#Hk416

A trusted source has revealed to me that the French Army has adopted the Heckler & Koch HK416 to replace the FAMAS. I will endeavour to find out which model has been adopted.

The day many thought would never arrive has finally materialized out of thin air! This week H&K finally started shipping the civilian version of the HK416 rifle. I shot it today for the first time and was impressed. It works as advertised. Easy to control and jumps right back on target. The retail price is slightly under $3000.

At the Eurosatory 2010 defense expo Sagem (part of SAFRAN) were showing off their new FÉLIN optics fitted on the FN SCAR and HK416. This is the first photo I have seen showing FÉLIN optics on a rifle other than the FAMAS. The French FÉLIN program is roughly equivalent to the United States Future Soldier program.

An enthusiast entrepreneurial gun dealer from Luxemburg, WI has listed a H&K MR556 (the semi-auto H&K 416) on Gun Broker with a Buy Now price of $2,995. He admits that he will not receive delivery of the rifle until next month.

The Royal Malaysian Navy (RMN) had their 76th anniversary last month. At a show they put on celebrating the anniversary their special forces group, PASKAL, had their weapons on display. I was quite surprised to see a XM-8 and MP5 with grenade launcher!

I was checking out my blog statistics and noticed that the Bushmaster ACR is no longer the biggest search term used to find The Firearm Blog. The current champion is the HK416. Why? It is featured on the game Battlefield: Bad Company 2 which was launched a few weeks ago. In the game it is called the M416 and has a standard M4 style stock, not the distinctive HK416 clubfoot stock, and oddly it appears to be a lefty version (ejection port is on the left side).

This video shows the internals of the H&K HK416. One nifty feature is that the handguard screws were designed so that they could be unscrewed using the bolt lugs. The video is well worth watching.

A couple of days ago I blogged about H&K winning the USMC’s IAR competition. There has been much confusion regarding the IAR competition since then.

Umarex is manufacturing this .22 LR rifle patterned on the HK416 . It features …

After a year of speculation and commentary from pundits, myself included, the Marine Times reports that the H&K has won the competition and that their entry will enter production next year …

Another new gun on display at DSEi was this H&K HK416 sub-carbine / PDW. What is very interesting about this gun is the buttstock and upper receiver design.

UPDATE: The Tactical Wire got it wrong. Production was not halted.
Tactical Wire claims that significant problems with the HK416 have been uncovered and production has been halted:

In my recent article about the Norwegian H416 rifle, Mauken, a Norwegian soldier, posted a link to this article at aftenposten.no (I have translated it into english using google):

Tanfo, a Norwegian soldier, reports at the ar15.com forum that they have been having problems with their new HK416 rifles.

H&K fans rejoice. The HK416 / HK417 piston driven AR-15 derivatives are finally coming in a semi-automatic form for civilians. The civilian 5.56x45mm HK416 is called the MR556 and the 7.62x51mm HK417 civilian equivalent is the MR762. They are expected to arrive in late 2009.