Yeah it's all interesting with the politics here. Republicans like to spend money on military and stuff related to it whenever possible. Democrats are all more on idk really, i forget, but they don't do no where near as much military spending as republicans do.
After that, the m16 is still in use because it's a very good and dependable gun. It's the longest running military gun being manufactured. The m16 comes in different designs, especially the navy one which has like a grenade launcher.
And then there's several old designs for helicopters and fighters that will be phased out in like 2020 or 2050 for the army. Why switch out stuff that works good? Besides that innovation these days tends to be aimed at new weapons a lot more than new vehicles of any kind.
Then again i never thought of all these new weapon stuff as an arms race, that's an interesting way to think about it. We all live in a day and age where many countries are acceling at pumping next gen advanced weaponry.
American military is pumping out some really interesting stuff, the newest of it is ray gun meant to be a nonlethal and less cumbersome means of detering crowds and riots without tear gas and stuff like that.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6300985.stmOf course i like how bbc writes under the picture of the blaster how it makes an easy rpg target (as if anything wouldn't be an rpg target...just one of those useless comments they'd like to include for god knows what reason).
The information is supposed to be classified, but i think it's obvious how it works employing microwaves (it's obviously an em weapon). I like how the ray gun looks like an fs radar dish.
It would be nice over here if like stuff slowed down, i mean new stuff is always going to come out, but there's a whole bunch of it coming out all at once, which is where everyone starts up the fact that my country is like pulling money out no where somehow, warspending, inflation, and the works (not to mention international debt which last i remembered was like some 350 billion or whatever, it's definitely increased since then and my memory probably isn't close to scratching what it actually is).