gunsandgunquestions:

The most modern of the 3 classic Cold War battle rifles, the G3A3 has outlived the other two by being extremely efficient at existing. It’s a brutally simple rifle that doesn’t oversell itself like the FAL or the M14 do. What you see is what you get, and no amount of 10k of PSG1 will make this anything more than a basic battle rifle for equipping large militaries with.

While other rifles like the M14 took way too long to spool up into mass production, the G3 platform smashed through the wall like a sausage sucking Kool-Aid guy right at the perfect time. 1959, the Bundeswehr are looking for a new rifle courtesy of the G1, an FAL pattern rifle made at FN. The whole problem began as Germany wanted to make the FAL in-house, and FN said no courtesy of the whole being invaded thing. So FN would deny Germany the package for both the FAL and FN MAG, so Germany would hold trials for in-house replacements for both. The GPMG would be the refined MG3 and H&K would borrow the CETME pattern to make the G3 and the rest is history.

Now, why has this thing lasted so long in comparison to the guns of the era? Because it is simple, effective and not heavy. The FAL has been petering out because it’s effective but heavy, the M14 got chucked out the window because it was big and heavy, and the AR-10 just exploded in trials or burned down random villages in the name of Portugal to not be relevant. The G3 is all of those things, the manual of arms is simple to teach to anyone, it’s an effective battle rifle and in comparison to the other designs, it’s quite light. Is it perfect? Hell no, the charging handle requires you to fight it every time you have to use it, the CETME rear sight is inferior to the G3′s diopter and that rear notch set up for 100m is designed by Satan to confuse mortals with where you’re supposed to line it up. But it’s good enough that these are still in widespread use today and will probably be the longest serving battle rifle in the world in the same way the B-52 will live well into the 2000′s.