Why NATO Troops Switched to the HK416

the HK416 rifle is quietly taking over the world as one of the most widely used primary weapon systems this all started back in 2007 when Norway was the first country to widely adopt it for their conventional Force grabbing more than 60,000 rifles fast forward 10 years and in 2016 France began swapping out their Famas for the HK416 when they placed just a massive Costco sized bulk order of 117,000 rifles it's a double trunk cha cookie they were on a roll at this point because only a year later the entire United States Marine Corps switched to

the HK416 they've since acquired 14,000 of these rifles for all their Frontline combat roles but you might not have heard about it because they made teeny tiny adjustments to the weapon and renamed it to the M27 I meanwhile Norway and France slapped an n and an F at the end of the name but if it looks like a duck quacks like a duck and shoots like an HK416 and it's probably an HK416 but rabbit hole gets even deeper as we continue to dig by 2021 the German military made the call to switch to the HK416

by ordering 118,000 rifles but they named it the g95 A1 even though it's essentially the same exact weapon with some minor improvements and upgrades that's a grand total of at least 309,000 rifles ordered under one name or another that's not even including the dozen or so special forces units who run the weapon which means that it's found in at least 30 different countries what is HK trying to hide by changing the rifle's name everywhere tell us where are the bodies buried HK oh that's right they're somewhere in the ocean in this investigation I want to

uncover how the HK416 went from relative obscurity to Special Forces exclusive loot box to damn near The Hitter of the Free World now within just two decades but first I want to tell you about this video's beautiful sponsor ODU the online business management platform that provides Entre entrepreneurs an all-in-one application to simplify the day-to-day operations of their business everything from website building to inventory and accounting Odo provides all the tools necessary to launch and run your business and the best part is the first Odo application is free for life including unlimited hosting and support letting

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reword or even change the tone of your copy no more writers block click the link below to jump start your online presence today our tale starts in the early 2000s inside America's special forces units where they were looking for a more reliable weapon in the dusty desert environments of the Middle East the German manufacturer H&K started looking into ways to improve the m4's reliability so they went to H&K and they said hey we want an M4 we wanted this thing to work no matter what it's kind of overgassed this rifle a little bit and made

it so this gun runs through any condition you can put it in one of their experimental designs caught the eye of famous Delta Force armorer Larry Vickers Vickers was brought on as part of a Consulting team to help with its development I dug up some old us patents for the weapon that were originally filed in 2006 publicly in simple terms the blueprints for the new rifle took a gas piston system like what was already in their G36 rifle and married it to the barrel of an M4 this vented the hot gas and carbon fouling out

the front of the gun instead of into the working parts in the rear just as importantly it all kept the fire controls in the similar Place compared to the M4 safety bolt magazine release everything was all laid out exactly the way American grunts like it if there's something us Americans really love and feel strongly about it's keeping our weapon controls laid out in an intuitive AR style personally I start to have panic attacks when that fire selector and magazine release button are moved around on me if something ain't broke why fix it no need to

over engineer our way into a new problem but the point is Vickers and others saw potential in this piston driven idea it was going to solve one of Delta Force's most nagging problems what problem am I talking about barrel length one of Delta Force's main jobs is direct action which means they rescue hostages and they eliminate terrorists in raids this is why they use that Cutting Edge close quarter combat weapons they were one of the first to adopt the MP5 but fast forward a few years and they realized the weapon didn't have enough spice to

it not enough power so Delta started using the more powerful short 10.5 in Barrel M4 in the mid1 1990s that cuts 4 in off of its normal length and that might not sound like a whole big of a deal but it actually introduced a lot of new technical problems to deal with the reason for this is because the M4 uses a gas tube that ports high pressure gas from the barrel directly back into the bolt group to cycle the action and make the gun work shortening that Barrel low down to 10.5 in meant that there

was a lot of extra heat and carbon fouling getting into the action so what all that means added together is that that extra back pressure from The Sound suppress and everything it makes the weapon have a ton of malfunctions and its parts start to break gross if you're special forces you can't afford to have that awkward empty echo of a click when you go to pull the trigger so over the next few years in the early 2000s vicer and the team of Engineers at H&K worked to adapt their blueprint into an actual functioning weapon they

tested it endlessly in all kinds of conditions from muddy Dusty cloudy rainy snowy gay straight and the thing worked remarkably well the first version of the 416 had only one gas setting which was deliberately set to allow more pressure through compared to similar military rifles what that means is it gives some more added reliability because it forces the bolt to the rear with extra pressure there are different types of mud tests in the US Army but one test showed that the HK had only 233 stoppages out of 60,000 rounds fired compared to the m4's 882

stoppages any methodical problems with that test let's put that aside for a second that just gives us some context to how well the weapon worked at the time uses all the same Parts as the M4 does your upper is where it's different um and you have the bolt carrier there and instead of having the little you know gas tube that you're used to it's literally just nothing that's just something for the op Rod to push against the HK416 fires 850 rounds per minute on full send mode it uses that standard 556 and it's credited with

being one of the most reliable operating systems ever miracled into existence technically it does add a little bit of extra felt recoil for the shooter compared to your standard M4 would you say The Recoil is pretty comparable to it's a little bit more just you're going to get that with piston guns you're going to feel a little bit more felt recoil than on a DI gun and it is heavier so it does mitigate that a little bit but it's not vicious or anything personally when I was firing It In the Heat of the Moment I

didn't know notice a massive difference but I'm not going to feel the detail of a recoil impulse like how an elite operator would it's like how when my wife orders a nice red wine and I think it tastes exactly the same as a bag of Mero that I smuggled into the restaurant the nonsense with the weapon's name started right away the gun was originally going to be called the hkm4 but Colt had a full-on contion when they heard that and that's because they' already trademarked the commercial name M4 for themselves so they're heavily armed sad

of lawyers wasn't going to be cool with that instead HK went with the numbers 416 which was a reference to the M4 and the M16 and thus a new rifle was born one of the more widely used variants was the 10.4 in version of the 416d with its more reliable Short Stroke gas piston system this seemed to solve all those problems that we talked about earlier and so Delta first started making use of the 416d in March of 2005 many of The Operators immediately love the gun choosing to run it over the old version of

the M4 A1 that they had why don't we just give everybody the M27 it's an infantry rifle it can be used as one it has everything we want it is more reliable than our standard issue m4s are let's just do that in 2008 the HK416 was considered to replace the M4 throughout the US Army but the whole attempt ended up being scuttled so HK went shopping for other units elsewhere or it might be more accurate to say other units went went shopping to HK because here's part of what changed things shortly after that I think

it became a viral sensation when the US Navy Seals used the 416 in their 2011 raid on Osama bin L's compound in Pakistan a legend has it that the HK416 was the rifle of choice to put the lights out on Bin Laden this picture was provided of the actual real life gun that finished the job you'll notice it's got all the cool guy attachments including a PEC 15 l designator AAC m4200 suppressor has a glass breaker on that suppressor the Surefire m600 flashlight EOTech 551 optic with a flip side magnifier somewhere out there there's a

Call of Duty 3D model Creator who is hooing so hard right now it might sound like a lot but each of those tools have a specific purpose for giving you a slight Edge needed in close quarters combat and in raids a flick of a high-powered flashlight can disorient the enemy for a fraction of a second that's absolutely necessary and that image of that weapon that slayed Bin Laden and that story that was better marketing campaign than millions of dollars and a 12 booths at Shot Show could ever buy even the top Marketing Executives at budlight

couldn't create such a perfect mix of positive Buzz around a product it was the kind of free publicity that only a team of deadly US Navy Seals writing books about their insane missions afterwards could provide it's one of those intangible things that you can't really plan for that launches a weapon in the spotlight and makes it a forever iconic gun when I was holding the rifle and testing it out in the field I felt a little bit more confident with it because Jesus [ __ ] Christ this is the same cold metal steel that the

most elite guys trusted in one of the most sensitive high-profile missions in history used I think this is one of the factors that explains what happens next in this story everyone and their mom started being seen with the 416 you saw it in American law enforcement showing up in swat around the country conventional forces throughout NATO started adopting it when they were looking to replace B their Asian Cold War inventory it became a short elevator pitch an easy way to explain why spending millions of dollars on the rifle would be worthwhile of an investment and

you wouldn't get fired for switching over to it hey did you hear it's the same gun that cooked Bin Laden and all the US Special Forces guys are running with it [ __ ] man that's all you had to say it's kind of like how during the Cold War the fnfal was nicknamed the right arm of the Free World and I vote we nickname the HK416 The Hitter of the Free World there's a ton of reasons why everyone switched but to quickly explain it Norway switched from their aging ag3 because that thing still used the

larger 762 x 51 mm full battle rifle cartridge and it wasn't able to mount attachments easily on it to take advantage of that extra range France switched because the Famas Bullpup its spare parts were becoming harder to find and also it wasn't great with attachments Germany switched partly because the G36 allegedly had some reliability issues in operability is a huge reason which all these countries including the US Marines using one type of weapon an economy of scale made it cheaper to use in the future and sharing Parts between them can benefit them all there's also

a concept that I created that I think really helps explain what happened called the trickle down gun economy this barely credible briefing will help explain it in the trickle down gun economy elite weapons filter down to us regular folk here's how it works Special Forces guys get the cool guns the high-end guns first they run them through the ringer for years after that these weapons get more affordable for smaller armies like Norway once production scales become bigger players like France jump in over time what was once exclusive for the elites becomes available for everyone it's

like how high fashion eventually ends up on sale but with deadly guns don't get me wrong these are still pricey boomsticks from what I could find the current government cost for a brand new contract HK416 is like $2500 not including the suppressor and other goodies buying them in bulk might help reduce that you get the government discount so to speak but when you compare that to the average M4 cost for the government it's like $700 we're really not even in the same ballpark here which is part of the reason why I think the United States

Marine Corps and all these other countries are only issuing them to their Frontline soldiers and their infantry and the combat arms mainly and it's not just good PR and Word of Mouth the weapon stats check out too even with the extra heat and pressure from sound suppressors it's minimum Barrel life for the 416 is 15,000 rounds some hitters even reported it lasting 40 ,000 rounds this is key because during the global war on terror we saw a huge jump in the operational Tempo at one point Delta Force was running with more than 300 raids and

rescues a month targeting Al-Qaeda and Insurgent leaders while extracting American and international Personnel from terrorist strongholds and prisons these guns were more run through than the chicks at the Aven a WS performance differences in weapon barrels like Barrel life that might sound minor to an average infant like myself start to become exponentially important when you're putting the weapon through a much higher pace of training and combat but operators often keep their weapons on semi-auto for that more accurate shot placement and better recoil control its accuracy and range will vary widely depending on the barrel length

so a lot of them are either 16.5 in barrels that can hit out to at least 400 m and Beyond taking full advantage of that Acog scope that it pairs well with however you can't get something for nothing and one of the drawbacks of the Piston design is that it's inherently heavier than your standard M4 it's heavy it's a lot heavier than the M4 is because of the Piston depending on the version a 416 weighs around 8 lb while an M4 is usually around 7 but that extra weight won't really be noticeable unless you're carrying

it as a secondary weapon along with your heavier sniper rifle although when I tried a variant of the 416 I didn't notice it to be that much heavier I walked around the Arizona heat with the thing for a few hours to get a feel for how it might wear on you over time and really I kind of found it to be a non-issue but that's just coming from Old Spaghetti arms over over here a lot of the 416 extra weight is focused over the barrel making the gun more front heavy which I found to be

a comfortable distribution but I know that's personally for me I'm weird a lot of people do not prefer that weight distribution traditional m4s don't like to run dry so good gun lubrication is essential to keep them running but here's the thing about that gun oil can attract dust de breze and make it stick to Parts jamming it up retire Delta 4 Sergeant Major Chuck pressberg described the 416s reliability in a 2018 intervie he said quote I loved it a lot of people don't like the weight I'm certainly not a fan of The Recoil impulse but

here's the deal people back here in America will say man my direct impingement gun can do anything that your piston gun can do all I have to do is keep it lubed and that thing will run for days the HK416 allowed users to run it dry so I learned that by having a piston gun of the hnk variety I could absolutely 100% without fail get through a MAG or two even dusty and dirty I knew it was going to be able to get through a MAG or two with a bone dry rifle so that ability

to have a gun in a high sand environment that does not need to be wet all the time to work was absolutely Priceless to me there you have it if you've been in a 6ft deep filthy dirty trench and you're running a suppressor the HK416 is going to cycle rounds when your life depends on it it's not just Delta Force who's using it the Navy Seals US Marines found even greater use for it because of several different reasons but I think one of the main ones is its quote unquote over the beach capability over the

beach means that the gun is able to fire safely after being fully submerged in water unlike the gas tube of a traditional M4 that has to be fully drained first so basically uh they have like a nice promotional video that they did in the early 2000s where dude comes out of the water all Navy SEAL style fires a regular M4 it explodes uh still water in the barrel the gun couldn't do it and then they have a nice HK416 come out of the water and the guy just dumps the magazine and it works perfectly fine

so they designed the rifle specifically with martime environments in mind trying to to fire an M4 filled with water causes too much pressure and can destroy the rifle so this capability meant that it fit well into the Marines Force design 2030 plan which I've talked about here in this video if you want to check that out more but part of the reason they did this is because Marines are trying to focus refocus more on amphibious assaults the marinees use of the HK416 is kind of wild and revolutionary it's also controversial and very debated after years

of testing and trials by 2017 the US Marine Corps switched to a version of the HK416 that they called the M27 iir they issued it to every Marine who was in infantry or working with infantry like combat engineers Etc but the thing that really blows people's minds is that it would pull triple Duty they replaced all their automatic belt-fed M249 saws with the M27 suppressing the M249 is very uncommon to see but these weapons the M27 all had suppressors they all replaced their squad designated Marksman roll also they still had their m240 belt feds but

the whole Small Arms game had been changed although they kind of use the loophole because heavy weapon Squad in the Marines still keeps those two 49 this ended up being kind of controversial but whether or not it was okay to lose that extra volume of fire for increased accuracy s for debate many of these weapons are also getting counter drone attachments on them that the M249 would have been too heavy with the argument for all this comes from the fact that the saw the M249 has a 12 minut of angle grouping what that means is

that at a distance of like 100 m it's shooting groupings of bullets within 12 in at 200 M now you're hitting a group within 24 in and so on so the HK416 has a 1 minute of angle it's very accurate compare that to the M4 and the M16 the standard issue ones have a four minute of angle and we can start to see why this weapon is taking over in theory the Marine leadership believed that accurate shots could suppress the enemy more than volume of shots that's a whole different can of warms though it's interesting

to note that the Marine Elite Raider units stuck with their trusty old m4s and 249s for few years following that switch recently in 2022 though there's been news that a new short 10-inch barrel version a new improved HK416 would be adopted by the Marine recon units who conduct missions like clearing ships in close quarters combat however recent Rumblings from inside Json is that the HK416 might be starting to be transitioned out of use in the American Special Operations communities there are several reasons why this might be the case but it appears that the Sig MCX

Rattler firing the quiet 3 00 blackout round has become a new favorite amongst SF units for this role starting around 2019 it's interesting to note that some of the same designers on the HK416 like Robert Hurt would later work at Sig and help design some of the weapons that are again taking over in a new wave of Special Operations Firearms even if that is the case though it will continue to be fielded in SF units around the world including Ireland turkey South Korea Italy Estonia just to name a few what's clear to me is that

this will most likely be the most widely used firearm inside NATO for the next couple of decades maybe if you like this video check out this one I think you'll love it I'm your average infan Chris Kappy follow me at Cappy Army on Instagram and Twitter signing off this net time now