Dunno how many of you knew this or not, but the reason that Stargate SG1 used the Fabrique Nationale Grendel P90 submachinegun is this: FN couldn't sell them (for the $2500 each asking price) and offered to supply the guns and all the blank ammunition the show could shoot. A P90 was supposed to be an anti-armored terrorist weapon that wouldn't go through the wall behind the one you're shooting in the mazes of Jerusalem and Riyadh. It got adopted into a PDW (Personal Defense Weapon) because its very small and holds a lot of spray and pray ammo in the magazine. Turns out that once you've fired a few rounds and bump it, the ammo tumbles in the magazine and the gun seizes. The engineers needed to be shamed over that. And that's why its not a big seller in the real world.
In the pilot episode, the base security open fire on the invading aliens with full magazines of M-16, and later in the series, during some big sales of the P90 to Saudi Security forces when there was a serious shortage of blank ammunition, they carried around Heckler and Koch G36 rifle and MP7s, which are a competing system. The G36 is a piston driven version of the M16 firing the same ammunition. And the funny bit? The Grendel's ammo is slower and less powerful than an M16 and G36. So just a little movie conceit for television there. The P90 is lower powered than the .223, a ballistic twin to the slower .221 Fireball, which is half an inch shorter and several hundred feet per second slower despite the very light bullet it shoots. The mechanical advantage of the firearm is its a blowback lock, like a conventional submachinegun rather than a proper automatic rifle or main battle rifle. They are cheaper to make. And they jacked up the price a ridiculous amount. Wars are fought with economics. FN lost the plot. So they had to give them away.
Of course, in the real world, body armor has gotten good enough that our troops aren't always able to kill with the M16 right away. Beyond 200 yards the velocity of the .223 bullet drops below a critical mechanical threshold and its usual explosive deconstruction ceases so it just drills through, leaving a small hole. So beyond 200 yards, a full length barrel won't fix it. A shorter barrel M4 makes it WORSE and fiddling with lighter bullets is gradually returning performance, however penetration is based on sectional density, which requires long heavy bullets, but they can't reach full speed without full power loads and a long barrel to accelerate in. Which doesn't work in CQB like the mud hut cities our troops keep fighting in. This irritation leads to air strikes and genocide.
In the real world, bullet sizes are climbing again, and the 6.8 SPC retrofitted into the M4 magazine space is much more effective at both distance and CQB. But a longer round, with more velocity and a new magazine designed for it would be better. The nearly ancient .308 fired by the M14 are back because they rip through body armor and can drop an enemy at much longer than the effective range of the M16, which is 200 yards in the full barrel length, but merely 100 in the P90 with its puny bullet, cheap construction techniques, and low recoil ammunition with the high markup. Its about profits.
Stargate was a fun show, and the P90 is more effective than the MP5. They could have used MP10's, however, and offered Flechette core rounds or something. Its not like the villains followed the Geneva convention so use whatever works. A flechette is a weighted dart, like a 16 penny nail with fins with a disposable sleeve to fit the gun barrel, fired by conventional gunpowder. The lightness of the round and its low drag means it goes very fast and punches through armor at very long ranges and deforms on impact into frightening levels of explosive damage. No wearable armor stops it. They were banned by the Geneva Convention right after they were invented because they worked. If our troops had them, the war would already be over. For pure terror value, put them on drones with miniguns. They would easily go through adobe walls.
There's also the .300 Blackout, which is meant to be very quiet and subsonic. Considering the characters are often sneaking into bases and getting caught, escaping, and blowing stuff up, that would probably be a good choice. Meh.
Just wanted to comment on that.
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