horse·sh*t, G36 is a fantastic weapon system and will live forever. If you heat up anything it will change
characteristics

 

Wow. This is simple, the G36 “issue” was bull****.
416 is a different platform altogether.
Short answer is, no. 416 is 100% Gucci.

 

I wonder how....

WTF is it with people with bird/raptor-related usernames and "wondering"?

 

About the only way that the HK416 and G36 are related is that they use the same gas piston and both fire 5.56 rounds. That’s pretty much it. The G36 “issue”, if it exists, is related to the fact that the G36 has a polymer receiver. The HK416 is basically an AR, and like an AR made out of metal, except for the stock and grip. Also, the HK416 doesn’t have a heavy barrel. You may be confusing it with the early MR556 heavy barrel.

 

Why do you think there are quick change barrels? in any platform

 

Hah! Good to see a 2008 discussed topic is coming back again! Do the forum search. Plenty HKPro old and knowledgeable members already discussed it.

 

Well, for one those pesky polymer dust covers on the 416 tend to melt a lot when you put them in fire.

 

There really isn't any relation, hardware-wise, between the G36 and HK416, as others have stated. The piston, perhaps, but short-stroke pistons are quite common. The 416 is essentially a short-stroke piston-driven AR15 derivative, and the G36 is heavily influenced by the AR18. I don't think the hubbub with the G36 has much, if any, influence over what is/will happen with the HK416 with regards to German use.

As far as the G36 controversy, I encourage you to watch both the Forgotten Weapons (history) and InRangeTV (field testing) videos on this very subject. It isn't necessarily a myth, but it's likely way overblown. Like all hot-button issues, the truth is often somewhere in the middle.

Forgotten Weapons

InRangeTV

 

Interesting to see the POI shift on the german gun. Did not know that was a problem

 

Research and the search function are your friend.

a large part of the BS G36reports involved ammo issues and using the rifle outside design spec

 

As far as searching the forums goes, I did that already. There were too many hits to wade through, the threads I found were over ten years old, and not decisive.

As far as the idea that this is a 2008 topic, well maybe it was discussed back then, but the big events in the story hadn't happened yet in 2008. I only learned about this in 2018, and the German Army test results were reported in 2015. The infamous firefight in Afghanistan that got the ball rolling was in 2010.

The comments here made me dig into it again, and the German Army claimed that firing 60 rounds was enough to degrade accuracy to an unacceptable and highly unusual extent. They reported that after 60 rounds, the weapon was off-target by 18 inches at 200 meters, and by 20 feet at 500 meters. One of the media outlets I read was this German news site (it's in English).

That sounds pretty awful, so awful that it's hard to fathom, and hard to believe. It's possible that something is off with how the journalist worded the findings. He said "accuracy degradation can be as severe as" (emphasis mine) the above numbers. Maybe those were outliers or something, not the normal result after 60 rounds. Without knowing the exact test procedures I feel like I'm flying blind here. It would be important to see the raw data and test methods. Even if those numbers were outliers though, we'd need more info to understand what an "outlier" means in this context. How could any firearm they used, any G36 in good condition, produce those numbers after 60 rounds?

The Firearms Blog has more of a deep dive into the German Army findings here.

As far as claims that the G36 and HK416 are unrelated, well I don't understand how people can say that. HK says: "Thanks to the integrated G36 technology, the HK416 weapon system from Heckler & Koch represents yet another reliable option for military, police and special operations forces with regard to accuracy, reliability, ease of maintenance and handling." (Link)

As far as quick change barrels, the G36 doesn't have them as far as I know. Relatedly, I'm stumped by contradictory things I'm reading about the barrel though. Wikipedia said that it's free-floating, but I thought it wasn't. Other sources state that the fact that it doesn't have a free-floating barrel is the root cause of its overheating issues. Which is it? It's not free-floating, right?

I don't think the German Army reversed its findings on the G36, so I'm not sure what the skeptics are talking about. This thread is feeling too much like a Tesla forum, with the whole tribal fanboy dynamic. Reality is whatever it is. Our job is to deal with it. HK can be awesome and the G36 can be flawed, at the same time, in the same universe.

 

As far as claims that the G36 and HK416 are unrelated, well I don't understand how people can say that. HK says: "Thanks to the integrated G36 technology, the HK416 weapon system from Heckler & Koch represents yet another reliable option for military, police and special operations forces with regard to accuracy, reliability, ease of maintenance and handling." (Link)

People say that, perhaps, because it's true. What HK says is one part truth, one part marketing. The 416 may use a similar piston system, but that's about where it ends as far as I can tell. The HK416 is basically an AR15 derivative, the G36 is not. They have different style of bolt carrier, different triggers, different receiver designs, different barrels, different recoil systems. I would ask exactly what "G36 technology" did HK integrate into the HK416.

As far as quick change barrels, the G36 doesn't have them as far as I know. Relatedly, I'm stumped by contradictory things I'm reading about the barrel though. Wikipedia said that it's free-floating, but I thought it wasn't. Other sources state that the fact that it doesn't have a free-floating barrel is the root cause of its overheating issues. Which is it? It's not free-floating, right?

The barrel on a G36 is as free-floated as one can get while being a piston-driven gun. The generally accepted definition of a free-floated barrel is a barrel whose only point of contact with the rest of the gun except for where it attaches to the action. If you want to be nitpicky, then there's no such thing as a free-floated piston-driven gun, as the piston makes contact with the barrel and the action. But for the G36, that's it. It doesn't come into contact with the handguard.

As far as quick-change barrels go, I'm not familiar enough with all the G36 and HK416 variants to know for sure, but I don't know of any quick-change barrel for either one. But that might've been the point of mentioning it. Neither platform is really well-suited for MG-levels of continuous fire. The M27 tries to be.

I don't think the German Army reversed its findings on the G36, so I'm not sure what the skeptics are talking about. This thread is feeling too much like a Tesla forum, with the whole tribal fanboy dynamic. Reality is whatever it is. Our job is to deal with it. HK can be awesome and the G36 can be flawed, at the same time, in the same universe.

You did come to an HK-centered forum. That said, it also feels like you just came in, asked for info, then stuck your nose up at all the replies that didn't sound like what you wanted.

 

I cannot speak to reports that I have never read but I can speak to experience and offer my two cents. I have fired both of these rifles; demo's where leo's test the rifle then the new guy inevitably mag dump. The g36 began to falter after 12 mags; not complete failure but 1) light primer strikes and 2) the user would have to manually cycle the weapon. The hk416 went almost 24 mags before it suffered catastrophic failure; you pull the trigger but only hear a click. I do not know what the problem was as it was too hot to open at the demo site; after breaking the weapon down I found the gas block had shifted enough to not allow enough gas to push the piston and force the rod to cycle the bolt carrier. Again, I cannot stress enough, these rifles are select fire and NOT squad automatics. These tools are not made to send hundreds of rounds without fail or quick barrel changes. If I mess anything up I am typing from a phone and have large fingers.

My opinion is that these rifles are the same in that they fire a projectile. There are subtle differences between the two and when you add up the differences you create a different rifle altogether.

~The 416 was a 10.4" barrel with the vented gas block and I am not familiar enough with the g36 to know which version they had.

 

The G36 issue is simple - the receiver is plastic, plastic is an insulator and plastic deforms at much lower temperatures than aluminum or steel. So when you fire the gun a lot the plastic holding the barrel doesn't conduct the heat away and gets soft. This would happen regardless of whether the barrel was floated or not, and it beggars the imagination that anyone who has ever melted a plastic spatula on a frypan would be surprised by this.

The 416 barrel is in a aluminum receiver, which conducts heat like Calphalon and has a much higher working temp than any plastic. Of course there isn't a comparable issue.

 

The quick change barrel comment was to say there are guns that are designed to be MGs, the G36 is not.

 

M27. RPK.

 

I would say that I am very pleased with all my LMT long guns