Of course hindsight is 20/20

Just about every western country adopted a full caliber “battle rifle” type of weapon. Like people have said there’s some advantages to having a larger round or longer barrel. They chose that over something like the stg because they thought that would be the best choice.

Then they moved to 5.56 rounds and an assault rifle design. Because it has advantages which people have mentioned already.

And now the US is trying to switch to something more similar to a battle rifle again.

There is no best weapon or doctrine. They’re all going to have trade offs and they didn’t decide they wanted to use an “assault rifle” until the War In Vietnam.

Also I think people look at the stg like it was the greatest weapon of all time. Sure it was one of the first “assault rifles” but that doesn’t make it hands down better than its contemporaries