A link to the official statement issued by H&K early April in reply to the publication of the first reports about the G36.

http://www.heckler-koch.com/de/unternehmen/news/detail/article/stellungnahme-aktuelle-medienberichte-zum-gewehr-g36.html

Of course, an outsider cannot judge what of that is true, and what is just self-defence of compoany ionterests in an attempt to deceive possible real iossues.

If they - H&K or the BW - want to solve the issue and priove the reliability of the rifle beyond all pubolished doubts, they really should release the testing conditions and the results of the examination of those quoted 89 rifles.

Investigative journalism lives by informants leaking material, else journalism cannot serve in the role of being one of the checking and counter-balancing entities in a democracy. H&K's complaint that the leak was probably illegal, must be seen in this light. If the leaked information helps to cure a possible major weakness of the armed forces, than I am all for illegally leaking such informations.

Only judicious people don't shoot like in Hollywood movies ...

... but the imitation is sometimes unfortunately obligatory !

When the 7th Cavalry arrives in a Hollywood movie, all besieged are saved. Not the same thing in reality, when the AH-64 flie over survivors ...
But one can admit that the Talibans adapted perfectly to their NATO enemies and to their (bad ?) firefight doctrines.

Fire discipline is the main thing that a platoon leader must learn to his troop. It's the base of the combat, which is a collective action. Shoot or no shoot, on the orders : a difficult training. The precision of the shooting is additional, concerns only the soldiers individually, and can be (relatively) easily acquired.

Maybe the heart of the matter ! Adoption of the 5.56 gauge by military forces belonging to NATO knew a certain number of reserves. Not because it had an US origin, but because its use under extreme conditions. For example, tests in the extreme cold resulted in the explosion of the barrel. Condensation in a very fine gun can gave this result when the 5.56 cartridge is struck. Naturally, no publicity was made on this kind of problems. But in front ot this particular difficulty, Soviets put chromium inside the barrel of their AK-47.
And I leave aside the problem about the various models of projectiles, they were only compatible, not completely interchangeable.

And what about used ammunitions ?

I agree with you about AK-47. But Uzi is only a SMG (for short distance).

But changing the hot barrel of a MG3 was easy, with an asbestos glove naturally. Maybe Bundeswehr must give a second life to these LMGs ....

???

Thanks, Skybird. In a preceding post, I gave the adress of the english version.

http://www.heckler-koch.com/en/company/news/detail/article/stellungnahme-aktuelle-medienberichte-zum-gewehr-g36.html


What made Julian Assange on this date ? :)

I'm no expert on guns, but 1.20 meters at 100 meters is HORRIBLE
its 349 MOA!

from some quick googling, the standard for the m16 is 8 MOA, the FN FAL can do 0.5 MOA.

That was one of the serious design flaws of the M-60 the bipod was attached directly to the barrel which meant that the gun was in two halves when the barrel was changed very bad in combat on the MG42(one of the supposed inspirations for the M-60) the barrel is inside a shroud and the bipod is part of the shroud so when the barrel is changed the gun is not in two halves.The FNMAG(aka the GPMG "Gimpy" to the Brits and the M240 to the US) was innovative in that it took the good desgin features of the MG42 but took away the bad high RPM the MG42 had too high a ROF and ate barrels up like made as well as ammo the FNMAG also was one of the first MGs to have the bipod mount closer towards the center of balance of the weapon and not near the end of the barrel and that improves stability alot.

The funny thing is that the FNMAG was available on the market in 1957 and many nations including the UK quickly made it their standard LMG but not the Us no sir we had to use the better engineered(not) M-60 until they started mounting a version of the FNMAG on M1A1s as the coaxial weapon some smart Marines realized that the gun was far better than the M-60 and they jury ordered stocks for them making the M-240G after that the DOD realized that the M-240 kicked the M-60s but and they made it the standard MG only 40 years after many nations had already discovered this.The M-240 is the only small to have received a 100% confidence rating from troops.

The selection of 5.56mm as the new NATO caliber had everything to do with the US NATO does what the US wants the US in the mid 70's was already set on 5.56 and that was that.


I have never heard of an LC-80 though did it go by another name? I assume your are referring to some firearm.Nothing shows up searching for LC-80 well Land Rovers do but no firearms.

As to H&K i think they are sort of snobby and "nothing is ever wrong with our guns" besides the fact that they are often over priced and they often have design flaws I have heard many owners of H&K pistols complain that the magazines are too fragile and that the safety catches and magazine release button/catch are too easily depressed by accident at the times when you do not want your magazine dropping out or inadvertently tripping the safety I have seen both of these complaints even come from some fairly experienced shooters.I do not own any H&K weapons myself but I have fired some G-36s with some German troops before and I honestly was not overly impressed with the G-36 now the G-3 I thought was a great rifle.

Exactly, that's why I am more certain that the Spiegel had acces to internal test protocols from the Bundeswehr. They had acces to classified documents before, shown on several occasions in the past. That's also why I am sceptical of the new infos from yesterday, as their info source is Bild.
For the dirty foreigners: Bild is the equivalent of the British Sun, or the American National Enquirer. I wouldn't even trust them telling it rains while standing in a thunderstorm myself.


As said, the Spiegel article is the only thing we have yet which cites facts and numbers, that's why I linked it. Btw: do you have a source about your 1.2 meter inaccuracy? No offense, but I trust a claim to have read it somewhere in the web less than antikristukes anecdotical evidence - even giving the fact that the Estonians use it in temperatures which are 120° lower than in Afghanistan :D
Also you first said it would be 1.2m on 100m, later on 200m. The question is also which test procedures the guy who makes the claim went through (scientific testing or just shooting experience)

For the reduction of accuracy to 1/3rd (not by), we can only speculate about the procedure, but a reproducible e test should have first of all an attached rifle, not shot from a shoulder or so. You first would calculate a medium point, the average where the shots hit the target aftzer several shots. Then according to the specification (which only the Bundeswehr and H&K know) you'd have a circular target with the medium point as a center, a rough estimate would be 10 - 20cm diameter. This would be the target area where a rifle after the Bundeswehr specifications would have to hit (with a cold barrel). So in our case, the recuded accuracy with a hot barrel would mean than only one out of 3 shots hits into this designated area.

Oh my.

Bild is basing on an internal BW paper yesterday - and all others yesterday copied from Bild. ;) They even said that.

The story unfolded in two stages. Yesterday was second stage.

First stage was three weeks ago. When Spiegel, Focus, Welt and others first mentioned the issue. But three weeks ago the given description was a bit tamer. The description now is worse.

The "one third issue", the formulation was "um ein Drittel". And that translates into "by one third". The conbfusion is increasingk, since others said "um bis zu zwei Drittel". I do not rule out that some clever journalist again messed up their number understanding: from full - reducing by one third - down to two third remaining, or vice versa. Its is journalists writing the articles, most likely those that suually write celver comments on economy, poltiicans and their famous quotes and the latest dress of Merkel or Ashton.

The 1,2 meter claim was by a former BW soldier in one of the military or veteran or Bundeswehr blogs there are in German. There were many popping up on the issue when googling with "G36 heiß präzision" or a combination like that.

Other such entries explained that the heavy use of multipolymeric materials (plastic) blocks heat transportation and cooling, or leads to inner distortion of the weapon frame. The prohblem is not the barrel wich is said to be of solid quality (and of cours enot made of plastic!), but the frame and the way it messes up the cooling of the barrel. Not just with the G36, but many other latest generation weapons making heavy use of these materials.

This is how you can do it.
Fiest you zero in the gun at 25 m with something like this or equivalent for the gun and sights... like penguin said.
http://legacy.uploaded.fresh.co.il/3cda6a2d06ac5968.jpg


http://2004.uploaded.fresh.co.il/2004/02/23/441550.jpg


Then you rock and roll a bit and repeat the test.
That way you can see the difference very well.


(thats a lot of gun talking peww lol)

No, Bild claims to base it on an internal paper :03:

The only reliable source they mention would be Ulrich Kirsch.

I found something mentioning overheating in this video from 2010: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyO-SCiqfx0 (at 4:38), though it was about a 9 hour(!) firefight. For the non-German speakers: they say some weapons failed due to overheating.
Interesting is also the fire discipline, in the beginning you can clearly see and hear the M4 firing auto bursts, as it should be in a support role, however you can also notice G36s firing full auto (not only short bursts)

So it should also be tested if it would make sense to consider what the Americans did after their experiences from Vietnam: when they introduced the M16 A2, they removed the capability to fire full auto, it was reduced to 3-shot-bursts, mainly for ammo conservation reasons. I don't know how much of a problem overheating was back there, but it is definitely a side effect to prevent the barrel from getting hot too quickly.


edit: arrgh, your text grew :):
The Spiegel article, as the original source who makes the claims clearly states: "auf ein Drittel" - to 1/3

The G-3 is a nightmare in sandy conditions. I served with a G-3 variant in 2008/09, the Swedish AK4. It is a reliable weapon in almost all other respects, but sand will quickly foul the weapon because it can easily get between the bold and frame via the cocking handle slot cut into the weapon. When that happens you are either going to have a really hard time getting the bold moving again or you are completely **** out of luck, this is a problem that gets eorse the hotter the weapon is and the G-3 does overheat quite fast if you maintain a high rate of fire with single shots.

ESTSOF and our Scouts battalion are deployed to Afghanistan ;)

Heck, didn't Germany invent the barrel change in the MG42?

No, the MG-34 also had a quick change barrel. Though don't have any info on earlier weapons with quickly changeable barrels.

Edit: After a quick search the first weapon to feature a quick change barrel system I could find is the ZB vz. 26 adopted in 1924 by the Czech. Not sure if it is the actual first though.

:damn:
:dead:
@ Penguin exclusively and thus in German (allows me more precision, and is irrelevant for this thread's original content),


Von Stöksken auf Hölzken, und alles bis aufs i-Tüpfelchen ausdiskutieren, oder was? Also momentan tötest Du mir a Bisserl den Nerv, echt.

Auf die Artikel von vor drei Wochen, nahm ich keinen Bezug. Mein Opening bezieht sich auf die Artikellage gestern. Fast alle Medien gestern bezogen sich auf teilweis identisch abgedruckte Artikel, die ich deshalb nicht zitierte, weil in der Regel eine deutsche Textangabe in diesem englischsprachigen Forum wenig Sinn macht, der Inhalt der Meldung aber inhaltlich unstrittig sein sollte in der Art, wie ich ihn zusammenfaßte. Die Bild hat es sogar in der Printausgabe gebracht: die Bild hat ein internes Papier der Materialprüfstelle der BW, in dem die von mir genannten, rot markierten Textstellen enthalten sind, so Bild.

Mag sein daß der Spiegel vor drei Wochen ein anderes oder das gleiche Paspier vorliegen hatte, oder nicht. Ich weiß es nicht. Ich nahm keinen Bezug darauf.

Tatsache ist, daß einige Medien gestern auch andeuteten, daß in den drei Wochen sich die Verdachtmomente - so nenne ich sie, weil die Daten nicht direkt veröffentlicht wurden - verdichteten, dahingehend, daß das Problem noch gravierender ist als zuvor beschrieben wurde.

Zu den überregionalen Zeitungen wie Welt, Focus, FAZ und Spiegel, googelte ich im verlauf des Threads noch weiter, stieß auf regionale Kleinzeitungen, die teilweis identische Textmeldungen veröffentlichten wie den, den ich weiter oben zitierte, und auf diverse Blogs von BW Anbgehörigen, BW-Fans, Soaldatenblogs und Militaria-blogs. Dort wurde auf existierende Hitze- und Präzisions-Probleme hingewiesen, von Leuten die durch eigene Angabe und den Stil ihres Posting mir den Eindruck vermittelten, Erfahrung mit dem G36 zu haben und zu wissen, wovon sie redeten, in technischer Hinsicht. Aus einem solchen Blog stammt die Angabe über eine Abweichung von 1.2 Meter auf 100 Meter in heißgeschossenem Zustand. Ich habe das als solches wohl kenntlich gemacht.

Aus solchen Quellen entnahm ich auch, daß das G3 selbst kalt eine lausige Präzision hat trotz des größeren Kalibers (bei der DDR-Armee stand das G3 mehrheitlich in sehr schlechtem Ruf), und daß das MG3 eigentlich sehr gut sei, aber lausig schnell heiß wird - was wohl kein Wunder ist bei der rekordverdächtigen Schußfrequenz in seiner Klasse zu seiner Zeit. Aber das nur am Rande.

Dann das "eine Drittel" und "zwei Drittel". Meine Zweifel an der sprachlichen Schlampigkeit von schreibenden Journalisten gründet sich darauf, daß viele nicht wissen, wovon sie schreiben und sie dazu neigen, komplexe Angaben von Information eines spezifischen Sachgebiets in möglichst griffige Formulierungen pressen zu wollen, und das schnell. Meine Zweifel gründen sich darauf, daß tatsächlich in mehreren vereinzelten Meldungen - in dreien, wenn ich mich recht entsinne - Angaben in Bezug auf "Drittel" gemacht wurden. Nur war es jedes Mal etwas anderes, was gesagt wurde. Mal wurde die Präzision "auf zwei Drittel gesenkt". Mal wurde sie "um ein Drittel" gesenkt. Mal reduzierte sie sich "um ein Drittel". Offensichtlich haben da mehrere Leute was durcheinander gebracht, haben vielleicht sogar eigenmächtig Subtraktionsoperationen durchgeführt, obwohl sie nicht Kopfrechnen können. Was die BW tatsächlich gesagt hat in ihrem Papier, wird nirgendwo gesagt. Was der Spiegel und andere angeben, sind lediglich selbstverfasste Formulierungen, die obendrein widersprüchlich sind. Und alle gestern nahmen auf die Bild und deren vorliegendes internes BW Papier Bezug. Wat solls nu sein, eh? Und über die Testbedingungen - Schußzahl, Munitionsart, Entfernung - wurde in allen Fällen gar nichts gesagt. Es heißt jedoch, daß die 5.52 mm Muni, die die BW momentan in Deutschland ausgibt, ungewöhnlich leicht sei, hieß es in den Kommentaren zweier Blogs. Und das ist der Präzision und Durchschlagskraft, vermute ich, nicht zuträglich, zusätzlich zur übrigen Kritik an diesem kleinen Kaliber. Wie sie's machen, weiß ich nicht, Treibladungen verändert vielleicht. Im Sportpräzisionsschießen, Kurzwaffe, spielt das eine SEHR große Rolle, zumindest das weiß ich zuverlässig aus erster Hand.

Darüber hinaus setze ich aufgrund der katastrophal abgenommen Qualität des sprachlichen Ausdrucks gedruckter Meldungen in Internet- und Print-Zeitungen kein blindes Vertrauen in die Präzision der sprachlichen Formulierungen - zu oft habe ich schon etwas gelesen, und später stellte es sich heraus, daß falsch zitiert wurde, aus dem Zusammenhang gerissen wurde, oder Angaben, über die berichtet wurde, in unzutreffende sprachliche Entsprechungen gekleidet wurden. Manchmal spielt auch eine gewollte ideologisch motivierte Zielvorgabe eine einflußnhemnede Rolle. Leider ist Suggestivsprache in der Zeitung heutzutage genauso häufig, wie der verfälschende verbale Transport einer Information durch mißverständlichen oder schlichtweg falschen verbalen Ausddruck. Daher meine grundsätzlich gemeinte Andeutung, daß der Spiegel in dem von Dir zitierten Artikel von vor drei Wochen, der eine komplexen internen Bericht obendrein in einer irrwitzig kurzen Meldung komprimiert, möglicherweise Vereinfachungen oder Fehlformulierungen enthält, wie sie leider heutzutage überall anscheinend zum täglichen Brot der Schreiberlinge gehören. Das Journalistenhandwerk ist völlig auf den Hund gekommen, die meisten berichten nicht präzise, sondern plappern, oder kopieren unhinterfragt. Die Kooperation von Internetzeitungen macht es nicht gerade besser. Der Text, den ich irgendwo vorher zitierte, fand sich in den zitierten Originalformat in mehreren verschiedenen Zeitungen aus ganz Deutschland! Wenn einer unüberprüft nur vom anderen übernimmt, dann verfielfältigen sich auch die Fehler entsprechend.

So, weiteres Mikroskopieren von allerkleinsten Hölzken-Komponenten bitte ohne meine weitere Teilnahme.


What is needed now is the original report by the Materialprüfungsstelle of the German army, and exact information about the testing conditions and numerical results. Until then we only have the output of some uncaring inkspitters.

Does anyone have information about the claimed cmpaign against H&K? They mentioned in their announcement that they see themselves as victims of such a campaign. Beside the usual demands in germany to always tighten the weapon laws for sport shooters, I am not aware of any such campaign against H&K currently - not by pacifists, and not by business rivals.

I suppose it might be more of an issue in today's standards with our space-age materials and "expert" knowledge of ballistics and physics.

Back in WW2, Most gun barrels would overheat easily. Hence the mainly watercooled browning .30 and the air cooled, easy swap out barrels MG42

In this respect i had respect for the germans in WW2, not their nazi affiliation mind you, but their superb engineering and big scale thinking was awesome in scope and fascinating.

The Germans made excellent weapons. Although their biggest designs, such as the Panther, Tiger II, Tiger 1, and some Tank destroyers were mechanically unreliable because of its incredibly high tech (at the time) designs and huge weight, the Germans had some amazing equipment.

And they make great weapons today. Weapons such as the MP5, MG3, UMP45, MP7, variants of the M16, and so on. Every company has their designs that cant quite perform as well as it should. I dont think that the fix would be very hard, Heckler & koch simply need to solve an issueo f overheating, and the G36 will be even more effective. The G26 is a GREAT rifle, and aside from its slight overheating problems its a fantastic Assault rifle.

Germans still make excellent stuff. And ive told people, that if i had to live in any other country in the world, id probably live in Germany. :)


(Edit, my 1000th post :woot:)

You mean to say that the Germans made many excellent but over-engineered weapons their problem was that they could not let go of all that design in a war of mass production such things hurt you as they make the machine more costly to produce and much more difficult to maintain in the field.Take the both the Panther and the Tiger I both where over designed and the panther was rushed into service a problem that both tanks had where the wheels they had very close spacing bad news in the Russian climes where mud and ice would freeze up these close gaps during the night it was a problem never fully solved and the Soviets took advantage when they could and often they liked to attack in the early morning to take advantage of the frozen conditions in fact the Soviets became masters of night/early morning combat as the war progressed as this was a weak point for the Germans.

The MG42 was a simplified design inspired by the MG34 which was much more expensive to produce in my opinion the MG42 was the best weapon designed by the Germans during the war because it was one of the few that was actually designed with ease of production in mind and actually had more simplified design than what came before it.

The MG3 is nothing more than an MG42 chambered for 7.62x51mm NATO therefore it is not really a redesign more than an improved MG42 think of it as an M16A4 being the end of the line to the M16E1(the first model pre foward assist).the G36 is really an average rifle because it does not perform in a notably superior manner than a current M-16 which sets the standard more or less for modern military firearms.It has the same problem that the M-16 has as well the rapid over heating which is funny because the H&K versions of the M-16 the HK416 and 417 solved the overheating issue of the M-16 design by making use of a gas tapping piston system rather than a gas port system the HK416 is just an M4 with a different upper receiver then bolt and everything else is an M4 in fact the ones that they hoped to sell to the US military where just that an upper receiver kit.

Another sign that few are coming up with something that really changes the game is that the DOD has tested several weapons that are supposed to be much better than the M4/16 yet in tests they prove to only be marginally better and not worth the cost of procuring you can easily just buy an improved gas tapping kit for the M-16/M4 for only few hundred bucks some are better than others I am sure but they reduce the overheating issue alot
and you can install one yourself easily I have one on my AR-15 and it keeps the bolt so cool that you can take it out and hold it in your hand if you tried this with a a regular AR-15.M-16 you would get burned.

The G-36 now its over heating problem lies elsewhere because the G-36 already uses the cooler gas piston set up so the issue lies elsewhere but it does prove that H&K did fail to really put the G-36 through the ringer when they tested it because an over heating problem should become very obvious if it is unreasonably rapid in occurring I bet they knew about it but the German Army had too much faith in H&K due to past history.

H&K makes most of its money on the US civil market(military's usually buy in bulk so the money that pays for research for must gun makers comes from non military buyers who buy at market prices) and guys who think that H&K makes the best guns in the world and are wiling to pay $200~$400 more for their pistol,rifle over just as good or better firearms from other gun makers H&K is the gun that the flashy guy that probably can not field strip his gun and takes his gun to a gun smith just for cleaning owns.

@antikristuseke I only fired the G3 at a military range on a joint training day while stationed in Germany based on my experience there it seemed decent although I condenser the FNFAL its direct competitor to be a far superior design(I might be biased though I do own an SA-58) the bolt operation on the G3 really sloppy to me and counter intuitive I can see it getting fouled easily with dirt as you mention.Funny thing is a G3 will cost you often twice as much as any FNFAL or CETME(Spanish G3 or should I say that the G3 is a German CETME how innovative is H&K really?) you can buy a used CETME for several hundred less than a G3(HK91) and an old FNFAL will run a couple hundred less and now you can buy new SA58 US made FAL for a good price. I have seen chepo HK91 clones go for what a quality made AR or FNFAL or even a Springfeild M1A(M-14) goes for new.

I lived in Germany for 4 years as an American military member I do like the German culture as a whole but as Skybird often says there are alot of problems in Germany more so than the US.I would own a nice house in the woods in Germany and visit it and German friends of mine a few times a year but I would not want to live there and deal with their many current problems.My German friends are more than happy to come to the Us and visit me though when they need a break form the ratte race.