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The Real Reason Delta Force Switched to the HK416 — Transcript

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0:00Toward the end of the 2000s, an Army
0:02colonel at Fort Benning, Georgia, was
0:05asked about the rifle carried by
0:06American soldiers. His name was Robert
0:09Radcliffe. He ran combat developments at
0:12the Army's Infantry Center, and his
0:15answer was flat.
0:17"There was no weapon out there," he
0:19said, "that was significantly better
0:21than the M4." He was defending a carbine
0:24made by Colt. Tens of thousands of
0:27American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan
0:30depended on it. The M4 was the American
0:33rifle.
0:34But, the most selective unit in the
0:36United States Army was not carrying it
0:39anymore.
0:40Neither was the Navy's most secretive
0:42team.
0:43First Special Forces Operational
0:46Detachment Delta, Delta Force, and the
0:49Navy's SEAL Team Six had set their M4s
0:52aside.
0:53>> [music]
0:53>> They had bought something else. And they
0:56had paid for it out of their own
0:57budgets.
0:59The something else came from Germany. It
1:02was built by Heckler & Koch in a small
1:04town called Oberndorf.
1:07It was called the HK416.
1:10Here is the [music] strange part. Pick
1:13it up, and it feels like an M4. The same
1:16controls, the same magazines, the same
1:20pistol grip, the same stock, [music]
1:22the same lower receiver.
1:24It was so close to the American carbine
1:27that the company originally planned to
1:29call it the HKM4.
1:32Colt sued. The name changed.
1:35>> [music]
1:35>> So, why would the Army's most elite unit
1:38trade the American carbine for a German
1:41copy of the American carbine?
1:43The usual answer is that the M4 jammed,
1:47that it choked in the sand in Iraq, that
1:50some famous test [music] proved it, that
1:52the German gun was the one that killed
1:55Osama bin Laden.
1:56Every one of those stories has a piece
1:58of truth in it.
2:00None of them is the reason.
2:02The real reason is narrower than that
2:05and more specific.
2:07Delta wanted a very short rifle.
2:09It wanted a suppressor on the end of it.
2:12And it wanted that rifle to fire long
2:14strings of automatic fire without
2:17faltering.
2:19In that one small corner of what a rifle
2:21can be asked to do, the M4 had a problem
2:25built into its design. The gas that ran
2:28the rifle ended up inside it.
2:31That is the whole story and it comes
2:33down to one question.
2:35Where does the gas go?
2:37Every rifle like this runs on the gas of
2:40its own gunshot.
2:42What separates the M4 from the HK416
2:45[music]
2:46is not the barrel or the stock or the
2:48trigger.
2:50It is what happens to that gas in the
2:52fraction [music] of a second after the
2:54bullet passes a small hole in the
2:56barrel.
2:57And the answer the Germans gave did not
2:59really come from Germany.
3:01>> [music]
3:01>> It traces back to a small workshop in
3:03California, to the man who designed the
3:06original rifle
3:07>> [music]
3:08>> and to a sale he had no say in.
3:11Before we get to where that piston
3:12actually came from and it's not where
3:15you'd guess, a quick like [music] and
3:17subscribe helps more of these get made.
3:21Start with the problem Delta was trying
3:24to solve.
3:25For years the unit had leaned on two
3:27weapons for close work. One was the
3:30Heckler and Koch MP5,
3:33the German submachine gun that had
3:34become the symbol of counterterrorism
3:37after the SAS carried it into the
3:39Iranian Embassy in London.
3:41It was accurate. It was controllable. It
3:44was quiet with a suppressor. But it
3:47fired a pistol cartridge, the 9 mm.
3:51For the work Delta now faced, that round
3:53was considered too [music] weak.
3:56The other weapon was the M4 carbine. It
3:59fired a real rifle cartridge, the 5.56
4:03by 45 mm NATO,
4:06but it was long,
4:07>> [music]
4:07>> and with a suppressor threaded onto the
4:09muzzle, it was longer still,
4:12too bulky for the tight spaces the unit
4:15was expected to fight in.
4:17The obvious fix [music] was to cut the
4:19M4's barrel down,
4:21make it short enough to handle like a
4:23submachine gun, and [music] keep the
4:25rifle cartridge. People had tried that
4:27before.
4:29During the Vietnam War, Colt built a
4:31carbine version of the rifle with a
4:33barrel just 10 in long.
4:36The muzzle flash and blast were so
4:38severe that Colt lengthened the barrel
4:40to 11 and 1/2 in. Short barrels
4:43Short barrels on this rifle had a
4:45history of misbehaving.
4:47The man whose job it was to worry about
4:49this was a non-commissioned officer
4:52named Larry Vickers.
4:54He grew up in Adams Mills, Ohio, a small
4:57town where his father and his uncle had
4:59both served in the Second World War.
5:02In Delta, he held a job with an
5:04unglamorous title, research and
5:07development NCO.
5:09His work was to find out what failed and
5:12then find something that didn't.
5:14>> [music]
5:15>> On the other side of the Atlantic,
5:17Heckler & Koch was in a strange position
5:20of its own.
5:21The company had been founded in 1949
5:24by three former Mauser engineers in the
5:27gutted buildings of the old Mauser
5:29factory in Oberndorf am Neckar.
5:33It had built the G3, the MP5, and later
5:37the G36, the Bundeswehr's polymer-bodied
5:40rifle.
5:42But in the early 1990s, as East and West
5:45Germany reunified and defense budgets
5:47shrank, the company could not secure
5:50funded contracts from its own
5:52government. It became financially
5:54vulnerable.
5:56It ended up under British ownership, and
5:58after a 1999 merger, it belonged to the
6:01British defense giant BAE Systems.
6:05That ownership handed Heckler and Koch
6:08an unusual assignment. In 2000, the
6:11company was contracted to rework the
6:13British Army's SA80 rifle, a weapon with
6:17a long list of reliability problems.
6:20Heckler and Koch's engineers took a
6:21troubled rifle designed by someone else
6:24and made it work. Hold on to that. It is
6:27exactly the skill the next project would
6:30need.
6:31In 2002, BAE Systems restructured and
6:35sold Heckler and Koch to a group of
6:38private investors. The company was
6:40independent again, and it needed
6:42products it could sell.
6:45According to one detailed account, the
6:47conversation that started the new rifle
6:50happened around 2001.
6:52Jim Schatz of Heckler and Koch's
6:55American operation sat down with Larry
6:57Vickers. The company had spent years
7:00suggesting [music]
7:01improvements to the M16 family to the
7:03American military.
7:05Now, Schatz made a specific pitch.
7:08Heckler and Koch could raise the
7:10carbine's reliability the way it had
7:12raised the British rifles, and it could
7:15do it without Delta needing separate
7:17funding to get started.
7:19On those terms, the two sides agreed to
7:22work together.
7:23In Germany, the work reached Ernst
7:26Mauch, one of Heckler and Koch's senior
7:29engineers who was already busy with an
7:31American Army rifle program of his own.
7:34Vickers has since described the finished
7:37rifle as a product of his and Mauch's
7:39work together.
7:40The German side brought the gas system
7:42from the G36.
7:45The American side brought a list of what
7:47the rifle had to survive. By 2003, the
7:51first operational prototypes were being
7:53tested in the desert at Yuma, Arizona.
7:56A former Heckler & Koch employee who was
7:59there has said that two things were true
8:01at the same time. The Delta story is
8:04accurate, and the company also had
8:06civilian sales very much on its mind.
8:10The civilian side did not take long to
8:12appear.
8:13In 2007, Heckler & Koch introduced a
8:17semi-automatic version for the European
8:19market called the MR223.
8:23At the 2009 SHOT Show, it crossed the
8:26Atlantic under a new name, the MR556.
8:31That is worth holding on to.
8:34Delta had only a few hundred operators.
8:37No company builds a rifle for a customer
8:39that small unless it can see a bigger
8:42market standing behind it.
8:44Heckler & Koch was not running a
8:46charity.
8:47It was betting that if the most
8:49demanding unit in the American military
8:51chose this rifle, everyone else would
8:54eventually want to know why.
8:56But the first customer was Delta,
8:59and Delta's question was a narrow one.
9:02Could a German gas system, the one
9:04inside the G36,
9:06be fitted inside an American rifle
9:09without changing anything a Delta
9:11operator touched?
9:13To see why that mattered, start with the
9:16rifle Delta already had.
9:18The M4 descends from the AR-15, [music]
9:21and the AR-15 runs on a system its
9:24designer, Eugene Stoner, patented under
9:28a plain title, a gas-operated bolt and
9:31carrier system.
9:33Most people know it by another name,
9:35direct impingement.
9:38Here is how it works.
9:40When a round fires, the bullet travels
9:42down the barrel and passes a small hole,
9:45the gas port.
9:47Some of the hot propellant gas escapes
9:49through it. That gas travels backward
9:52through a thin steel tube running along
9:54the top of the barrel all the way into
9:57the upper receiver. There, it enters the
9:59bolt carrier itself. The bolt and the
10:02carrier act as the [music] piston and
10:04the cylinder. The gas drives the carrier
10:07backward, unlocks the bolt, and cycles
10:10[music] the rifle.
10:11It is an elegant design.
10:14There is no separate piston, no
10:16operating rod, no extra mass swinging
10:19around out front.
10:21That is part of why the rifle is light
10:24and part of why it is accurate.
10:26But look at where the gas goes. It goes
10:29all the way home.
10:31The same gas that cycles the action
10:33carries heat and carbon straight into
10:35the bolt carrier group, the part of the
10:37rifle doing the most delicate work. On a
10:40standard length rifle, that is
10:42manageable.
10:44Now, shorten the barrel. On a carbine
10:46around 10 in long, the gas [music] port
10:49sits very close to the muzzle.
10:51The window for gas to be bled off and
10:53sent back is brief, and the rifle's
10:56timing [music] becomes harsher.
10:58Add a suppressor and more hot gas is
11:01pushed back through the system. Add long
11:04strings of automatic fire and the heat
11:06builds on itself.
11:08Every one of [music] the things Delta
11:10wanted, the short barrel, the
11:12suppressor, the sustained fire, pushed
11:15the M4 [music] further toward its limit.
11:19Heckler and Koch's answer was to change
11:21one thing. On the HK416,
11:25the gas still escapes through a port in
11:27the barrel, but it does not travel
11:29[music] back into the receiver. It stops
11:32almost immediately at a short steel
11:35piston sitting in front of the receiver.
11:37The gas pushes that piston a short
11:39[music] distance. The piston drives an
11:41operating rod. The rod pushes the bolt
11:44carrier rearward. The gas itself stays
11:48forward. The heat and the fouling stay
11:50out of the heart of the rifle.
11:53Where does the gas go?
11:55On the M4, into the bolt carrier.
11:59On the HK416,
12:01nowhere near it.
12:03This was the system Heckler & Koch had
12:05already built for [music] the G36, a
12:08short stroke gas piston.
12:10The engineering choice was to transplant
12:12it into the M4's body and leave nearly
12:15everything else alone.
12:17The controls stayed where an M4 shooter
12:20expected them. The magazine stayed the
12:22same. The lower receiver stayed
12:24compatible.
12:26A customer could even buy a new upper
12:28receiver, buffer, and drive spring, and
12:31convert an existing M4.
12:34No retraining, no new muscle memory,
12:37just a different path for the gas.
12:40Around that one change, the company made
12:42a series of deliberate decisions. The
12:45barrel was cold hammer forged, a process
12:48that produces a stronger barrel and
12:51rated for a service life of 20,000
12:53rounds.
12:55The rail around the barrel was
12:56free-floating, touching nothing, which
12:59helps accuracy. It could even be removed
13:01without tools, using a locking lug from
13:05the rifle's own bolt as a screwdriver.
13:08A firing pin safety was added inside the
13:11bolt to reduce the [music] risk of the
13:13rifle firing as the bolt slammed
13:15forward.
13:16And for units that came out of the
13:18water, there was an over-the-beach
13:20option. Drainage holes in the bolt
13:22carrier and buffer system, so the rifle
13:25could fire safely soon after being
13:27submerged. According to accounts of
13:30Heckler & Koch's own factory testing,
13:32the rifle fired 10,000 rounds on full
13:35automatic without a malfunction.
13:39Every choice had a cost.
13:41The piston system [music] in its
13:43original default setting tended to
13:45recoil harder than an adjustable system
13:47[music] would. A user-adjustable gas
13:50regulator only arrived in later
13:52versions,
13:53>> [music]
13:54>> and the key parts were proprietary, a
13:57piston and a carrier bought from Heckler
13:59& Koch, not from any of the hundreds of
14:01shops that made AR-15 parts. Some of
14:05those costs were answered later.
14:08By around 2013,
14:10Heckler & Koch had replaced the original
14:12rifle with an updated version, the A5.
14:16It added ambidextrous controls, and it
14:19added a toolless adjustable gas
14:22regulator for suppressor use, one that
14:24could handle barrels down to about 10
14:27and 1/2 in
14:28without modification.
14:30The regulator was an admission of sorts.
14:33The piston solved where the gas went. It
14:36did not, on its own, solve how much gas
14:39[music] arrived.
14:40Vickers himself has been unusually
14:42honest about how narrow the advantage
14:45was.
14:46As he has described [music]
14:47it, the piston earns its keep in a
14:49specific set of conditions. Barrels
14:52shorter than about 14 and 1/2 in, just
14:55running a suppressor, firing on full
14:58automatic, switching between different
15:00types and weights of ammunition. With
15:03longer barrels, he has said, the German
15:06rifle did not do anything a properly set
15:08up direct impingement rifle could not.
15:11That is the real reason, stated [music]
15:14plainly.
15:15The HK416
15:17was built for the corner of the map
15:19where the M4 struggled. Delta lived in
15:22that corner.
15:23Its shortest version of the new rifle
15:26carried a barrel just 10.4 inches long.
15:30After exhaustive testing with Delta's
15:32help, the rifle was ready in 2004.
15:36By 2005,
15:38the unit had replaced its M4s.
15:41According to Vickers, the very first
15:43rifles off the assembly line in Germany
15:45went straight to Delta.
15:47He has called helping to create the
15:49rifle the proudest [music] success he
15:51has ever had in the firearms industry.
15:54A rifle shaped around the needs of a few
15:56hundred operators was now in combat.
15:59The question was how far it could travel
16:01from there.
16:03The first answer was not very far inside
16:06the United States Army.
16:08Delta was not alone for long.
16:11The Navy's SEAL Team Six carried the
16:14rifle.
16:14>> [music]
16:15>> So did the Army's Asymmetric Warfare
16:17Group, a unit set up in the mid-2000s to
16:20find new tactics and technologies for
16:22the regular Army.
16:24What those units shared [music] was
16:26money of their own.
16:27Top-tier special operations forces had
16:30their own acquisition budgets and the
16:32latitude to buy equipment the rest of
16:34the military could not or would not.
16:38The rest of the Army kept the M4.
16:40In February of 2007, an Army Times
16:44headline summed up the situation in
16:46seven words:
16:48Better than M4,
16:50but you can't have one.
16:52Pressure came from Congress. Senator Tom
16:55Coburn of Oklahoma began examining the
16:57M4 after receiving complaints [music]
17:00from soldiers. He said the carbine
17:02jammed too often in sandy environments
17:05like Iraq and needed far more
17:07maintenance than more durable designs.
17:10He pointed [music] out that Colt had
17:11been awarded a no-bid contract to make
17:14the M4 in 1994
17:16>> [music]
17:17>> and held an exclusive production
17:18arrangement that would not end until
17:20June of 2009.
17:23The Army pushed back. Its officials
17:25called the M4 an excellent carbine. So,
17:28the Army ran a test. From late September
17:32to late November of 2007 at the Army
17:35Test and Evaluation Command at Aberdeen
17:37Proving Ground, Maryland, four carbines
17:40were exposed to sandstorm conditions. 10
17:44rifles of each type, 60,000 rounds per
17:47model. The HK416
17:50was there, so was FN's SCAR Light
17:54developed [music] for Special Operations
17:55Command, so was Heckler & Koch's XM8,
17:59the rifle the Army had shelved in 2005,
18:03and so was the M4.
18:05The results were lopsided.
18:08The XM8 had 127 stoppages, the SCAR 226,
18:13[music]
18:14the HK416
18:16233,
18:18the M4 had 882,
18:21>> [music]
18:21>> roughly one for every 68 rounds fired.
18:24That is the number most people remember.
18:27The details are less famous.
18:29239 of the M4's failures were caused by
18:33its magazines, not [music] the rifle.
18:36In an earlier round of testing that same
18:38summer, the M4 had recorded just 307
18:41stoppages in 60,000 rounds.
18:45The general who briefed the results,
18:47Brigadier General Mark Brown, said the
18:49laboratory conditions were harsher than
18:51anything even the worst desert would
18:53produce and that M4 users reported an
18:5789% satisfaction rate.
19:00And the Army was clear that the test was
19:02about future needs.
19:03>> [music]
19:03>> It was not choosing a replacement.
19:06Notice the order, too.
19:09Delta had switched years before [music]
19:11this test. The dust chamber did not
19:13cause the decision, it only made the
19:16question public.
19:18A few months later, in March of 2008,
19:21the Army went further.
19:23It stripped the Asymmetric Warfare Group
19:25of its [music] HK416
19:27rifles and ordered the unit back to the
19:30standard M4, reversing the policy that
19:33had let it buy them.
19:35Members of the group had fought to keep
19:37their several hundred rifles. Their
19:39argument was simple.
19:41The German rifle outperformed the M4 and
19:44needed far [music] less maintenance. It
19:46was the gas question in plain language.
19:50Where the gas goes decides how often you
19:53have [music] to clean the place it went.
19:55The Army tried once more to look for a
19:58successor.
19:59An improved version, the [music]
20:01HK416A5,
20:03was entered into the Individual Carbine
20:05[music] competition to replace the M4.
20:09In 2013,
20:11the competition was canceled before any
20:13winner was chosen. [music]
20:16Outside the United States Army, the
20:18rifle kept [music] moving.
20:20Norway chose it in 2007 and made it the
20:23standard rifle of its armed forces in
20:262008.
20:28In December of 2009,
20:30a modified version beat finalists from
20:33FN Herstal and from Colt itself in the
20:36Marine Corps' Infantry Automatic Rifle
20:39Program.
20:40In July of 2010, it was designated the
20:44M27.
20:46In December of 2017,
20:48>> [music]
20:48>> the Marine Corps decided to put it in
20:50the hands of every Marine in an infantry
20:52squad.
20:54By 2019,
20:56about 14,100
20:58had been delivered.
20:59France selected it in 2016 [music] to
21:02replace the FAMAS and ordered 93,080
21:06rifles. The first 400 were delivered on
21:09May 3rd, 2017.
21:12Germany's path was the strangest.
21:15In 2017,
21:17the Bundeswehr began looking for a
21:19replacement [music] for the G36,
21:22spurred in part by accuracy problems
21:25when the rifle's barrel heated up.
21:27A rival manufacturer, CG Haenel,
21:31initially won the competition in
21:32September of [music] 2020.
21:35German authorities canceled that
21:37contract the following month amid
21:39allegations that Haenel's rifle
21:41infringed on Heckler & Koch patents. The
21:44HK416 was selected in early 2021
21:49>> [music]
21:49>> and a German court dismissed Haenel's
21:51lawsuit in June of 2022.
21:55In 2025,
21:57the German Army adopted the rifle
21:59[music] as the G95A1
22:02and G95KA1
22:04with 250,000 [music]
22:06planned.
22:08Even the over-the-beach feature ended up
22:10in court. [music]
22:11In September of 2022,
22:14Germany's Federal Patent Court in Munich
22:17partially invalidated Heckler & Koch's
22:19patent on it in a dispute with Haenel.
22:23The drainage holes that let a rifle fire
22:25after coming out of the water had become
22:27something worth fighting over.
22:30Think about that. The G36 gave its
22:33piston to the HK416. [music]
22:3620 years later, the HK416 replaced the
22:39[music] G36. Not every contest went its
22:42way.
22:44Heckler & Koch built an ultra-compact
22:46version, the HK416C,
22:50with a barrel of about 9 in,
22:52>> [music]
22:53>> originally developed after a request
22:55from British special forces.
22:57It was submitted for an ultra-compact
22:59individual weapon contract.
23:02>> [music]
23:02>> It lost to a rival design, the LWRC
23:06M6A2,
23:08and never went into full production.
23:11The rifle built for short barrels had
23:13found a barrel too short to win with.
23:15The list of other users runs from
23:17Ireland's Army Ranger Wing to Japan's
23:20special forces to police tactical teams
23:23[music] in South Korea.
23:25Rifles supplied by the Netherlands have
23:27ended up with Ukraine's armed forces.
23:29>> [music]
23:30>> And in 2011, the rifle picked up the
23:33association most people now know it for.
23:36It was widely reported that SEAL Team
23:38Six carried HK416s
23:41on the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
23:44That was the Navy's unit, not Delta. But
23:47by then, the rifle's [music] fame had
23:49outrun the unit that asked for it.
23:53So, here is a German rifle with a German
23:56pistol adopted by the Marine Corps, by
23:59France, by Norway, and by Germany
24:02itself.
24:03Except the pistol [music] is not really
24:05German at all.
24:07Its ancestors were born in California
24:09[music]
24:10in the same small company where the
24:12rifle it replaced was born.
24:15In 1959,
24:16ArmaLite, the aircraft company's weapons
24:19division where Eugene Stoner had
24:21designed the AR-15, [music]
24:23sold the rights to that rifle to Colt.
24:27The sale gave Colt the rifle [music]
24:29and with it Stoner's gas system.
24:32That left ArmaLite in an odd position.
24:36Its own chief designer had invented one
24:38of the most important operating systems
24:40of the century, and the company could no
24:43longer use it.
24:44So, ArmaLite designed around its own
24:46invention.
24:48An experimental rifle called the AR-12,
24:51originally built on Stoner's direct gas
24:54[music] system, was retrofitted with a
24:56short stroke gas piston. Stoner's last
24:59design for ArmaLite, the AR-16, [music]
25:03used a short stroke piston as well.
25:06Stoner left the company in 1961.
25:09The work went on without him.
25:12In 1963,
25:13ArmaLite produced the AR-18,
25:16credited to Arthur Miller, Eugene
25:19Stoner, George Sullivan, [music]
25:21and Charles Dorchester.
25:24A short stroke piston, a rotating bolt,
25:27built to be cheap from stamped metal.
25:30It never became the standard rifle of
25:32any nation, but the AR-18's ideas
25:36spread.
25:37Its short stroke piston and its bolt
25:40design reappeared over the following
25:42decades in rifles around the world. One
25:46of them was the British SA80, [music]
25:48the troubled rifle Heckler & Koch was
25:51hired to fix in 2000. Another was
25:54Heckler & Koch's own G36,
25:56whose operating system has been
25:58described as a modification of the
26:00AR-18's
26:02with the same kind of short stroke
26:03piston riding above the barrel.
26:06>> [music]
26:06>> And the line did not stop at Oberndorf.
26:09One of the engineers involved in the
26:11HK416's [music] development at Heckler &
26:14Koch was Robert Hirt.
26:16He later became a principal engineer on
26:19two rifles of his own, the SIG Sauer
26:22SIG516 [music] and the Caracal 816.
26:27Both share lineage with the HK416.
26:31Both kept the short stroke piston and
26:34traded many of the proprietary parts
26:36back for standard M4 components. The
26:39family tree kept branching. Follow the
26:42line.
26:43Colt buys Stoner's gas system in 1959.
26:47ArmaLite, locked out of it, builds a
26:50piston system instead.
26:52That piston system becomes the AR-18.
26:56The AR-18's ideas shaped the G36.
27:00The G36's piston goes into the HK416.
27:03[music]
27:05And the HK416
27:07is the rifle Delta chose over Colt's M4.
27:11The fix for Stoner's gas system came out
27:13of the workaround his own company was
27:15forced into when it sold that gas system
27:18away.
27:20Then there is the name.
27:22Colt had used M4 in its advertising
27:25since the early 1990s and registered it
27:28as a trademark in 2001.
27:31In 2004,
27:32the year the new rifle was ready, Colt
27:35sued Heckler and Koch and another
27:37manufacturer, Bushmaster, over their use
27:40of the name.
27:41Heckler and Koch settled out of court.
27:44The HKM4 became the HK416.
27:48Bushmaster did not settle. It fought.
27:52On December 8th, 2005,
27:55a federal judge in Maine ruled in
27:57Bushmaster's [music] favor and found
27:59that M4 had become a generic name. In
28:03May of 2007, a federal appeals court
28:06agreed. Colt's registration was
28:09canceled. Heckler and Koch had given up
28:11a name that within 3 years Colt was not
28:15allowed to keep.
28:17And there is one more piece and it
28:19circles back to the question in the
28:21title.
28:22Why did Delta switch? The engineering
28:25answer is the piston.
28:27But there is an institutional answer
28:29underneath it.
28:30Delta could switch because Delta had its
28:32own money and the authority to spend it.
28:36The Asymmetric Warfare Group made the
28:38same choice for the same stated reasons
28:40[music] and the Army took its rifles
28:42away.
28:43The HK416
28:45stayed with Delta not only because it
28:47worked, it stayed because Delta was one
28:50of the very few units in the army
28:52allowed to decide that for itself.
28:55Delta didn't switch away from Stoner's
28:57rifle. It switched [music] to the rifle
28:59Stoner's company had been forced to
29:01invent when it lost his.
29:04Go back to Fort Benning and the
29:06colonel's flat answer.
29:08There was no weapon out there that was
29:10significantly better than the M4.
29:13Here is the uncomfortable thing. For
29:15most soldiers carrying most barrel
29:18lengths in most of the conditions a
29:20rifle actually sees, he was close to
29:23right.
29:25Larry Vickers, the man who helped build
29:27the German rifle, has said nearly the
29:29same thing.
29:31At ordinary barrel lengths, a properly
29:34set up M4 did the job.
29:37The soldiers who carried it mostly said
29:39they were satisfied. [music]
29:40And here is the other uncomfortable
29:42thing. For a small unit doing a very
29:45specific kind of work, 10 inches of
29:48barrel, a suppressor on the end, the
29:50trigger held down in a small room, he
29:53was wrong.
29:55Both were true at the same time.
29:58The argument over the HK416 [music]
30:01was never really an argument over which
30:03rifle was better. It was an argument
30:05over whose needs set the standard and
30:08who got to decide.
30:11Look at what Delta actually changed.
30:13[music]
30:14The pistol grip is Stoner's. The
30:16magazine is Stoner's. The lower
30:18receiver, the controls, the way the
30:21rifle hinges open on its two pins, all
30:24Stoner's from the 1950s.
30:27What changed was a few inches of steel
30:30in front of the receiver. The rifle
30:32Delta walked away from and the rifle
30:34Delta walked toward are the same rifle
30:38almost everywhere a hand touches it.
30:41Everywhere except the path of the gas.
30:44Where does the gas go?
30:46On one rifle, it runs all the way home
30:49into the bolt carrier, the way Eugene
30:51Stoner designed it in the 1950s.
30:54On the other, it stops at a small
30:56piston. A piston whose ancestors were
30:59drawn up at the same California company
31:02because that company had sold its first
31:04answer to Colt and needed a second one.
31:08Stoner did not live to see the HK416.
31:11He died in 1997, a few years before
31:15Larry Vickers and Jim Schatz sat down to
31:17talk.
31:19He never saw his old company's
31:20workaround come back by way of a factory
31:23in Oberndorf to replace his own gas
31:26system in the hands of the army's most
31:28selective unit.
31:30Now, picture the rifle itself.
31:32Not in action. On a bench in an armory
31:36at rest.
31:37The upper receiver has the familiar
31:39shape of an M4.
31:41The magazine well is the same. The
31:43charging handle sits where it always
31:46has.
31:46>> [music]
31:47>> And stamped into the metal where a maker
31:49marks its work is the name
31:52HK416.
31:55It is not a random number.
31:57As historians of the rifle explain it,
32:00it was built from two American
32:01designations, the M4 and the M16,
32:06the two rifles it descended from,
32:08the two names it was not allowed to use.
32:11A German company made to rename an
32:13American rifle stamped that whole
32:15history into the receiver in three
32:17digits,
32:19four 16. And a few inches forward,
32:22hidden under the rail, a small steel
32:25piston holding the gas right where it
32:28started.

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