The New South Korean Armies gun. It fires the standard NATO 5.56mm bullet and although it has a shorter barrel (typically making accuracy worse) it has an extremely powerful infrared/night-vision/range finder scope that can automatically detect distances and see things in light, for a very lower power, meaning it's battery life is extremely long for a typical scope.
It as well as an integrated 30mm grenade launcher which is going to supposedly be extremely powerful and can be fired with nearly the same amount of accuracy as the 5.56, essentially arming every South Korean with a 5 round miniature rocket launcher. With the accuracy this weapon is intended to provide, the miniature part won't be so much a problem as it will deliver pinpoint high explosive rounds to the target from a safe distance at a reasonable cost and weight.
It will as well have an extremely accurate rifle addon, as the scope allows for this, and increases the range of the gun to roughly 500 or 600 meters, that of a normal weapon, except with a high increase in accuracy due to the scope. It as well is compact and though kind of heavy, is the lightest current weapon systems to integrate a grenade launcher and an assault rifle together.
It is as well one of the cheapest rifles of it's kind today, being roughly 11,500 dollars per unit, and although expensive, is cheap compared to the millions of dollars currently invested in several programs trying to achieve the same benefits, some comparisons being the OICW and PAPOP systems. The South Koreans are expecting to be fielding these rifles in around 2010, making them a very powerful upgrade higher and ahead of most, if not all other rifles currently being administered in any major army in the world, in a rather short amount of time from now.
This weapon could potentially offset the standard war community, and although the South Korean army is only around 500,000 soldiers, and each rifle is rather expensive, the Koreans are currently considered to be the most powerful economic asian country and the 11th strongest economic power in the world, which much of this money being transferred directly to the state, making military funding a rather easy thing to do. And with drafting and mandatory 24 month military volunteer work for every male ages 18-35, the army of South Korea could rapidly climb to that of an extremely high amount with the Koreans fielding the most exceptional fire-arm in the world.
The Koreans are also expected to be putting out tanks similar to that of the M1A1 Abrams, and though they won't match it's power most probably, the will get close, and have a vastly higher amount of tanks than The United States does, and several combined forces of the NATO powers. With the current trend of the Korean army, a simple saying so could transform the entire country into one of the World’s Military elites, if not the world's military elite, and provide a devastating effect on the rest of the world.
Anyone else have any ideas or opinions about such things?
