I'm sitting firmly on the fence here as my limited knowledge is really limited to the military aspects of firearms. BUT........., ahem......, on the basis that 'people' do indeed drill into the barrel (ouch!) to mount these pads more securely then surely it'd be better if they just drilled in to a much shallower depth and used a more substantial, say a 0 or 2 BA ish dia screw. I'm thinking tooth root strength and all that engineering stuff.

But I think we're all agreed that drilling into a barrel is what I'd call in technical language 'p--s poor engineering practice'