The fix is in on the M4
Rowan Scarborough at the Washington Times writes that the Army abruptly ended tests seeking to select a new main battle rifle when at least one rifle showed signs of outperforming the M4A1;
The report also says the Army changed the ammunition midstream to a round “tailored” for the M4A1 rifle. It quoted competing companies as saying the switch was unfair because they did not have enough time to fire the new ammo and redesign their rifles before the tests began.
Exactly how the eight challengers — and the M4 — performed in a shootout to replace the M4, a soldier’s most important personal defense, has been shrouded in secrecy.
[…]
Congress pressed the Army to hold the shootout in the face of mounting criticism from soldiers that the M4 is unreliable. The M4 is perhaps the most deployed weapon system in the war on terror — essential firepower in combating the Taliban, al Qaeda and other insurgents at close range during raids and firefights.
The Times earlier this year published a two-part series on the M4 revealing that, as the war on terror began, the carbine flunked several reliability tests when subjected to rapid fire.
Thanks to Chock Block for the link.
Category: Big Army
Big surprise here. Now what did Ike say about the military/industrial complex. Of course there are better weapons. They just aren’t made in America necessarily and the current contract has probably been going on since Vietnam. Nothings too good for the men, that’s why they get so much of it.
Are M4s even made in America anymore? FN is making them for DoD nowadays.
They shouldve kept the SCAR-17H platform… Real reliable and a pretty common round.
Good question….hey I’m old. I really did assume they were still made in America. Hard for me to believe FN would make a crappy weapon, but I know the M-16. It’s why I own a M-1 Carbine.
FN has had contracts for both the M16 and M4. They have a U.S. operation and a U.S. factory (FNH USA) to handle those contracts.
And we must not forget the M-9. An inferior personal defence arm if I ever saw one. Gee, and now they are showing excessive wear. I’ll keep my 100 year old colt, if you don’t mind.
I’ve been thinking of getting an M9A1 to participate in Marine Corps League pistol shoots (I’m the detachment’s pet civilian); It was easier for me to keep a tighter group at 25 yards than my 1911 (which I carry as my personal defense weapon).
Imagine if you will, the Army which rigged testing in favor of a weapons system such as the Bradley IFV, doing it for the M4. Well, get me a kepi and call me Captain Renault.
http://youtu.be/SjbPi00k_ME
Here you go, mon Capitan!
🙂
Thank you!
Hilarious!
March, or die, Louie. March, or die.
Not surprised at all. I am old enough to remember the Gama-Goat and the GOER, two vehicles that never should have hit the inventory they were so bad. Politics has stuck us with the M88A2, instead of an Abrams based recovery vehicle that shares parts with the Abrams line.
Jonn, were you involved in the Bradley testing that went on at Ft. Hood? There was no way that vehicle was going down.
Personally I prefer the AR-10 platform, but that’s just me.
I was a Control Officer on the Bradley Fighting Vehicle Combat Operational Assessment at Hood in ’06 and it was a joke. Staged angles of impact, juked miles systems, highly questionable data analysis, etc. I got my junior officer ass jumped by a couple of O-6’s for merely asking the wrong questions. I never wanted to go into combat in a Bradley after seeing first hand how our equipment made its’ way into the inventory. The only folks served by the BFV-COA were the testing contractor and the MFR. The O-6’s who wore me out went to work for United Defense upon retirement. They should have been recalled to active duty and tried. Talk about an ethical failure. I fear that this is the same crap all over again.
correction – ’06 & ’07
Spike62, was that 2006-2007?
I was at Ft Knox on 1980 when the first M2/M3 U-boats were launched in a presser both vehicles entered the water, both sunk almost at once. Great fun was had by all.
Wasn’t there a comedy called ‘The Pentagon Wars’ based around the Bradley testing?
Found it.
The Pentagon Wars is a 1998 HBO film, directed by Richard Benjamin, based on a book of the same name (The Pentagon Wars: Reformers Challenge the Old Guard) by Colonel James G. Burton, USAF (retired). Starring Kelsey Grammer, Cary Elwes and Richard Schiff, the film is a dark comedy describing the development of the M2 Bradley fighting vehicle.
Movie’s Summation of the Bradley: “a troop transport that can’t carry troops, a reconnaissance vehicle that’s too conspicuous to do reconnaissance, and a quasi-tank that has less armor than a snowblower, but has enough ammo to take out half of D.C.”
Here’s info about the book: Burton, James G. (1993) The Pentagon Wars: Reformers Challenge the Old Guard, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis MD: ISBN 1-55750-081-9
Great movie!
But, as platoon leader with the original series, company commander with the A2’s, and having hand on experience with the Soviet and NATO equivalents I’d have to say that it was better than any of the alternatives.
I am of the same belief. I have three AR10 type rifles, the latest a Sig Sauer 716. This is the AR platform with the gas piston instead of the direct impingement system.
My BN participated in what we called the SOB (Save Our Bradley) test at Fort Hood during the 86-87 timeframe. The test was pitting the M2/M3 against the M113. I remember being up on a hill watching the shooting runs. The Bradley was hitting targets, the M113, not so much.
That’s the one I was referring too. The fact that Spike was referring to 06-07, means they did it all over again!
Who were you with TxNorsky?
I am a Marine Infantry Unit Leader. I have deployed to combat with the M4.
I happen to like it. The one most commonly issued to Marines works well (as long as you don’t try to slam the plastic buttstock on the ground to dislodge a brass over bolt malfunction).
As for the M4A1, I have used one of those for a while, and as long as it was properly maintained, I had no issues with it. Even full auto worked better than I had expected.
If Marines/soldiers/sailors learn to take care of their weapons, I’m not talking inspection ready clean, I am talking about LUBE, then there is no issue with any gun. They are tools, we are the weapons. We must learn to respect our tools, like the enemy does, if we are ever to become better.
I noticed the same thing too, take care of your weapon, and your weapon will “have your back.”
During one of the Army schools that I went to, we got issued the M16 rather than the M4s that we deployed to Iraq/Afghanistan with.
Many of us were disappointed, but we took care of the M16s with proper maintenance and lubing. For us, those M16s quickly earned our respect when they operated smoothly during tactical scenarios.
I also never had any problems. Kept her clean and used Mobil 1 Synthetic Oil very sparingly as the lubricant.
Amen on Mobil 1 – it may be expensive as motor oil but it’s dirt cheap as a gun lube. I run mine a little wet, but that’s just my preference. OIF has the hot setup, though, with a gas piston gun.
I prefer Frog Lube on my personal guns. They have it in the liquid form, or a nice paste form.
Liquid for firing day and clean-up. Paste for storage/everyday carry.
I used Miltec and in 16 months in Iraq I didn’t have a single issue.
Anyone else notice that Congress called for the testing, but they are responsible for making us stay with the M4 (and turning the construction contract over to FN)?
Im going to offer my 2 cents worth, I do know a little about firearms.
Im not a big fan of the M-4. The list of what I dont like about it is long but my main issue is its very finicky.
I would rather see any of a number of piston operated bull pup designs. they run cleaner and will fire.
Think about the number of parts in the bolt alone of the M-4, each part is a point of failure.
Now think about the gas system. It dont take much for what was a fine shooting weapon to go south.
The Army needs to leave politics to the guys in DC and worry more about putting the best weapons for the task in the hands of soldiers
I suspect the weapon C that outperformed the M4 was the SCAR. It was significantly better in early testing but I was told also cost literally twice as much (easy to believe, civilian SCARS run about $2700 versus less than a thousand for an OK AR.) In the cold calculus of war, someone may be saying “well, if we stick with the M4 we get 95% of the weapon for 50% of the cost”. Sometimes the absolute best doesn’t make the cost cuts.
Re the ammunition – while someone above said they liked the AR10, that is a 7.62 – yeah, I like having a bunch more knockdown and range too, but damn those things are heavy. May as well resurrect the M14 or M1. Does anyone know anything about the “ammo change” this harps on? Was it significant (change bullet weight, powder charge etc) or minor? Is this a legitimate bitch?
Correct, David.
What you’re looking for is the most effective overall solution. The “best” individual item isn’t always the correct choice. You also have to be able to afford to buy enough of them to actually make a difference. If you can’t, it doesn’t matter how damn good the item is – buying it’s essentially a waste of money.
Except for the fission bomb, the Garand, and the 2 1/2 ton truck, the German Army had the most advanced weapons in World War II – pretty much across the board. And that remained true for most if not all of the war.
They still lost.
There is a GREAT story by Arthur C. Clarke in which a POW general is describing how his side kept introducing newer high-tech (and more expensive) weapons systems into an interstellar war and eventually lost because they were so busy fielding, repairing, and reorganizing to support the weapons that they got their butts kicked by the low-tech enemy. Should be as required reading for anyone military as Starship Trooper’s philosophical sections.
Here ya go:
“Superiority”
http://www.mayofamily.com/RLM/txt_Clarke_Superiority.html
It’s one of my all-time favorite SF stories.
Kinda sounds like an F-35 discussion….
There is also the additional cost of changing ammunition from 5.56 to 7.62, and then buying all the ancillary equipment like magazines which drives the cost up even more. M16/M4 magazines are not covered my patent so the cost is pretty low, the SCAR and its mags are under patent, so the cost will be quite high to field the entire force.
Sometimes, good enough is just that.
Even though I would prefer larger caliber (6.8 or even 7.62 x 3.9) and I would like a piston to keep hot gas out of my eye (like my SIG 516 does), the M4 gets to job done well enough.
Actually, the SCAR uses the same STANAG magazine as the M16/M4 and many other NATO weapons so transitioning to the SCAR would not disrupt the existing supply system too badly. Just sayin.
My bad then…I’ve only shot the SCAR in 7.62.
The same STANAG magazines could be used with a caliber change to the 6.5 Grendel, 6.8SPC, and even the .300BLK. The only real cost would be in retrofitting current uppers with a gas piston system and the cost of new uppers for the M4. Both would be a hell of a lot cheaper than introducing a new weapons system to the military.
Army news release from last year.
http://www.army.mil/article/105676/Individual_Carbine_competition_concludes_with_no_winner/
I’d really like to know what firearms were used in the test, specifically what was “Gun C?”
I have been through the Foreign Weapons Instructor Course, I loved it. And the big take away I got from it was this.
Effectiveness is all in the shooter.
My favorite gun in that course was the AK variants. I have been told my whole life that the AK is effective to only 300 yards MAX.
If this is true, why was I at the 600 yard line hitting the black part of the target every shot?
I do believe that the US needs a better weapon. We will find it in the FAL series. A 7.62X51 round (same as our M240 variants), full auto or semi. Excellent range and sufficient knockdown power.
OR, we could just all go to the M27. That little gun is freaking awesome!
It’s common knowledge that the most important part of any small-arms system if the nut behind the butt plate. 🙂
I remember this test from several years ago. It was the infamous “dust test” that was supposed to show the failings of the M4. If memory serves, the only gun in the test that one could say significantly outperformed the M4 was the HK416. But there again, even it had huge problems, like bolts shattering. Of the ten 416s used in the test, seven of them had major bolt failures. The M4? Two failures. As for failures in the M4, many were caused by cheap government issue mags. The military doesn’t need a new weapon. It only needs to tweak the one issued now. Change to a new cartridge, say the 6.8 Remington SPC. Add a gas piston upper. It could be done a hell of a lot cheaper than building and fielding a completely new weapon.
Kind of like a few decades ago when Colt bid about $200/gun to refurbish every ’45 to like-new? How far did THAT go… not enough people got rich off it, so it died.
I am with Tactical Trunk Monkey on his first comment. I like it. I was an infantryman with three years deployed to ODS/OEF. I shoot three gun matches, all with gas impingement ARs. I believe that the Army does a lousy job training soldiers to MAINTAIN their weapon. It ain’t a phased plasma rifle, it’s center fire rifle with moving parts that have to cleaned and, most importantly, lubed. It’s a highly adapatable (read SOP MOD), light weight weapon that do some serious damage in the hands of the right person.
In 1971-72 I was active duty working in a computer room at Fort Leavenworth KS. We were part of a large DOD-contractor team developing a division-level war game.
Guys, this was really the old days – punched cards, mag tape, and multipart paper output. Every 40 minutes of game time, everything stopped and they ran a process to resupply all of the synthetic units in the game. There was no video. Pong was magic compared to this thing.
The game had an element that permitted evaluation of armor. There was a 1LT who came up from Ft Sill and used the armor element to run combat simulations to compare the M60 tank and whatever was the Hot Soviet Tank of the day — I forget, T72 maybe. According to the game, the M60 was a piece. The Soviet tank blew it away every time. If I recall correctly, it had larger caliber gun, longer range, better armor, more engine power – the works.
In the game, it was red tank versus blue tank. After several months, in order to conceal the results from the brass and Congress, they made the Soviet tank blue and the US tank red. One of our officers said that was to keep funding going for the M60.
Was the M60 really as bad as the game suggested? This kerfuffle with the M4 sounds just as good – only public.
In 1971-72, probably. I cut my teeth on the M60 and M60A1 and on the M60A3 before it was phased out for the Abrams. Like all good tanks the M60 was great with a good crew. The M60A2, while an electronic nightmare, bequeathed the Abrams, a dream. I worked on every tank from M60 to the M1A2. Loved them and hated them at the same time.
A classic (2 part) article about the M-16’s introduction in Vietnam, and the Marine Corps’ reactions to the problems that were initially encountered:
http://www.bobrohrer.com/sea_stories/saga_of_the_m16_part_1.pdf
http://www.bobrohrer.com/sea_stories/saga_of_the_m16_part_2.pdf
I’d choose a rifle over a carbine any day. Had no problems with the M16, but as a civilian without free armor and not wanting to baby a rifle all the time the AK platform is just superior.
“The report also says the Army changed the ammunition midstream to a round “tailored” for the M4A1 rifle. It quoted competing companies as saying the switch was unfair because they did not have enough time to fire the new ammo and redesign their rifles before the tests began.”
I call BS. This makes no sense to me as a shooter. Changed to what round?
An M4 has a 1:7 twist and shoots 5.56mm NATO ammo. That’s, literally, the only major thing related to ammo type that I can think of.
There’s no special round “tailored” for the M4 floating out there. And if your rifle can’t shoot the standard M855, or any other standard (we’ll exclude the funky long range ammo that requires weird twists and chambers that aren’t on the M4 either, but let’s go with everything from cheap Wolf .223 to M193 to Mk262) 5.56mm then your rifle sucks.
And it can’t be the SCAR-L, as the SCAR has a 1:7 too. Should take all the same ammo.
If your rifle has a 1:7 twist, a standard chamber, and takes 5.56mm then it should shoot exactly the same ammo as a standard M4.
Probably the M855A1 round (new, silver metal tipped)… instead the M855 Ball (green tip) which is the 5.56mm NATO round.
not all nato 5.56 loads are equal.
powder charge can range from 21.5 grains to 26 depending brand used.
OACL (Over all case length) varies from 2.45 to 2.65
Bullet weights are all over the place.
Primers vary
tweaking a round to a gun is a science and an art. You can bet they started shoot LCA with a OAL of 2.60 23 grains of IMR 4895 and a 55 gr FMJBT and tweaked.
There is no tweaking with NATO ammo. If your rifle fails to shoot a NATO round, and the M16 does….guess which gun is better at shooting NATO ammo? Sorry SCAR, 416, and AK fans, but the M16 series is reliable, accurate, and fully able to hold it’s own in combat.
As a 1358 certified Small Arms Master Gunner, I will tell you that function is 96% user maintenance, 5% everything else. You want your rifle to shoot? Take care of it; clean it before any operation, after any operation, during an operation, after evening chow, before morning chow, while sitting n the back of a truck/tank/Bradley/aircraft carrier etc.
Just like every piece of equipment the US military owns and uses, maintenance is required for proper function….period.
28 months in Iraq, and EVERY weapon I repaired, was down for -10 ignorance.
I agree proper maint and cleaning is key. But we are not talking about weapons failure, we are talking about the intentional distortion of what was supposed to be a fair test.
That being said, if all NATO ammo is the same then how did the the ammo change happen?
The NATO spec for any round is about whieght length deminsion as well as minimum and max case pressure and muzzle velocity.
It is not load data
One other thing to remember is the NATO 5.56 was intended to be shot from a 20 inch barrel with 1/9 twist thr m4 mil spec is a 14.5 inch barrel with 1/7 twist. Muzzle velocity for the m-4 is less than that of the m-16. The effective range is less.
Thus the carbine designation of the m-4.
Being a bit old school in my designations I still think of carbine as a step between the pistol round and the rifle. Such as the .30 cal m-1
1:12 was the original on the early 20″ ARs and then the military went to 1:7 on everything when the M193 was mostly replaced. The change helped stabilize the SS109s.
I roll 1:9 on my civilian gun.
This is all actually fairly old news. The Army put this out at least a year ago maybe two. Can’t remember. It all blurs together in TRADOC.
From the Army’s news release (if I recall correctly), while several of the competitors in the replacement carbine competition DID outperform the M4/M4A1, none outperformed it in a significant enough way to justify the expense of scrapping our current weapons and adopting an entirely new platform.
Instead, the Army awarded a contract to Remington to convert all of our current M4s into SOPMOD M4A1s and purchase new ones to replace our M16s. The new Remington M4A1 has a shortened barrel, simplified select fire (semi and auto) sear system and widened gas ports.
So we are getting an improved weapon, just not something new. And really, as broke as we are, improving what we have instead of spending billions completely changing out our inventory, completely reworking our logistics train for them and completely changing our training plans, just makes fiscal sense.
Also the improved round, the M855A1 does have improved ballistics on the standard M855 it is replacing.
Also, FN-USA has the contract for many of our weapon systems currently, to include the M16A4, M249, M240 line and the new M2A1. ALL of which are made in the USA. They are just Belgian owned.
On a personal note, I deployed twice to OIF while carrying the M4. I never once had a problem with it doing anything I asked of it. In return I kept it maintained. If it was happy, I was happy.
http://soldiersystems.net/2013/06/13/breaking-army-concludes-individual-carbine-competition-without-winner/