnated that does similar.  So I certainly get it... 

With a gun the HK91, it'd be well served with a polymer outer receiver to protect the easily dented operating channel...  Take a look at the AR18 upper receiver steel vs many of these new polymer guns.  The amount of metal inside the polymer guns along the operating channel is definitely less thick than the AR18... Point being, stamped receiver guns do stand to benefit from polymer outers -- allowing them to be built to tighter tolerances b/c a small dent won't put them out of commission since a small dent is now much less likely to occur than w/ just bare metal...

But then even more extreme you have guns like the G36 that have a polymer encased trunnion, which has led to German soldiers saying its lack of accuracy when hot makes the gun combat ineffective... 

So my polymer hesitations are very much related to how used.  But in most cases, I see very little drawback from adding steel reinforcement at critical stress points...  Especially when recognizing that when very hot or very cold, polymer becomes more soft or brittle than metal at the same temps...  So it's less durable from that perspective as well.  And for whatever reason polymers seem to be less able to take certain forms of stress too -- when made for strength they're more brittle and prone to brakes, like shearing mag lugs on polymer mags.  Adding steel there adds little weight and a lot of added durability, wear resistance and peace of mind...

Bottom line, for me, I buy weapons for life and don't carry them for a living so the slight added weight and slight added costs are negligible for me.  Especially for rifles.  Handguns, especially CC, I'm less concerned about polymer.  In part, I know its due to lower costs of polymer handguns and less stress the cartridges/recoil put on the weapon, but, if honest, I do think there's some innate bias I have against polymer rifles too (I'm working through this though process through the Galil vs Galil ACE too).  I guess it is what it is, but I am leery of polymer battle/modern sporting rifles for my needs.  But the same doesn't apply to pistol carbines either.  I don't know, but your mileage likely will vary...

[armoredman]

Oddly enough, for all the talk of low weght and flimsiness, that one thing that struck me about the BREN and the EVO was how SOLID they felt. More solid than any AR-15 I've ever handled, and this one,


Just felt right. Of course, LEO only select fire version, not available for peons. The pistol version was very front heavy, of course,



But seen here with the cheek rest, it felt a lot better. I missed media day at the range, so i didn't get to fire it.

[h1seoul]

RSR,

Can you elaborate on the accuracy issues for the SCAR-L when the barrels are heated?  I have heard that for the G36 but didn't run across this for the SCAR-L.  I own both SCARs and I don't shoot it enough to to know if that is true or not.  Just curious where you heard this from.

Thanks!

Looking at the Bren, it's barrel profile looks really thin. 

I suspect it'll have the same accuracy issues that the G36 and SCAR-L (light) have experienced when heated up...

For instance (from 2012):

A German newspaper has revealed that a Bundeswehr report has said that once the H&K G36 rifle has heated up, the accuracy is significantly reduced to a point where it is useless beyond 200 meters (218 yards).

http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2012/04/26/hk-g36-useless-at-200m-when-hot/

To this year:

The German Defence Ministry has halted new orders of H&K?s G36 rifle. The Defense Ministry took the action after troops in Afghanistan complained that the H&K built rifles couldn?t hit their targets during prolonged firefights. It?s a serious problem; engagement distances in Afghanistan have tended to be much greater than originally envisioned when the rifle was designed. From the AFP (via ChannelNewsAsia) . . .

German troops in Afghanistan in recent years voiced concerns over the G36 automatic rifle made by Heckler & Koch, saying it became inaccurate when its barrel heated up in prolonged firefights.

The military initially blamed the use of unsuitable munitions, but the government auditing body the Bundesrechnungshof has now ordered a new investigation, reported the Bild am Sonntag newspaper.

?It is important to avoid that the defence ministry invests up to 34 million euros ($46 million) in a rifle that may not meet the requirements of the troops,? the court was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

The G36 has been the German Army?s main battle rifle since 1997. H&K designed the gun as a replacement for the aging G3 platform (which used the much heavier 7.62 NATO rounds that were quickly going out of fashion in modern militaries).

Guns are typically sighted in during a slow-firing session, where the barrel remains relatively cool. As the barrel heats up, the uneven expansion of the barrel material causes the gun to shift and the bullet impacts to wander off target. During a prolonged engagement it wouldn?t be surprising for the accuracy of a firearm to diminish considerably, especially with the relatively thin barrel used in the G36.

This isn?t a new complaint; the first reports of the issue started surfacing in April of 2012. The claim was that after a couple hundred rounds the rifle became ineffective at ranges past 200 meters and almost completely useless past 300 meters. At the time H&K blamed the ammunition. The Ministry of Defense seemed content with that answer. However it now looks like yet another branch of the government has gotten wind of the situation and decided to step in.

Germany currently fields around 180,000 G36 rifles, with hundreds of thousands more in the hands of friendly militaries and law enforcement agencies around the world.

http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2014/06/foghorn/troops-complain-hks-g36-cant-hit-broad-side-barn-german-govt-halts-new-orders/

[RSR]

Here: http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2011/01/chris-dumm/fn-scar-accuracy-results/

Summed up here in comments: http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2011/12/foghorn/ask-foghorn-maintaining-accuracy-when-the-barrel-heats-up/#comment-128943

Chris Dumm says:
December 2, 2011 at 12:45
Nick has it exactly right: thin barrels heat more quickly and warp more noticeably than thick barrels. My testing and experience shows that an HK-93 or SCAR-L will open up its group size quickly under sustained firing, but a Colt HBAR or an ArmaLite with a full-profile barrel will largely shrug off the effects of a hot barrel.
When the pencil-thin SCAR barrel got hot, it gave groups that were between 1/2 inch and 1.0 inches larger than its cold-barrel groups. The ArmaLite M-15, with a 16-inch bull barrel, only opened up its groups by 0.2 inches when it got hot. And it got hot much more slowly than the SCAR.
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2011/03/chris-dumm/gun-review-armalite-m-15/
Thin steel barrels with carbon-fiber sleeves are an excellent combination of light weight and thermal stability, but they can be prohibitively expensive and they only work best with blowback and recoil-operated guns. Gas-operated guns need not apply.

My understanding is also that, despite the lesser weight of the M4 system, one of the big reasons the M4 was used in place of the MK16 SCAR-L is due to the M4 being more accurate even w/ the gov't profile barrel...

Another thing that I really liked about the SCAR heavies were the fact that they were extremely accurate!
[...]
Conclusion
The FN SCAR The US Special Operations Command has currently cancelled their purchase of the Mk 16 SCAR-L and are planning to remove the rifle from their inventory by 2013. However, they plan to purchase 5.56 mm conversion kits for the Mk 17, supplanting the loss of the Mk 16.  The SCAR is now one of the competing weapons in the Individual Carbine competition which aims to find a replacement for the M4 Carbine.

http://loadoutroom.com/5347/the-fn-scar/

There might be more here too: http://www.defensereview.com/socom-cancels-fn-mk-16-scar-l-scar-light-riflecarbinesbr-program-will-the-fn-mk-17-scar-h-scar-heavy-survive/
http://www.defensereview.com/will-the-fn-mk17-scar-h-scar-heavy-common-receiver-and-mk16-scar-l-scar-light-conversion-kit-save-the-scar-program/

Sorry, don't have a good summation link... But point is at longer ranges when hot, in environs like Afghanistan, thin barrels can be a detriment... 
But military acquisition requirements force weight reductions as a premium need...  So it's sort of a catch 22 for newly developed weapons...  Especially with a caliber like 5.56 where longer barrels are required to achieve maximum capability from what you're sending downrange.

[RSR]

Good review, emphasis mine: http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_3_12/256500__ARCHIVED_THREAD____JANES_Report__SCAR_Supersedes_the_M4A1_Carbine.html&page=20#i2824027

I have personally tested the SCAR-L ,H, and EGLM.

The weapon is a step forward, but then again so are all of the piston driven ARs.
One large concern is the small ejection port and open slots through the receiver. There is no ejection port cover to protect the operating system from debris. These two flaws serve to make the weapon prone to stoppages that are very difficult to reduce. The small ejection port cover makes it impossible to inset a gloved finger into the chamber area to clear the offending rounds, you pretty much have to go in through the mag well. Add on the EGLM and it is really hard to get a finger up through the mag well since the EGLM add another 1.5 or so inches to the mag well depth.

Trigger reset is really slow and long, extending the split time of hammers well beyond that of the M16 series. Short stroking the trigger was pretty common.

The reduced cyclic rate seems to help poor shooters in Auto, but once the shooter learns how to control auto bursts with a proper stance it becomes irrelevant.

The top rail is way higher than that of an M16 type. It has to be to fit the huge bolt. The slow cyclic rate in conjunction with the short stroke piston and high bolt serve to give a very odd recoil impulse. The recoil is noticeably vertical and snappy. It doesn't really push the shooter off target if in a good stance, but it is not nearly as flat as an M16 series rifle or carbine. Most short stroke piston driven ARs feel similar, but once again, not nearly as noticeable.

The sights are odd. The rear sight is just a small peep on a flip-up stick. One thing that I demand in a BUIS is that it is physically present. I highly doubt that the stick could take a serious blow and retain zero, or even remain on the weapon. The LOS over bore is around 3.5 inches! That means that at 15 yards or less, the shooter has to place the tip of the front sight on the threat's hairline to drop shots into the T-Box. It's a pretty disconcerting sight picture. All optics will require lower (thus non-cowitnessing) optic mounts to alleviate this oddity.

The SCAR has gone through several EUAs, with several changes requested in each EUA. Skill level of the participants in each EUA seems to fluctuate, so it's hard for the engineers to pin down exactly what to do with the design. For example, the selector lever is a nightmare. It is a long reach for the thumb to sweep the lever off safe, and really easy to pass the semi position and roll right into auto. It was actually requested to be that way from one EUA, then the next one trashed the design.

Marketing has touted the SCAR as being "Chosen by the warriors." The biggest reason it won the testing was that one requirement was that the weapon be submerged in water, then removed and fired, without draining, in 3 seconds. It was the only tested weapon that passed. Further, the greatest threat to the FN design was not even tested! The HK416 was not involved at all. Litigation with Colt prevented the weapon's inclusion in testing. The XM8 also could not contend since at the time the XM8 was an Army project.

The SCAR is a system based on the lowest common denominator. The basis of the weapon is to basically allow a shooter to be negligent in cleaning or maintaining the weapon. It does not matter how a manufacturer decides to operate a weapon system, a dirty chamber is a dirty chamber, a non-lubed weapon will not run for long, and obstructing brass must be diagnosed and removed by the shooter. No matter how great a design is, a regimen of training and maintenance is essential. Even the venerable AK series can and do experience stoppages. The SCAR not a new spiffy design, it is essentially a reworked FNC painted brown.

With all the dilemma over ammunition (there is a lot more complaint about M855 than about the M4 or M16), I would rather see someone do something with ammo first, then figure out what to launch it from second. The 6.8/6.5 concepts seem to be going in the right direction, but ammo construction is still an issue. I know, barrel change/caliber swap is easy with the SCAR, well it's not that hard with the M16 series either. Since every barrel requires rezeroing anyway (it's not like the shooter is going to pop the barrel off his 18 incher to drop in a 10 inch barrel on the way into the stack) the quick change barrel is virtually irrelevant.

Accuracy? Good, but no better than a service grade M16A4 or M4A1. The weapon keeps being quoted as a "1 MOA gun", but that's 1 MOA over ammo, not combined.

One more thing, the bolt handle reciprocates, just like an AK. Seen many a thumb interface in a negative manner, usually resulting an a failure to feed along with some interesting swearing.

This is not to say that if we implement the SCAR into service we will all be wiped out, just that it is just another weapon. Nothing great. Evolution, not revolution. Until we develop something makedly better, we should just stick to what works, and frankly, the AR platform works. All the ergonomic "improvements" on the SCAR are the same ones you can do to any AR. Keep them lubed and they work.

If the decision is made to switch calibers, the AR may be at a disadvantage. In that even, a whole new test would be in order to ensure that lessons learned by the SCAR selection is not lost. Many manufacturers learned a lot from the tests on exactly what the shortfalls of their weapons were, and I would hope that they figured out what to do to fix them.

The Masada? I remember thinking to myself as I handled it, "This is what the SCAR should be."

Different thread, same poster:

Failure2Stop  [Member]
5/11/2007 11:45:27 AM EST
I was involved in an EUA for the SCAR. I have put tens of thousands of rounds through the SCAR-L (not limited to the EUA solely) and hundreds through the SCAR-H (EUA only). I have also used the 416.

There are flaws in both systems.

I wrote this a while ago.

http://www.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=3&f=12&t=256500&page=20 (toward the bottom 1/3, continues for a while)

I would prefer the 416, if I had to choose one or the other.

http://www.ar15.com/archive/topic.html?b=6&f=2&t=220569

In reply to the first thread, next page someone wrote (which I think is spot on) -- small element is navy seals who most pushed to keep the scar-l in the special operations arsenal...  Barrel comment is what I was sharing though:

We all know who required the SCAR to pass the water in bore test. A very small element.

And wait till this same element starts blowing the pencil profile SCAR barrels. FN would be required to beef up the barrel and then the SCAR is a 9 pound chunk.

HK416s all have heavy barrels fwiw.  And my opinion is that a civilian, the need for accuracy/to be a rifleman surpasses most infantry use where less precise area fire is an acceptable compromise for having a lighter weapon to carry on patrols...

[h1seoul]

Thanks RSR.  Good to know.  I appreciate  you taking the time to reference the links.  I disagree with some things but I don't want to derail the thread.  In any case, I can't wait to see the 805 in person.  It seems like a good mix between the Scar and ACR.  In functionality and such. 

[RSR]

To what degree it matters is really a question of ranges at which you'll be shooting and how accurate you need your weapon system to be, as well as rate of fire in regards to heat. 

Military w/ full auto and/or combat situations barrels heat up quickly with a lot of rounds down range in a very short time, and usually stay hot until a threat has been eliminated, so drawbacks of an inaccurate barrel are worse here...

I'm relatively ignorant about the latest generation of rifles. I've handled a neighbor's SCAR-L but never shot it. Like anything, you're ultimately talking about compromises and/or finding a weapon whose compromises fit your needs...  But for my needs lightweight/slim/thin profile barrels are a hard pill to swallow.