Now back to the M-​​4 COP Kahler/​OP Topside debate.

I spoke with Col. Doug Tamilio, Program Manager for Soldier Weapons and Rich Audette, the Soldier Weapons deputy PM on Oct. 15 about the find­ings in a draft report on the so called “Battle of Wanat” that called out the M4 and the M-​​249 for mul­ti­ple fail­ures at “high cyclic rates” dur­ing the battle.

We’ve had a bit of a back and forth on this issue here at DT: was it a fun­da­men­tal flaw with the M4 or was it a prob­lem of lead­er­ship? Both sides are well rep­re­sented here, but I thought I’d give the Army its say in this debate.

Tamilio said he was sur­prised with the find­ings and that he did not agree with the author’s call for a sys­tem­atic look at the M4’s abil­ity to keep up at high rates of fire.

“To date, I have never had a Soldier or a com­man­der or an NCO come up to me and say ‘these weapons are terrible’…Now I’m just talk­ing about the M4. we don’t get any­thing, no feed­back, and you know if there was a seri­ous issue out there some­where in eight years of fight­ing with all the bat­tles that we’ve had we would have some seri­ous data.”

Obviously Tamilio is defend­ing his service’s rifle, but he has a point. We all know that there are less maintenance-​​intensive options out there for troops who do their work in dusty envi­ron­ments (which is just about every­where except the arc­tic and the jun­gle). But this issue of high rates of fire hasn’t been brought up earlier.

The require­ment for the M4 “mean time between stop­page” is 600 rounds. But Tamilio said today it demon­strates “3,600 rounds before stoppage…So that’s a world-​​class weapon.”

Tamilio said there are some “incon­sis­ten­cies” between the draft his­tory report and what he read and heard just after the bat­tle. “We talked to the unit sergeant major a year ago and the report is not what I got first hand from him.”

“I truly believe that some of these Soldiers fired so many rounds so quickly that could that hap­pen? Yes,” he added, explain­ing that he’d done tests with SOCOM where they fired 560 rounds in two min­utes before the bar­rel warped.

“We knew this hap­pened,” Tamilio said. “We inter­viewed the unit, talked to them and then went on about our busi­ness because we didn’t at that time think we had any issues with the M4 in that incident.”

— Christian

We’re still find­ing out more details on the report that weapons fail­ures plagued the Soldiers defend­ing posi­tions in the bat­tle of Wanat.

I wanted to pass along some thoughts from a very tapped in source of ours who warned me that A) The final report has not been released and that I am bas­ing my take on the “draft” ver­sion and B) don’t con­fuse jams due to recir­cu­lated gas with mal­func­tions result­ing from high rates of fire.

My source said that he sus­pects the NCOs inter­viewed in the report are prob­a­bly being “taken to task by their peers” for not enforc­ing fire dis­ci­pline. He said this issue could be more of a train­ing and lead­er­ship prob­lem rather than a weapons one and added that despite its cur­rent unpop­u­lar­ity in the face of new Gucci guns, the M16 fam­ily of weapons has served the U.S. mil­i­tary very well “longer than any other rifle.”

Absolutely agree 100 percent.

I’m cau­tious about blam­ing the pre­lim­i­nary find­ings on the M4s oper­at­ing sys­tem and can under­stand how, like Cole Trickle in Days of Thunder, you can “do it delib­er­ate” by run­ning the gun so hard it can’t take any­more. But another source who was in on the polit­i­cal side of the debate early on last year told me there is a prob­lem with the M4’s sys­tem that when it’s oper­ated under high rates of fire, it melts the gas tube, where as the short stroke gas-​​piston design can run longer on high rates of fire with­out degrading.

Again, this is a debate with many facets. I’m hop­ing to talk to an Army small arms offi­cial very soon who can help pro­vide the service’s per­spec­tive on what might be going on here.

On another note, my tapped in source said that the SCAR has been received with lim­ited enthu­si­asm by spe­cial oper­a­tors in the field. He says that the SCAR, to him, is a step back­ward. He’s freaked out by the rec­i­p­ro­cat­ing bolt and other fea­tures that make it “just nuts, ergonom­i­cally.” He did say how­ever that his gouge says that the Mk17 7.62 is a “tack dri­ver” in the pre­ci­sion gas gun role and that the Mk16 is only being used in spe­cial cir­cum­stances and not as a gen­eral patrol rifle.

…his $.02 that I thought I’d pass along.

More TK…

– Christian

We’re report­ing a pretty hard-​​hitting story today on the con­clu­sions of an Army offi­cial report on the Wanat bat­tle show­ing that the small arms used in the bat­tle showed sig­nif­i­cant lev­els of fail­ure, mal­func­tion­ing and jam­ming “at high cyclic rates of fire.” The weapons include the M4 and SAW.

Defense Tech doesn’t have the final ver­sion of the report com­piled by the Army Combat Studies Institute at Leavenworth. But we did find a draft ver­sion and went through it to find all ref­er­ences to M4s, small arms and the reported malfunctions.

Basically, the most damn­ing con­clu­sions are com­piled in the rec­om­men­da­tions sec­tion of the report. There are a few instanced spec­i­fied in the report of an M4 foul­ing, and one where the M4 fouled and the Soldier picked up a SAW and that was jammed up as well.

In one instance, Staff Sgt. Erich Phillips had mul­ti­ple M4 failures:

Staff Sergeant Phillips poured out fire, as recalled by another Engineer Specialist load­ing for him, [SSG Phillips] went through three rifles using them until they jammed.

SSG Phillips recalled: My M4 quit fir­ing and would no longer charge when I tried to cor­rect the mal­func­tion. I grabbed the Engineers SAW and tried to fire. It would not fire, so I lifted the feed tray tried clear­ing it out and tried to fire again. It would not.

As you know, Defense Tech as been at the fore­front of the debate over whether a bet­ter solu­tion to the cur­rent M4 con­fig­u­ra­tion is out there. It’s pretty clear that the gas impinge­ment sys­tem is main­te­nance inten­sive. And I recall all too well when I con­fronted PEO Soldier offi­cials with a hypo­thet­i­cal instance very sim­i­lar to this dur­ing a brief I had at the Pentagon on the dust tests con­ducted on mul­ti­ple car­bine types at Aberdeen. I posited the bat­tle of Fallujah, where Marines and Soldiers were fight­ing for days on end with barely enough time to eat or sleep. Keeping your weapon clean is arguable as impor­tant as eat­ing, some crusty old gun­nies and sergeants first class would argue, but if the car­bine you’re car­ry­ing is so main­te­nance inten­sive and you’ve got bet­ter options out there that can stand up to more abuse, how can you tell that trooper if his gun jams in that sit­u­a­tion it’s all his fault?

Well, it looks like the Wanat bat­tle, at least in part, may have brought up that issue…but has it?

According to the report, the Soldiers had kept their weapons reli­giously main­tained. It looks like the sin­gle point of fail­ure might have been the high cyclic rates they were oper­at­ing under and the M4 just wasn’t able to catch up.

Some GWOT and U.S. Army vet­er­ans queried by the author have sug­gested that this could have been caused by improper weapon clean­ing. However, numer­ous Chosen Few NCOs inter­viewed for this study have been vehe­mently adamant in stat­ing that weapons were metic­u­lously and reg­u­larly cleaned, and rig­or­ously and rou­tinely inspected by the chain of com­mand. Other GWOT vet­er­ans con­sulted have noted that the high rates of fire sus­tained dur­ing the two hour intense engage­ment phase at Wanat could pos­si­bly have con­tributed to these fail­ures. However, numer­ous weapons failed rel­a­tively early in the engage­ment (par­tic­u­larly a num­ber of M-​​4 rifles and at one SAW at the mor­tar pit), and in any event the main­te­nance of cyclic rates of fire was crit­i­cal to restore fire supe­ri­or­ity, and to pre­vent posi­tions (par­tic­u­larly at OP Topside) from being over­run by deter­mined, numer­ous, and hard pressed insur­gent assaults.

The report goes on to sug­gest that the PEO Soldier work to find a solu­tion to this problem.

We could go on for hours on this, and I thinks it’s appro­pri­ate to do that in a forum like this. I’m dig­ging through my old notes, but I’m pretty sure that “high cyclic rates” were addressed in the dust test, and the M4 came out near the bot­tom of the pack on that amongst its com­peti­tors. The Army keep say­ing that sur­veys have shown that 94 per­cent of Soldiers say they’re sat­is­fied with the M4. But as I replied when con­fronted with this straw man argu­ment, isn’t it hard to say whether you’re truly sat­is­fied with a weapon unless you have some expe­ri­ence with other options — umm, like the spe­cial oper­a­tions forces do? And what do they pre­fer? The HK 416 and the SCAR, which are both less maintenance-​​intensive, gas pis­ton oper­at­ing systems.

What does this say about the Corps’ pro­gram for the Infantry Automatic Rifle? Why replace a good por­tion of your auto­matic weapons with one that only has a 30 round mag­a­zine? And, I could be wrong on this, but aren’t M4s assigned to straight leg infantry units con­fig­ured to fire in three-​​round bursts and semi auto? Only spe­cial oper­a­tors have ones with a full auto switch? If this instance shows any­thing that a coun­terin­sur­gency strat­egy demon­strates, it’s that small units will likely be con­fronted with supe­rior num­bers of bad guys and will need to pour out the lead when the you-​​know-​​what hits the fan. And what about weapons tac­tics train­ing? There’s a scary line in the report that quotes one of the Soldiers say­ing he was unpre­pared for such an Alamo style fight. You’d have thought since Blackhawk Down we’d be teach­ing how to hold off wave attacks with supe­rior fire.

There are so many more action­able lessons to the drawn from the report, and I encour­age DT read­ers to scour through it again. But kudos to the AP reporter who brought this out and one has to won­der whether the Army will work toward a more rugged solu­tion as it explores options to the M4 this year.

– Christian

I’d like to call everyone’s atten­tion to a solid post­ing from our friends at the Soldier Systems blog on the Daniel Defense so-​​called DDM4.

I had the good for­tune to speak with Larry Vickers, the brains behind the new M4 entry from the Savannah, Ga.-based Daniel Defense at SHOT and I’ve got to say, while the weapon seemed to me from the specs he out­lined to be unre­mark­able, the fact that he’s behind the design speaks vol­umes to me.

Vickers tried to sell me on their Back Up Iron Sight con­fig­u­ra­tion which gives more eye relief and quicker on tar­get per­for­mance, but I’m not a high enough cal­iber shooter to really eval­u­ate that with any insight.

This entry is good to keep in the record since we’re less than a month away from the release of the M4 tech­ni­cal data pack­age that will open the door for com­peti­tors of Colt and the entire M4/​M16 design to some truly inno­v­a­tive com­pa­nies just chomp­ing at the bit to deliver an improve­ment on a fairly old design.

Enjoy:

Daniel Defense set out to build the best car­bine on the mar­ket and they are well on their way. Everything about this rifle meets or exceeds Mil-​​Spec includ­ing such crit­i­cal items as a 5.56mm cham­ber, prop­erly staked gas key, as well as a shot peened and Mil-​​Spec MP tested bolt. Additionally, Daniel Defense has begun to pro­duce ham­mer forged bar­rels in house and they have also engi­neered a num­ber of enhance­ments into the design such as a flared mag­a­zine well, radiused trig­ger guard, and machines index­ing numbers.

Finally, the car­bine comes with a Magpul MOE stock and PMAG in addi­tion to a Daniel Defense A2 Style Vertical Grip, Omega X 12.0 FSP, and A1.5 Fixed Rear Sight, all packed in a cus­tom hard case.

Interestingly, the DDM4 was fea­tured on a recent episode of G4TVs Attack of the Show.

The DDM4 sec­tion begins at 1:08

The DDM4, a rifle so good it has its own web­site. Visit www​.ddm4​.com for more information.

WATCH ANOTHER GOOD VIDEO HERE.

– Christian

From this morning’s head­lines at Military​.com…

It could be a per­fect fit for cramped cock­pits and truck cabs — a weapon potent enough to pen­e­trate body armor, but sport­ing a ban­tam pack­age that won’t turn maneu­ver­ing in tight spaces into a Houdini act. 

Though the Army says it’s inter­ested in putting a so-​​called “sub­com­pact” car­bine into the hands of cer­tain Joes, the effort is likely to get kicked to the curb in favor of a new, full-​​sized car­bine — the vic­tim of with­er­ing bud­gets and the service’s focus on updat­ing the M4. 

Late last sum­mer, the Army embarked on an ambi­tious analy­sis of the lat­est weapons the small arms indus­try had to offer. The effort focused mainly on pos­si­ble alter­na­tives to the M4 car­bine, but its sec­ondary goal was to look at sub­com­pacts, or so-​​called “per­sonal defense weapons.“ 

These handy lit­tle guns can be any­thing from a sub­ma­chine gun to a chopped-​​down car­bine. The Army first announced it was inter­ested in such a weapon in 2007, to give pilots, tankers and truck dri­vers a lit­tle more fire­power than the Beretta M9 9mm pistol. 

The service’s inter­est prompted gun mak­ers to gin up a vari­ety of these James Bond-​​style weapons in mul­ti­ple cal­ibers and bar­rel lengths. Gun com­pa­nies showed off their new designs at an Army indus­try day in November, but Army weapons offi­cials still have no con­crete plans for the effort’s future. 

“The sub­com­pact has to serve a lot of dif­fer­ent peo­ple … it’s much too early to say this is what we are look­ing for,” Jim Stone, the head of the Soldier Requirement’s Division at Fort Benning, Ga., told Military​.Com recently. 

Such a cau­tious approach has vet­eran gun mak­ers doubt­ful that these new, com­pact weapons will ever make it to for­mal test­ing, let alone into Soldier’s hands. 

“I see this as an uphill bat­tle,” said C. Reed Knight Jr., owner of Knight’s Armament Company. “The gov­ern­ment still doesn’t know what it wants.”

(more…)

I know it’s a bit late, but I got my hands on some mate­r­ial that came out of the mid-​​November “indus­try day” held in the DC area to show the Army what’s out there to replace the M4. 

You’ll remem­ber that the ser­vice has indi­cated it’s finally will­ing to explore updated options to its standard-​​issue ser­vice rifle…now the M4. Whether you think the M4 sucks or not, it makes sense that the Army is break­ing free of its single-​​minded love affair with the M16 and its variants. 

I missed the indus­try day (dumb me) but I got a write-​​up on the meet­ing from a renowned weapons expert that many of you might know. He did not send this directly to me, I obtained it through other sources, so I’m going to pro­tect its ori­gins and the author. 

According to the expert, “19 ven­dors showed up at the indus­try day, includ­ing Polytech, KAC, Precision Reflex, POF, S&W, FN with SCAR, Superior Tooling, AAI with LSAT, LWRC, Colt Defense, Barrett, Sabre Defense, Armwest, HK, Bushmater/​Remington, Robinson Armament, Troy Industries and SIG Sauer.” Army sec­re­tary Pete Geren showed up as well, along with key play­ers from PEO Soldier and PEO Soldier Weapons. According to one of my sources, for­tu­nately some con­gres­sional staffers from top law­mak­ers who want to take up this issue also showed, includ­ing staffers for Salazar, Hutchison, Sessions and John Warner (though we know he’s retir­ing soon). 

The weapons expert said:

Lots of AR-​​based sys­tems on dis­play, mostly off the shelf items, many op rod guns and con­ver­sions. A few medium cal­iber (6.5G and 6.8 Rem SPC and 7.62x39mm R) plat­forms on dis­play and a few 7.62x51mm sys­tems as well. No bullpups (Tavor, AUG or F2000)surprisingly and no XM8. Lots of dis­cus­sion about op rod upgrades to M4’s ver­sus com­plete new sys­tems. Little talk that I heard any­way about user con­vert­ible (bar­rel, butt­stock, cal­iber) mod­u­lar fam­ily of weapons but there were one or two such sys­tems there. 

(more…)

It seems like you all are talk­ing alot about the Magpul/​Bushmaster ACR, so I dug up this YouTube video from Future Weapons (I want that guy’s job) and decided to post it here.

As more of you make con­vinc­ing pitches for M4 replace­ments, I’ll dig up what­ever video I can find and fea­ture it here…

In a move that could reverse years of Army small arms pol­icy, the ser­vice is ask­ing indus­try to send in ideas for a new com­bat rifle that could replace the M4 carbine. 

In late August, the Army issued a solic­i­ta­tion to the arms indus­try ask­ing com­pa­nies to sub­mit pro­pos­als that would demon­strate “improve­ments in indi­vid­ual weapon per­for­mance in the areas of accu­racy and dis­per­sion … reli­a­bil­ity and dura­bil­ity in all envi­ron­ments, mod­u­lar­ity and ter­mi­nal performance.“ 

And in a dra­matic ges­ture that could throw the door wide open to a totally new car­bine, the ser­vice did not con­strain ideas to the cur­rent 5.56mm round used in the M4. 

“We’re at the point now where we’re going to go out and com­pete,” said Richard Audette, project man­ager for Soldier weapons at the Army’s Picatinny Arsenal. 

“We’re look­ing for any­one that has a world-​​class car­bine,” Audette told Military​.com in a Sept 15 inter­view. “We’re inter­ested in any new tech­nolo­gies out there.“ 

Audette couldn’t remem­ber an Army weapons pro­gram that opened up the com­pe­ti­tion to ideas so diverse; he cited the M240 request in the 1990s and M9 solic­i­ta­tion in the 1980s as exam­ples of broad requests, but they stuck with spe­cific cal­iber ammunition.

(more…)

It’s a rifle designed specif­i­cally for the spe­cial oper­a­tions com­mu­nity. Modular bar­rels, ambidex­trous con­trols, a gas-​​piston oper­at­ing sys­tem, a host of adjust­ment options — but you already know that. 

So with all the slick mar­ket­ing lan­guage and eye-​​popping spec­i­fi­ca­tions of the SOCOM Combat Assault Rifle, it’s a given that oper­a­tors will embrace the thing whole­heart­edly, right? 

Well, let’s ask them. 

“This rifle is awe­some,” said one Special Forces oper­a­tor who, like the rest of the Green Berets in this inter­view, declined to be named for secu­rity rea­sons. “It’s spot on.“ 

Now you get an idea of how the men who’ll use the weapon in com­bat felt about it, not just some six-​​figure mar­ket­ing guru spew­ing crafty catch-​​phrases. But what’s most inter­est­ing is why they liked the rifle so much. 

In an exclu­sive, Military​.com joined a group of about a dozen spe­cial oper­a­tions Soldiers from around the coun­try who trav­eled to Northern Virginia this sum­mer to test fire the SCAR before their upcom­ing deploy­ment to the Middle East. Ground rules agreed to between the spe­cial oper­a­tors, the rifle man­u­fac­turer and Military​.com pre­cluded nam­ing the unit, its mem­bers or its deploy­ment destination. 

See the Military​.com SCAR Demo Slideshow

The SCAR, which comes in a 5.56mm ver­sion and a 7.62mm one, is near­ing the end of its field user assess­ment phase — the final stage before full-​​rate pro­duc­tion and field­ing to units under U.S. Special Operations Command, includ­ing SEALs, Green Berets and Air Force Special Tactics units. 

The entry of the SCAR into the spec ops com­mu­nity comes as the ser­vices, Congress and the Pentagon scuf­fle over whether or not to replace the cur­rent M4 rifle and address per­sis­tent com­plaints over the standard-​​issued carbine’s reported lack of “stop­ping power” and its need for con­stant main­te­nance and clean­ing to avoid jams.

(more…)

In a move that could ruf­fle the feath­ers of an Army com­mand that views the Colt Defense-​​built M4 as the best car­bine in the world, a select group of top sen­ate staffers is gath­er­ing today to look at what could be the future of the military’s stan­dard assault rifle. 

About 30 leg­isla­tive aides have signed up to attend a July 11 demon­stra­tion at Marine Corps Base Quantico, just out­side Washington, D.C., that will fea­ture weapons from var­i­ous man­u­fac­tur­ers vying to end the reign of the M16 and M4 as the U.S. military’s most fielded per­sonal weapon. 

The range day is intended to help famil­iar­ize key law­mak­ers with pos­si­ble alter­na­tives to the M16 and M4 once the exclu­sive con­tract with Colt Defense of West Hartford, Conn., ends in the sum­mer of 2009, a senior sen­ate aide told Defense Tech. 

“When you re-​​compete the M4 it shouldn’t just be for the same thing we’ve been build­ing for the last 20 to 30 years,” said the senior sen­ate staffer who requested anonymity because the issue is so sen­si­tive with the Army. 

Over the past year the Army has taken fire from M4 crit­ics who say there are bet­ter options avail­able to troops, weapons that require less inten­sive main­te­nance and fire more lethal rounds. While the Army — which is respon­si­ble for procur­ing small arms for all the ser­vices — con­tin­ues to stand by the M4 and M16, a small group of tena­cious sen­a­tors, includ­ing Oklahoma Republican James Coburn, have pressed the issue, forc­ing the ser­vice to sub­ject the M4 to rig­or­ous envi­ron­men­tal tests and push­ing for side-​​by-​​side com­pe­ti­tions with sev­eral M4 alternatives. 

“There’s no urgent need to improve the M4, it’s clearly work­ing bet­ter than the M16,” the senior sen­ate aide said. “Our con­cern is that, urgent or not, we really ought to be improv­ing it on par with tech­no­log­i­cal improve­ments [and] not be wed­ded to an older weapon just because that’s the way we’ve always been doing it.“ 

While the aide declined to list all the com­pa­nies par­tic­i­pat­ing in the demo, con­gres­sional and indus­try sources say the shoot will fea­ture the stan­dard 5.56mm M4 car­bine, the FNH USA-​​build Mk-​​17 — which fires a 7.62mm round — and a mod­i­fied “M4-​​style” rifle that fires a new 6.8mm spe­cial pur­pose car­tridge round, among others. 

The 6.8mm SPC round was born of a 6-​​month pro­gram launched by the inter­a­gency Technical Support Working Group which looked into how an M4 or M16 could be eas­ily mod­i­fied to fire a round that had bet­ter bal­lis­tic char­ac­ter­is­tics than the cur­rent arse­nal when fired from a short barrel.

(more…)