Future
In 1990, H&K finished the development of the G11, intended for the Bundeswehr and other NATO partners. Although the weapon was a technical success, it never entered full production due to the political changes of German reunification and lack of procurement contract. Only 1000 units were ever produced, some of which made their way into the hands of the Bundeswehr.
By 2004, the technology developed for the G11 was licensed for the Lightweight Small Arms Technologies project, the current project of which is a light machine gun prototype for the US Army. The design is intended to be able to proceed with either a cased cartridge using a composite case or a caseless ammunition design developed from the G11. Both ammunition designs are telescoped ammunition like that used by the G11, however the current ammunition design has a plastic case in contrast to the fully caseless G11 ammunition. The design, like the G11, uses a rotating bolt, but rotating about the longitudinal axis of the weapon.
Ultimately, the German armed forces replaced the G3 with the G36.
Read more about this topic: Heckler & Koch G11
Famous quotes containing the word future:
“Only he who can view his own past as an abortion sprung from compulsion and need can use it to full advantage in the present. For what one has lived is at best comparable to a beautiful statue which has had all its limbs knocked off in transit, and now yields nothing but the precious block out of which the image of one’s future must be hewn.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)
“It is marvelous indeed to watch on television the rings of Saturn close; and to speculate on what we may yet find at galaxy’s edge. But in the process, we have lost the human element; not to mention the high hope of those quaint days when flight would create “one world.” Instead of one world, we have “star wars,” and a future in which dumb dented human toys will drift mindlessly about the cosmos long after our small planet’s dead.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)
“I imagine, on the benches of an assembly, the most intrepid of thinkers, a brilliant mind, one of those men who, when they ascend the tribune, feel it beneath them like the tripod of the oracle, suddenly grow in stature and become colossal, surpass by a head the massive appearances that mask reality, and see clearly the future over the high, frowning wall of the present.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)