Gee, being as I only have a high school diploma I don't know if I can comment on this one, but I'll give it a shot anyhow...
USMC units at regimental level and below, unless something has changed since I got out in 2006, do not deploy with a 2112 armorer, including MEU (SOC). If your M40A1 went down, you were fucked as there were no spare parts, nobody to work on it, and would have to be sent back to the USA while waiting on a replacement. There were no "spare" rifles in a STA Platoon; every single one (8-12, depending on the platoon) was issued to a Scout Sniper and every single one was in service at every opportunity. Have a '40 go down, guess what bitch? Here's your SASR, have fun humping that shit.... Maybe they can use a DMR now, but we didn't get those until late 2001 in a Christmas delivery straight from Quantico to Kandahar.
We did not have authorization to do anything other than cleaning maintenance on our rifles. We were not authorized to pull the actions from the stock. Yes, I saw it done in extreme circumstances, but that was risking a NinJa Punch for sure. Triggers and bolt catches failed on a regular basis. Getting sugar cookied on insert or extract, either on the beach coming in on Zod's or by a CH-53 in a sandy HLZ wreaked havoc on our rifles. Our rifles went in for maintenance every 6 months at the longest, and it was rare for there to not be something wrong with them during that service. Yeah, we shot a lot, we used them very hard and if you lock a grunt in a padded room with two ball bearings for 30 minutes, when you come back he will have lost one and broken the other, but we had to baby our rifles on deployment to keep from having them go down. Typical life span of a M40A1 in our platoon was 24 months and in that time, the barrel would be shot out (7000 rounds), have the trigger or bolt stop adjusted or repaired two or three times, replaced the firing pin, spring or both due to soft strikes, have the O-rings reglued on the Unertl twice or more, and one or two other issues would have cropped up here or there.
I have limited experience with AIs, mostly from shooting with a Swiss sniper team in a competition back in '99 and also going through SSAC in '01 with a Royal Marine. We would of course trade off rifles and shoot each others, and I was jealous of the entire setup from the DBM and bipod to the smoothness of the action and the trigger. They ran flawlessly for them including while our M40A1/3s were giving us issues in the cold and rain, all three of them scored very high (a testament to the rifles and their skills), and I became sold on the system. Getting an AI of my own has been long on my list of to-dos that will hopefully be fulfilled by year's end. I have two GAP builds, one M40A1 and one Templar/Rock Solid .260, both of which do a damn fine job, but both of which need a certain finesse at times as well. Maybe I'm not through the christening period on the actions yet...
I could give a shit less about anyone's business model, manufacturing processes, patents, blah blah blah... I'm a shooter who does not have limitless budgets, a garage full of machines, tools and parts, or even the current skill level to do that work on my own. I also don't have the time with 10+ months a year overseas to learn it anytime soon either. I need a rifle that will be thoroughly multi-purpose, accurate, dependable in and out of the field while still having the support if it has problems, and will have the longevity to not only serve me in my passions but also be a legacy piece for my son to enjoy as well. I have found no other rifle that can fulfill that role for me.
Remington, Savage, Defiance, Surgeon, Badger, whatever other fans there may be out there, good on you, but it's hard to deny the facts: AIs flat out run.