Originally posted by glock:
1. All the newer rifles invariable have 16 to 18 inch plus
barrels eg TAR21,
F2000, G36 in standard variant. All have built in scopes & all
are much
lighter than SAR21. A 20 in barrel is more lethal but a 16 to 18 in
one is
sufficient for a normal conscript infantryman up to 300 m ranges.
With
modular designs, give the more skilled conscript a 20 to 24 in
barrel and 4
X scope & he will take out enemy at 400 to 600 m.
I think we need to keep in mind that the SAR-21 is of sorts, an
attempt to design a weapon that can be used by as many different
users as possible over a single design. Hence everybody from the
seasoned soldier to the fei zhai RPs are supposed to have a weapon
that does the job for them and yet is standard enough that it was
be mass-produced and issued. I would go for the 20' barrel simply
because the extra weight isn't that great a liability, and since
you already have a bullpup, why not make use of the extra space you
have to mount a longer barrel? The extra 15 or so meters in which
the round remains lethal is important in 5.56 ammo.
The difference is between giving your enemy an icepick wound or a
gaping internal cavity full of bullet fragments. 20' seems a nice
compromise on the high side for me.
They do have shorter barreled versions of the SAR in 14 or 16
barrels, but AFAIK they are for specialized applications.
2. The aunties / teenagers / kids can hit man sized targets at
100 m with
SAR21 without training. They can also do the same with the other
rifles
above. They can also do so with a scoped M16.
I believe the justification for it was that for a SAR you can
basically pick it off the assembly line and get decent groupings
with the whole pakage without much fuss. The whole weapon is in
itself that very thing. Mount an LAD and scope on the M-16 you get
a system that actually heavier then the SAR, not to mention more
expensive and you still have to spend more time to zero the whole
thing. In times of war you would like your weapons systems to come
in "happy meal" packages with less fuss.
3. SCAR, G36 and F2000 have Safe/Fire & Auto/Single shot
controls which are
similar or better than the ones in M16s which are hard to
fault.
Granted I never understood why ST in all their wisdom and
cunning designs never bothered to fix the whole fire
selector/safety issue. Unless they were making it with SAF doctrine
in mind where the soldiers would be doing semi most of the time and
auto was extremely rare.
Prehaps they figured adding the links to redesign the fire selector
in another more egronomic position made the whole system less
reliable and added more moving parts. Granted... how often do we
rock and roll on anyway? Is the added time to switch to this mode a
serious design flaw or just a compromise for reliability. Of course
this is just my speculation.
4. P rails give flexibility to the normal infantryman. They are
not only for Spec
Ops. When u need a light in urban combat or when u need to
configure
rifle for a night battle and need a night sight , the P rail will
be needed.
There is a version of the SAR with the P rail, but last I heard
no plans in the SAF to extend this to all us conscripts. They
didn't do it with the M-16, and so far no plans to do it with the
usual SAR. But this is not really the issue of the weapon and that
of the SAF. I would prefer a P Rail myself, as I would also like to
see things like body armour and what have you not becoming
standard. Time will tell, but there's nothing stopping the SAR from
becoming P-Railed... and indeed it has.
5. The sight reticule in the standard optical sight in the SAR21
is hard to see
& is useless in poor light & darkness. It shud not be black
but illuminated
to amber or red. There are also no graduations to estimate range -
one
only needs to see a G36 standard optical sight to see how simple
and
effective a good sight is.
I believe they never intended for the scope to be used in night
conditions, shifting the whole emphasis of night engagements to the
LAD. Seems somewhat incomplete to me however, but then again proper
night engagements (which do not involve blasting at each other)
usually takes place below 100 meters, at which using an LAD in a
firefight is probably much better then squinting down a scope.
Personally I engaged night targets much faster by point indexing
them with the SAR, given a short burst of the LAD to check the aim
and squeezing off a round then I could ever do with my M16 night
sights. Using a normal scope at night isn't really a good
idea.
Scope optics let in less light then normal sights and the reduced
field of view leaves you even more blind. The best I feel would be
a nice dot sight, but I suppose giving the backup sights a glow tip
would help a lot in night fighting.
I don't see why you need graduations in the SAR scope. The center
dot is zeroed (unless you messed with it) to 200 and the limits of
the circle are where you expect your bullets to impact at 100 and
300 respectively. It's an elegant and somewhat idiot-proof sight to
use. Point and shoot.
The fancy scopes with the graduations are found in the sharpshooter
version of the SAR though, so there you have it.