Meanwhile, you can file this this under "Only the best for our boys in uniform (yeah right)."
Army quits tests after competing rifle outperforms M4A1 carbine
A competing rifle outperformed the Army’s favored M4A1 carbine in key firings during a competition last year before the service abruptly called off the tests and stuck with its gun, according to a new confidential report.
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.
But an “official use only report” by the Center for Naval Analyses shows that one of the eight unidentified weapons outperformed the M4 on reliability and on the number of rounds fired before the most common type of failures, or stoppages, occurred, according to data obtained by The Washington Times.
7 comments:
Pretty much the same thing they did to Eugene Stoner and the Stoner 63 & 63A weapons system.
How many soldiers died because these dumb asses refused to use the correct gunpowder when M16 introduced?
I think the Army wants to wait a few more years and adopt one of the LSAT rifles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LSAT_rifle) instead of replacing the M4 and then doing it all over again in a few years.
The 5.56/M-16 HAS NEVER preformed as advertised. Yet the dumb assed AR-15 fan boys continue to castrate the barrel to look like their hero's . The weapon is like everything else Gene Stoner did. A failed experiment based on someone else's failed work. The Army has said that the M-16 is temporary because they are "waiting for the next generation rifle" for 50 years now, But the four star political operators over at the pentagon are making FAR too much in kickbacks to ever let the M-16/M-4/AR-15 POS go. This is about WEAPONS CONTRACTS and who pays who a fat kickback. NOBODY in DC actually cares if the under powered unreliable carbines in the hands of our troops work or not, They just want it quick and with enough Barbie "add on's" to keep them 4 billion a year contracts flowing forever.
I'll bet the real winner was a beat up Romy AK in .223.
Several things here.
1, before the military will buy off on a new weapon platform it must be leaps and bounds better than the one we have now.
2, the M4 aint your grand daddies M16. There have been continual improvements over the last 50 years making this a very good weapon system.
3, no LBDs (little brown dudes) ever complained about what I shot them with. They werent around to. In the USMC we shot 500 meters with M16a1s and that's using the little M193 ball. Hell, my grandpa who fought in WW II said sometimes the 06 would just poke a hole in the enemy and it seemed to happen most at... yep, over 300 meters. Aime small, miss small and especially with Hague legal ammunition, hitting the vitals CoM is king.
4, cleaned and lubed, mine took me through an engagement where I expended well over 400 rounds (thats over 2 basic loads) with no major stoppages. The old "reliability problems" are from the powder being changed way back in the '60s getting some of our guys killed during Tet. Now, it's the mags. Hell, any time we need new mags, we tell the armorer and throw the bad one away. No excuse there either.
I have never fired the M855A1 so I can not comment on it but the way the article sounds is someone got butthurt their project wasnt selected. M855A1 was in development for a long time, the military didnt just "suddenly" change to it.
The one major problem the 5.56 has is bucking the wind at range. Aside from making a higher BC bullet, there is no fix other than more training in reading the wind. Also, with training, the current system of one hit and the target drops makes a false sense of security causing people to think the weapon failed. A determined human is one of the hardest animals on the planet to kill.
In CQC, the M4 really shines. I can only think of a few rifles that can beat it (the F2000 for one). The low recoil lets you get back on target for followup shots fast and the bullet having not stabilized yaws easily.
In short, and in my 20 years of military experience, the 5.56 and M4 are just fine.The biggest thing needed is more training.
I often wonder what the result would have been had the USG/NATO types gone for a .270" bullet in a shorter/fatter cartridge back in the Sixties. I believe the Brits proposed something of this ilk then.
The AR-family of military arms is very long in the tooth. The "magic" of chemistry and metallurgy can only take the 5.56mm platform so far. Its long past time to take the modular concept of the ARs into a new generation. IOW, this is an "and" situation, not an "or". Jeff
I'm laughing at this one.
The M4 did indeed have a shorter rounds between stoppage than the more-reliable competitor.
But it had a far higher count of rounds between breakages than said competitor.
And the competition was cancelled because none of the prospective replacements met the specified threshold for the competition to continue, not because the Army is taking its ball and going home.
They specified 100% improvement over M4/M4A1 performance, and nothing delivered that, so the competition was cut short PER THE TERMS OF THE COMPETITION FROM THE BEGINNING.
The simple fact is that the M-16/M-4 Family of Weapons is probably the most mature, best-tested small arm currently fielded anywhere.
And it says something that pretty much all the world's special units who get a choice in the matter choose some form of that very weapon.
Heck, the SAS did a big competition a while back. They tested the Galil, the L85A2, the G36, the Sig550, the AUG, and several others. Several people "in the know" (ex-SF with connections in the industry) commented that the SAS testing was notably thorough because they'd probably not get to hold another for 25 years or more.
The SAS chose the Colt Canada C8--basically the Canadian version of the M4. Almost all the differences from the US M4 are cosmetic, by the way.
So this is probably indicating that AT PRESENT there's nothing available that's doing the job significantly better than the M4, and the Army declined to waste more money on a competition in which that was apparent from the first stage.
All the M-16/M-4/AR15 hate is getting to be flat out comical at this point.
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