: I'm sorry but I have to take this to task. When have UNSC weapons ever looked
: 500 years beyond our current technological limitations? The Spartan Laser?
: MAC guns? Those look like things that could pop up in the next 50 years or
: less. All of the UNSC's conventional weapons would look perfectly at home
: in today's military and/or military shooter.

We've gone from crude muskets with barely uniform barrels and ammunition encased in a wood stock to precision-manufactured, composite rifles built by the tens of thousands in just a couple hundred years. The prevelance of repeating and bolt action rifles were barely in vogue for a century before submachine guns and assault rifles came along during the World Wars. These past couple years alone have seen great strides in mounting both lasers and railguns aboard U.S. Navy warships.

The UNSC has very rarely possessed technologies out of our comprehension. Bungie made it that way for us to relate more to humanity in the 26th century when they should, by all means, have laser, directed energy, etc. small arms in vast quantities.

: With perhaps the exception of the AR and it's non-scope.

Various rifle concepts today link a rifle's weapons sights to a head-mounted display and allow the user to aim and fire around an object without the need to expose your body. The MA5 seems to be a very basic refinement of those concepts.