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Home » Guns » …And Here’s the Rest of the M4 Story…

…And Here’s the Rest of the M4 Story…

m4dust.jpg

The pri­mary weapon car­ried by most sol­diers into bat­tle in Iraq and Afghanistan per­formed the worst in a recent series of tests designed to see how it stacked up against three other top car­bines in sandy environments.

After fir­ing 6,000 rounds through ten M4s in a dust cham­ber at the Army’s Aberdeen test cen­ter in Maryland this fall, the weapons expe­ri­enced a total of 863 minor stop­pages and 19 that would have required the armorer to fix the prob­lem. Stacked up against the M4 dur­ing the side-​​by-​​side tests were two other weapons pop­u­lar with spe­cial oper­a­tions forces, includ­ing the Heckler and Koch 416 and the FN USA Special Operations Combat Assault Rifle, or Mk16.

Another car­bine involved in the tests that had been rejected by the Army two years ago, the H&K XM8, came out the win­ner, with a total of 116 minor stop­pages and 11 major ones. The Mk16 expe­ri­enced a total of 226 stop­pages, the 416 had 233.

The Army was quick to point out that even with 863 minor stop­pages — termed “class one” stop­pages which require 10 sec­onds or less to clear and “class two” stop­pages which require more than ten sec­onds to clear — the M4 func­tioned well, with over 98 per­cent of the 60,000 total rounds fir­ing with­out a problem.

“The M4 car­bine is a world-​​class weapon,” said Brig. Gen. Mark Brown, the Army’s top equip­ment buyer, in a Dec. 17 brief­ing at the Pentagon. Soldiers “have high con­fi­dence in that weapon, and that high con­fi­dence level is jus­ti­fied, in our view, as a result of all test data and all inves­ti­ga­tions we have made.”

Though Army testers and engi­neers are still eval­u­at­ing the data, offi­cials with the Army’s Infantry Center based in Fort Benning, Ga., said they planned to issue new require­ments for the standard-​​issue car­bine in about 18 months that could include a whole­sale replace­ment of the M4. But the Army has been resis­tant to replace the M4, which has been in the Army inven­tory for over 18 years, until there’s enough of a per­for­mance leap to jus­tify buy­ing a new carbine.

“We know there are some pretty excit­ing things on the hori­zon with tech­nol­ogy … so maybe what we do is stick with the M4 for now and let tech­nolo­gies mature enough that we can spin them into a new car­bine,” said Col. Robert Radcliffe, direc­tor of com­bat devel­op­ment at the Army’s Infantry Center. “It’s just not ready yet. But it can be ready rel­a­tively rapidly.”

That’s not good enough for some on Capitol Hill who’ve pushed hard for the so-​​called “extreme dust test” since last spring. Oklahoma Republican Senator Tom Coburn placed a hold on the nom­i­na­tion of Army Secretary Pete Geren ear­lier this year to force the Army to take another look at the M4 and its reliability.

In an April 12 let­ter to the still uncon­firmed Geren, Coburn wrote that “con­sid­er­ing the long stand­ing reli­a­bil­ity and lethal­ity prob­lems with the M16 design, of which the M4 is based, I am afraid that our troops in com­bat might not have the best weapon.” He insisted the Army con­duct a side-​​by-​​side test to ver­ify his con­tention that more reli­able designs existed and could be fielded soon.

Despite the 98 per­cent reli­a­bil­ity argu­ment now being pushed by the Army, one con­gres­sional staffer famil­iar with the extreme dust tests is skep­ti­cal of the service’s conclusions.

“This isn’t brain surgery — a rifle needs to do three things: shoot when you pull the trig­ger, put bul­lets where you aim them and deliver enough energy to stop what’s attack­ing you,” the staffer told Military​.com in an email. “If the M4 can’t be depended on to shoot then every­thing else is irrelevant.”

The staffer offered a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive of how to view the Army’s result. If you look at the num­bers, he rea­soned, the M4’s 882 total stop­pages aver­ages out to a jam every 68 rounds. There are about 30 rounds per mag­a­zine in the M4.

By com­par­i­son, the XM8 jammed once every 472 rounds, the Mk16 every 265 rounds and the 416 every 257 rounds. Army offi­cials con­tend sol­diers rarely fire more than 140 rounds in an engagement.

“These results are stun­ning, and frankly they are sig­nif­i­cantly more dra­matic than most weapons experts expected,” the staffer said.

Army offi­cials say the staffer’s com­par­i­son is “mis­lead­ing” since the extreme dust test did not rep­re­sent a typ­i­cal com­bat envi­ron­ment and did not include the reg­u­lar weapons clean­ing sol­diers typ­i­cally per­form in the field.

So the Army is stick­ing by the M4 and has recently signed another con­tract with man­u­fac­turer Colt Defense to out­fit sev­eral more brigade com­bat teams with the com­pact weapon. Service offi­cials say feed­back from the field on the M4 has been uni­ver­sally pos­i­tive — except for some grum­bling about the stop­ping power of its 5.56mm round. And as long as sol­diers take the time to clean their weapons prop­erly, even the “extreme” dust test­ing showed the weapon per­formed as advertised.

“The force will tell you the weapon sys­tem is reli­able, they’re con­fi­dent in it, they under­stand that the key to mak­ing that weapon sys­tem effec­tive on the bat­tle­field and killing the enemy is a solid main­te­nance pro­gram and, just as impor­tant, is a marks­man­ship pro­gram,” said Sgt. Maj. Tom Coleman, sergeant major for PEO Soldier and the Natick Soldier Systems Center. “So, you can’t start talk­ing about a weapon sys­tem with­out bring­ing in all the other pieces that come into play.”

That’s not enough for some who say the tech­nol­ogy is out there to field a bet­ter, more reli­able rifle to troops in con­tact now.

“It’s time to stop mak­ing excuses and just con­duct a com­pe­ti­tion for a new weapon,” the con­gres­sional staffer said.

– Christian

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December 18th, 2007 | Guns | 271775 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2007/12/18/and-heres-the-rest-of-the-m4-story/...And+Here%27s+the+Rest+of+the+M4+Story...2007-12-18+12%3A59%3A25Ward You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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  1. Steve A says:
    December 19, 2007 at 2:10 pm

    I own an M4 and an AK. I love them both but the facts are the facts. The worst AK ever built is still far more reli­able then the best M16/​M4 ever built. The M4 may be pret­tier and more accu­rate but I would take an AK any day of the week. I car­ried both M16 and M4 for 8 years in the mil­i­tary and they are good weapons but they do need to design a weapon that is garun­teed to fire every sin­gle time, not just most of the time.

    Reply
  2. John says:
    December 19, 2007 at 2:19 pm

    The M-​​16 and all it’s vari­ants have gone long in the tooth. It’s 22 cal bul­let is too slow at 2300 fps, hardly faster than a good rim­fire. At 3300 fps, the lethal­ity is so much higher that it is off the charts when com­pared to the slower speed. I would want a weapon that gave me some knock-​​down power at any range I could hit with it. The M-​​14 was that weapon. It could hit any­thing I put the post on and it knocked down every­thing I pulled down on.
    As for going to a larger round than the .223 to maybe the 6.5 or 6.8 is going in the right direc­tion. I have shot a 243/​6mm and they do a job on all game I have put the cross hairs on. It hits like a freight train at closer range and can reach out to almost 1000 yards with­out the loss of killing power. I have shot bucks from 50 to over 500 yards and they die like they were struck by light­ning. So my vote goes to the larger cal­iber than a .223/5.56 just for the sake of car­ry­ing a few more rounds that you prob­a­bly won’t shoot. Besides, when using the M-​​14, you could get some ammo from the M-​​60 and pop them off the belt if you needed more. By that time, the mor­tars had found the machine gun­ner or there was enough machine gun ammo to make up for a lack of car­ry­ing an extra few mags. And I have never seen or heard of a fir­ing pin com­ing out of the rear of any M-​​14. Not that I doubt the writer, but in my time in the Marines, I never saw it.

    Reply
  3. Brian says:
    December 19, 2007 at 5:33 pm

    Amen and Hallelujah Jesus! Boy, there is a lot of reli­gion in this thread.
    I don’t know crap about guns. Tanks, planes, all that stuff is inter­est­ing. Guns? Rifles? Now my eyes are glaz­ing over. There’s a lot of pseu­do­science when it comes to the “com­mon wis­dom” of firearms. You’ll find web­site after web­site talk­ing about hydro­sta­tic shock, and all kinds of make believe crap.
    That’s the prob­lem. We’ve got guys who recoil from the M-​​16 line of weapons like a vam­pire con­fronted by the cross. We get two ‘Nam vets and one says one thing, the other says the exact oppo­site. We’ve got a guy who sounds like a sales­man for Militec.
    The rea­son Congress doesn’t do any­thing about it is because its impos­si­ble to tell who is right and who is wrong on an issue like this. With fighter jets, its easy. “This one can go fast! It evades radar!” It’s harder to tell on rifles. I want our guys to have the absolute best weapons avail­able, but I don’t know who to believe. I’ll tell you that I DON’T buy this “we need big­ger bul­lets, because the M-​​16 is like shoot­ing some­one with a spit­wad” crap­ola. I’ve seen what rifles do to peo­ple, and the M-​​16 seems plenty deadly. We’re not try­ing to kill pachy­derms with these.
    I want our guys to have the best that is avail­able, but I don’t want to waste money buy­ing the new thing just because its new, if it doesn’t show some sort of improve­ment. I remain unde­cided on the results of this test. It cer­tainly LOOKS bad for the M4, but I’ll await fur­ther news before mak­ing up my own mind about it.

    Reply
  4. TB says:
    December 20, 2007 at 2:00 am

    For those singing the praises of the AK-​​47 as the per­fect weapon, even that old thing still needs main­te­nance. We cap­tured a hand­ful of weapons recently and fired them at our range. The Russian AK-​​47 I fired (with brand new ammo) blew up in my face. The cover flew back and cut my mouth and the bolt became fused to the receiver. My bad for not let­ting the armorer check it out first, but I’ve never heard of an M4/​M16 mis­fire caus­ing an explosion.

    Reply
  5. Clay Cooper, USAF Ret. says:
    December 20, 2007 at 8:29 am

    After 45 years of hunt­ing to com­pet­ing with the Air Force High Power Team, one thing that I don

    Reply
  6. L. Clay Cooper, USAF Ret. says:
    December 20, 2007 at 9:00 am

    The biggest prob­lem I see with today

    Reply
  7. Wes says:
    December 20, 2007 at 11:03 am

    Jesus X. Crist. Now the “com­pe­ti­tion” shoot­ers are chim­ing in.
    Fact: most human sized tar­gets are not vis­i­ble on the bat­tle­field past 300 meters.
    Fact: most infantry engage­ments in Iraq are at 50 meters and closer.
    Yet these jok­ers are brag­ging about how they can hit a (sta­tion­ary and giant-​​sized) tar­get at 1000 yards! Here’s a clue: the enemy isn’t going to stand there motion­less while you did­dle with your knobs and dials try­ing to get a hit!
    Thus, the comep­ti­tion shoot­ers and big bore big­ots who want to foist a large cal­iber dinosaur on out troops have their real­ity wrong. Competition shoot­ers are why the mutant M-​​16A2 with its use­less tar­get sight and over­long bar­rel was adopted, instead of the more suit­able M-​​4. And, like Brian said, we aren’t shoot­ing pachy­derms here. So knock off the 6.5 or 6.8 or 6.X non­sense day­dreams already.

    Reply
  8. hoochbear says:
    December 20, 2007 at 2:02 pm

    lesseeee.…
    1 round in 68
    that’s about 1 round per 2.7 box of 25 shot­shells
    1 round per 3.4 20 rd boxes of civ hunt­ing ammo
    1 round per 6.8 loads of ext mag­a­zine shot­gun
    1 round per 13.6 5 rd clips of civ hunt­ing ammo
    1 round per 13.6 5 rd box civ buckshot/​ slugs
    1 round per 22.7 legal loads from plugged shot­gun
    1 round per 34 rd side by side or o/​u shot­gun
    yeah.
    A hunter who is is mostly
    under no risk of loss to life,
    nor extended adverse con­di­tions other than
    laws espoused by some DC and California politi­cians .……
    would not tol­er­ate this.
    .…..weapon or ammo.
    Even by Robert McNamara’s cost effec­tiv­ness,
    why spend 10’s of thou­sands of dol­lars to recruit, train, pay and deploy 1 sol­dier and then send out with­out opti­m­i­mum fire­power?
    Duh?
    Last time I asked, there was lit­tle need for long dis­tance rifle fire­power such as in the trenches of WWI or the Brits fight­ing off Zulu hordes. Yes, every sol­dier and Marine a rifle­man, not a sniper.
    Or some­thing like that…
    Get it right this time. By the way, H&K does have a plant here in the States.
    .….….…..just one dumb old civilian.

    Reply
  9. Don Meaker says:
    December 21, 2007 at 1:18 am

    I got a chance to review the data from the tests.
    One point: Reliability after a clean/​lube point is very very high for all. As more and more rounds are fired, the reli­a­bil­ity goes down.
    Second point. M-​​4 accu­racy is as good as or bet­ter than any alter­na­tive tested. Accuracy for all weapons degraded.
    A bul­let is not a magic death ray. Nearly any bul­let will stop if the round pen­e­trates brain, spine or heart. Higher veloc­ity bul­lets frag­ment: this occurs at a thresh­old that depends on the bul­let design. Yes, the German 7.62 round is very effec­tive at short range because the steel jacket will frag­ment, and spit lead all over. The Swedish 6.5mm does the same. The old Vietnam war era M-​​193 (or the newer Swiss bul­let that is sim­i­lar) has a lighter bul­let, and so gets a higher muz­zle veloc­ity than the M855 round. Having lower sec­tional den­sity, the lighter bul­let bleeds off it veloc­ity faster. From an M-​​4 the thresh­old for frag­men­ta­tion is about 2500, and the thresh­old for nearly com­plete frag­men­ta­tion is 2700 ft per sec­ond, and the lighter bul­let will be a lit­tle more effec­tive a lit­tle fur­ther.
    After the bul­let slows down from 2800 or so at the muz­zle to 2490 ft per sec­ond, it acts as a solid. US 7.62 ball rounds have a thick gild­ing metal jacket, and act as a solid at speeds less than 2800. That means you can still get frag­men­ta­tion if you shoot the M-​​14 to remove your enemy from the bay­o­net!
    The AK-​​47 has a muz­zle veloc­ity around 2400 feet per sec­ond. The AK-​​74 has a much higher muz­zle veloc­ity, but the round tends to frag­ment into two large pieces, or per­haps to only bend, giv­ing it inter­est­ing tra­jec­to­ries through the tar­get.
    My under­stand­ing of brush buck­ing rounds is that there aren’t any. A fel­low runs “the box o’ truth” and has some inter­est­ing demon­stra­tions.
    I spend over a year liv­ing with my M-​​14. That odd jam only hap­pened once. But you can look into a slot through the top of the receiver, behind the bolt. Dirt can col­lect there. M-​​16 has no sim­i­lar slot.

    Reply
  10. Don Meaker says:
    December 21, 2007 at 1:43 am

    I would sug­gest that an accu­rate rifle at long dis­tance will sel­dom be the cause for a miss (at the mar­gin) at short dis­tance. That is why we do long range test­ing. It is the same rea­son why we do dust tests in envi­ron­ments that are more dusty than any­thing you will ever see.
    I loved my Inland M-​​16A. I was issued it with a clean­ing kit, and we worked well together. The ball pow­der is pre­ferred by the Army because it is cheap. Why cheap? It is often made from recy­cled explo­sive from other appli­ca­tions which has exceeded age lim­its.
    At long dis­tances, use a mor­tar. Perhaps a .50 Browning. An air strike. 155mm how­itzer.
    Exposed Target Engagment: For rounds 12 gauge and under, the right answer is to keep shoot­ing at short range until you see the man fall.
    No Exposed Target Engagement: At mod­er­ate range, you shoot at suspected/​likely enemy posi­tions, except where such fire is more likely to hurt your mis­sions (may be occu­pied by non-​​combatants or friendly forces). If there are 5 within your sec­tor, you shoot all 5, one after another, to keep the enemy’s head down. You would only change from that if you really truly saw an exposed enemy, then revert to Exposed Target Engagement.
    And when Marines sug­gest they never saw a fir­ing pin come out the back of the M-​​14 bolt! Well, where I was, I never saw a Marine. So, should I sug­gest that the Marines are a fig­ment of some sailor’s imag­i­na­tion?
    By the way, the fir­ing pin of the M-​​14, upon assem­bly, is inserted into the back of the bolt, and held in place by its own spring ten­sion, rather like the extrac­tor of a M-​​1911A1. Under heavy use, the fir­ing pin heats up, and ten­sion is reduced. You can guess what kind of day I was having…

    Reply
  11. ohwilleke says:
    December 21, 2007 at 7:00 pm

    The rea­son to fire such a large num­ber of rounds is to get a sta­tis­ti­cally valid sam­ple.
    Suppose they had done 600 rounds each instead of 60,000, which is much closer to the num­ber used in a pro­longed engage­ment.
    Based on the larger test, the expected result would be 9, 5, 4 and 1 minor stoppage(s) for each type of gun respec­tively, and 1 major stop­page in one type of gun. But, a slight sta­tis­ti­cal fluke of just one or two stop­pages dif­fer­ent from the long run aver­age could pro­duce the wrong result to rank the guns in reli­a­bil­ity, and ran­dom chance says that flukes of this mag­ni­tude are very com­mon when you are deal­ing with num­bers this small and rare events. Indeed, the type of gun that would have suf­fered a major stop­page would have been vir­tu­ally ran­dom and pro­vided no use­ful infor­ma­tion to the testers.
    If you are going to the trou­ble of doing a test, why not spend a few extra dol­lars to get a sam­ple size large enough to get an undis­putably accu­rate result.

    Reply
  12. Ken Snyder says:
    December 29, 2007 at 10:34 pm

    I’m a civil­ian, and quite frankly, my knowl­edge of weapons is such that the more tech­ni­cal infor­ma­tion pro­vided in the test does not mean any­thing to me.What I want to know is this: are my heroes in the 173rd Airborne Brigade who are in the Korengal Valley tonight equipped with the BEST weapon that the American peo­ple can pro­vide for them? Yes or no? I don’t want to hear any more bull­shit from the Pentagon or the politi­cians. Do my Sky Soldiers have the best weapon avail­able? Would you send your son to the Korengal Valley tot­ing an M4?

    Reply
  13. boerje says:
    January 1, 2008 at 6:19 pm

    If we are talk­ing about AK-​​47 why should we only talk about the not so accu­rate Soviet one? There are sev­eral more advanced AK-​​47 based weapons.
    One of the best “copies” is the Finnish Sako Rk 95 TP. Extremely reli­able AND accu­rate. Israeli IMI Galil was actu­ally copied from Finnish Rk 62, the fore­fa­ther to Rk 95.

    Reply
  14. Redeye says:
    January 2, 2008 at 12:58 pm

    I have A civi M4 to set zero 250yds to 300yds. I only have 50yds zero­ing range, I would like to know how many inches above or below bulleyes on paper using SS109 rounds and 55grm,
    Thank You
    Redeye

    Reply
  15. Redeye says:
    January 2, 2008 at 12:59 pm

    I have A civi M4 to set zero 250yds to 300yds. I only have 50yds zero­ing range, I would like to know how many inches above or below bulleyes on paper using SS109 rounds and 55grm,
    Thank You
    Redeye

    Reply
  16. Dustin Downard says:
    January 17, 2008 at 10:02 pm

    i dont under­stand where there get­ting this uni­ver­sal sup­port for the M4. yea sure it can work if you main­tain the hell out of it, but not every­one does. and hon­estly how can the army con­tinue to state that they field the absolute best in the world for their sol­diers after this test.
    i think the rifle needs to be replaced now and not just with a band aid upper reciever like the 416. per­son­ally i would like to see the new mag­pul masada in the run­ning for a replacment.

    Reply
  17. Roland Ma says:
    February 20, 2008 at 12:32 am

    Billions of dol­lars are spend on high tech equip­ment, but at the end of the day it is the foot sol­dier who is doing all the ground work. Dangerous and deadly ground work where these troop­ers risk their lives so that we can live free. They deserve the best rifle and equipment.They have loved ones wait­ing for them to come home alive.The M4 is good but there are bet­ter rifles like the LWRC rifles or the Masada Rifle. My opin­ion is that the US army should adopt the LWRC, a com­plete all American man­u­fac­tured weapon sys­tem. If not, the Masada

    Reply
  18. Mike says:
    May 17, 2008 at 6:00 am

    So I’ve read through this entire thread, and here’s what I’ve got­ten from it.
    “The 5.56 ammo is crap”, I’ve killed a deer with a .22 long rifle.. so the 5.56 is prob­a­bly just fine for killing peo­ple. Thats just my opin­ion though.
    “The M4 is crap.”, I’ve never shot one. But; if any of my guns jammed after 2 clips(thats the aver­age for the M4 in that test), I’d have long ago got­ten rid of it. I also don’t buy the Army’s expla­na­tion of “Its the clip!”. The M4 has been in use for decades, after being in ser­vice for that long… ALL, not some, but ALL, flaws which are not incor­po­rated into its basic design, should have been removed from the weapon. What this means to me is that if it con­tin­ues to have this many prob­lems after all these years of ser­vice and incre­men­tal upgrades.. is that its prob­lems are com­pletely rest­ing with its basic design.

    Reply
  19. Jeff says:
    May 21, 2008 at 12:31 pm

    Hey Mike if you have never fired the weapon, and refer to the mag­a­zine as a “clip” I urge you to reserve our com­ments. The direct impinge­ment sys­tem is not nec­es­sar­ily the best oper­at­ing sys­tem. However, in 19 years of my expe­ri­ence with the M16/​M4 a lit­tle clean­ing and lub­ing make the dif­fer­ence. If an oper­a­tor can’t keep his weapons clean he is a lia­bil­ity to his team regard­less of the weapon. The lat­est improve­ments, short stroke pis­ton, heav­ier grain bul­let, and heav­ier cal­iber round will ensure the most ergonomic sys­tem devel­oped will con­tinue well into this cen­tury. By the way…you are a knucklehead.

    Reply
  20. Zulu says:
    October 7, 2008 at 6:05 pm

    I’ve had expe­ri­ence with the M16A2 fam­ily of rifles in train­ing, and some were pretty beat up. Only one mal­func­tion per sixty or so rounds in a high dust envi­ron­ment seems pretty low, once the rifle starts get­ting dirty, it mal­func­tions quite a bit. Older rifles are a lot less reli­able. The best thing might be to field some of the var­i­ous com­pet­ing rifles in com­bat and see how they hold up. I’m not even going to touch on the topic of a dif­fer­ent round. Need to find some­thing reli­able and durable, then get the right round to do the job.

    Reply

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