Military History | How To Make War | Wars Around the World Rules of Use How to Behave on an Internet Forum
Weapons of the World Discussion Board
   Return to Topic Page
Subject: M4 in the harsh spotlight, again
Something Meatier    4/20/2008 11:01:21 PM
Colt's grip on military rifle criticized Associated Press, 4/20/08 HARTFORD, Conn. - No weapon is more important to tens of thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan than the carbine rifle. And for well over a decade, the military has relied on one company, Colt Defense of Hartford, Conn., to make the M4s they trust with their lives. Now, as Congress considers spending millions more on the guns, this exclusive arrangement is being criticized as a bad deal for American forces as well as taxpayers, according to interviews and research conducted by The Associated Press. "What we have is a fat contractor in Colt who's gotten very rich off our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan," says Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. The M4, which can fire at a rate of 700 to 950 bullets a minute, is a shorter and lighter version of the company's M16 rifle first used 40 years ago during the Vietnam War. It normally carries a 30-round magazine. At about $1,500 apiece, the M4 is overpriced, according to Coburn. It jams too often in sandy environments like Iraq, he adds, and requires far more maintenance than more durable carbines. "And if you tend to have the problem at the wrong time, you're putting your life on the line," says Coburn, who began examining the M4's performance last year after receiving complaints from soldiers. "The fact is, the American GI today doesn't have the best weapon. And they ought to." U.S. military officials don't agree. They call the M4 an excellent carbine. When the time comes to replace the M4, they want a combat rifle that is leaps and bounds beyond what's currently available. "There's not a weapon out there that's significantly better than the M4," says Col. Robert Radcliffe, director of combat developments at the Army Infantry Center in Fort Benning, Ga. "To replace it with something that has essentially the same capabilities as we have today doesn't make good sense." Colt's exclusive production agreement ends in June 2009. At that point, the Army, in its role as the military's principal buyer of firearms, may have other gunmakers compete along with Colt for continued M4 production. Or, it might begin looking for a totally new weapon. "We haven't made up our mind yet," Radcliffe says. William Keys, Colt's chief executive officer, says the M4 gets impressive reviews from the battlefield. And he worries that bashing the carbine will undermine the confidence the troops have in it. "The guy killing the enemy with this gun loves it," says Keys, a former Marine Corps general who was awarded the Navy Cross for battlefield valor in Vietnam. "I'm not going to stand here and disparage the senator, but I think he's wrong." In 2006, a non-profit research group surveyed 2,600 soldiers who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan and found 89 percent were satisfied with the M4. While Colt and the Army have trumpeted that finding, detractors say the survey also revealed that 19 percent of these soldiers had their weapon jam during a firefight. And the relationship between the Army and Colt has been frosty at times. Concerned over the steadily rising cost of the M4, the Army forced Colt to lower its prices two years ago by threatening to buy rifles from another supplier. Prior to the warning, Colt "had not demonstrated any incentive to consider a price reduction," then-Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Sorenson, an Army acquisition official, wrote in a November 2006 report. Coburn is the M4's harshest and most vocal critic. But his concern is shared by others, who point to the "SCAR," made by Belgian armorer FN Herstal, and the HK416, produced by Germany's Heckler & Koch, as possible contenders. Both weapons cost about the same as the M4, their manufacturers say. The SCAR is being purchased by U.S. special operations forces, who have their own acquisition budget and the latitude to buy gear the other military branches can't. Or won't. "All I know is, we're not having the competition, and the technology that is out there is not in the hands of our troops," says Jack Keane, a former Army general who pushed unsuccessfully for an M4 replacement before retiring four years ago. The dispute over the M4 has been overshadowed by larger but not necessarily more important concerns. When the public's attention is focused on the annual defense budget, it tends to be captured by bigger-ticket items, like the Air Force's F-22 Raptors that cost $160 million each. The Raptor, a radar-evading jet fighter, has never been used in Iraq and Afghanistan. For the troops who patrol Baghdad's still-dangerous neighborhoods or track insurgents along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, there's no piece of gear more critical than the rifles on their shoulders. They go everywhere with them, even to the bathroom and the chow hall. Yet the military has a poor track record for getting high-quality firearms to warfighters. Since the Revolutionary War, mountains of red tape, oversize egos and never-ending arguments o
 
Quote    Reply

Show Only Poster Name and Title     Newest to Oldest
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9   NEXT
Herald12345    Let the experts reply to this article.   4/20/2008 11:26:03 PM
But from what they taught me in the last year and a half about army rifles, this article is filled with how shall I put it charitably?

"Self serving propaganda, vendetta venting, loser whining, and just plain factual error."

So many complainers with their own "ECONOMIC INTERESTS" at play trying to fault the Army, make me suspect the  usual crap reporting up and down the line.

I especially chuckled over the  complainer champion of the XM-8 [Keane].  If there was a red flag to warn me that this piece of  Q@#$ er journalism was not worth the waste of time I took to read it, that red flag was it.

So, let's read the enduser experts' comments. I trust them more than an H&K puff propaganda piece or official Army or Colt replies in this case..

Herald 

 
Quote    Reply

smitty237    Skeptical   4/21/2008 1:52:13 AM
One thing that set my B.S. alarm going off was the statement that the HK-416 costs about as much as the M-4.  From everything I've seen and heard the HK product costs TWICE as much, and the XM-8 would have cost that much or more.  The main reason that HK has had a hard time selling the G-36 in the United States to law enforcement agencies is because it is so much more expensive that the M-16 and its clones, which are easily purchased for under a grand.  Also, the G-36 just isn't that much better than the M-16/M-4 rifles to justify the extra cost, and an HK rep admitted as much to me at a SWAT convention a number of years ago.  There have been a number of good weapons designs out there that were never adopted for the simple reason that they simply weren't that much better than the existing designs already out there. 
 
Quote    Reply

kensohaski       4/21/2008 11:28:26 AM

But from what they taught me in the last year and a half about army rifles, this article is filled with how shall I put it charitably?

"Self serving propaganda, vendetta venting, loser whining, and just plain factual error."

So many complainers with their own "ECONOMIC INTERESTS" at play trying to fault the Army, make me suspect the  usual crap reporting up and down the line.

I especially chuckled over the  complainer champion of the XM-8 [Keane].  If there was a red flag to warn me that this piece of  Q@#$ er journalism was not worth the waste of time I took to read it, that red flag was it.

So, let's read the enduser experts' comments. I trust them more than an H&K puff propaganda piece or official Army or Colt replies in this case..

Herald 


So I should accept what the general said at face value?  I am inclined to do so but I just needed reassurance from some of the experts around here.  For now I will support the continued decision to use the M-4. 

 
Quote    Reply

Herald12345       4/21/2008 9:23:17 PM



But from what they taught me in the last year and a half about army rifles, this article is filled with how shall I put it charitably?

"Self serving propaganda, vendetta venting, loser whining, and just plain factual error."

So many complainers with their own "ECONOMIC INTERESTS" at play trying to fault the Army, make me suspect the  usual crap reporting up and down the line.

I especially chuckled over the  complainer champion of the XM-8 [Keane].  If there was a red flag to warn me that this piece of  Q@#$ er journalism was not worth the waste of time I took to read it, that red flag was it.

So, let's read the enduser experts' comments. I trust them more than an H&K puff propaganda piece or official Army or Colt replies in this case..

Herald 



So I should accept what the general said at face value?  I am inclined to do so but I just needed reassurance from some of the experts around here.  For now I will support the continued decision to use the M-4. 


NO! You should read Horsesoldier, Yimmy, Bob the Brit, the Marines who post here, the other genuine experts' comments. I am waiting to read what they have to say on the subject. I just know enough to be properly skeptical of this news so-called article. I don't know enough to have a well-informed opinion on this subject. I thought I said this?

Herald   

 
Quote    Reply

k3n-54n       4/21/2008 11:08:08 PM
I just read a book, House to House, and really enjoyed it.  The author seemed to think the M4 was great, but I was amazed at the inability of the M4 to kill.  This didn't seem to bother the author at all.  I think what matters to folks like me who are far away, physically and conceptually, from war is very different from what matters to the infantrymen whose lives depend on it. I might tell a carpenter, hey, your hammer is stupid, get a nice 3 pound mallet instead, and it will really put those nails in. But stupid carpenters seem to think they know their business better than I do, and continue to use 16 oz hammers with narrow faces.  I could probably convince a senator I was right, too.  Maybe I will.
 
Quote    Reply

Claymore       4/22/2008 1:52:43 AM
Nothing out there is THAT much better than the M4 to warrant replacing it.

Simple.

 
Quote    Reply

Yimmy       4/22/2008 9:21:54 AM
Herald I appreciate the sentiment but I wouldn't label myself an "expert".  My knowledge of rifles and the infantry et al is mostly a hobby of mine.  My field of study is International Relations, and according to the left wing hippies living in the land of the elves and pixies who mark my work, I'm a high 2/1 student at best.  :)
 
For my 2 Cents on the M4 - its largest downfall is not it's operating mechanism but its short barrel, especially when combined with the 5.56mm NATO round.  This is just stating the obvious, but it is a bad decision to combine a round which is highly dependent on velocity, with a rifle with a short barrel which can not produce high velocities (or at least sustain them at distance).  When using a short carbine barrel, the Soviet 7.62x39mm round I would argue is more suitable, due to the much increased bullet weight and reduced importance of velocity - however this has the trade off of vastly reducing the weapons effective range due to the rounds trajectory.
 
The full length M16 (at still only a meter long) doesn't have the velocity issues of the M4 when using the 5.56mm round, and in getting the most out of said round the weapon is vastly more potent than any 7.62x39mm Soviet combination.  I believe the American army made a mistake on standardising on the M4 - the marines had the right idea with the M16A3/A4.  The army should have limited the move to the shorter weapon to mechanised forces only, who operate in confined spaces.
 
Quote    Reply

JFKY    K3   4/22/2008 11:45:39 AM
I am not a soldier nor an "expert" but I will tell you what Horsesoldier might tell you...no weapon will kill if you don't hit the target.  Many complaints about lethality are really people complaining aobut not hitting their target.  You might think on that...
 
Quote    Reply

RockyMTNClimber    Motivations   4/22/2008 6:53:52 PM
One wonders if Sen. Coburn has a competitor in his state (or promising to move there with his continued support....) that wants to bite a big piece of this pie for themselves? It would be insane to make a change in the middle of a war. When the contract is up in 2009 it would be appropriate to bid the manufacturing out. Until then a deal is a deal.
 
The money spent investigating other alternatives like the XM-8 or H & K's newer rifles is a good investment in my opinion. But unless I am mis-understanding the feed back from the Services, nothing new today will make enough of a difference to justify replacement of our existing weapons or for that matter, the primary contractor.
 
On the subject of other weapons/calibers; this has been reviewed to death inside and outside of the US MIL.. Although there are notable exceptions, there appears to me to be no broad groundswell of support among the shooters to toss the current systems out. The massive cost of replacing our existing small arms inventories would only be justified by a significant, and I do mean significant, increase in performance over the M16/M4. Otherwise we would be spending money on something that requires a whole new logistical tail and training support just for the sake of pork barrel politics. A supremely stupid idea (but one that could happen none the less). Absent a technology change that I can't see from here, that money would be better spent helping our personnel and veterans home from war duty, investing in new emerging technologies, and replacement of war worn equipment to make our warriors the best trained and equiped forces in history. Improving their survivability in a dangerous world.
 
Check Six
 
Rocky
 
 
 
Quote    Reply

buzzard       4/23/2008 4:43:28 PM

There exist right now M16 (AR15) variants with what I considered a 'fixed' operating system. They have switched to a gas piston system, and I consider that a pretty large improvement. Why such a modification could not be done with the M4 without breaking the bank escapes me. One person I know locally who is former Special Forces is not the biggest fan of the M16/M4 series simply because of this reliability issue due to the operation mechanism.

buzzard
 
Quote    Reply
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9   NEXT



 Latest
 News
 
 Most
 Read
 
 Most
 Commented
 Hot
 Topics