U.S. Military Losing Edge in Small Arms

National Defense Magazine ^ | November 2015 | Jim Schatz

[re_tail20]

Since the end of World War II, only 10 U.S tank crew members have been killed in warfare. This is an amazing testament to fighting vehicle technology and the money spent to develop and sustain that tactical edge over our enemies.

In that same period, the United States has lost some 60,000 soldiers in small arms engagements, an approximate one for one exchange.

Few foes on the planet could hope to dominate America in a tank, air or naval battle. Yet every bad actor with an AK-47 takes on U.S. and NATO ground forces in a small arms fight. We are no longer suitably armed to prevent it.

This happens because the current U.S. Army small arms development and acquisition system is dysfunctional and virtually unworkable, even for those within the system. It has not brought troops substantial evolutionary small arms and ammunition capabilities in years, or even decades, and too often not at all, and almost never on or under budget. Lives are often lost as a result.

Case in point is the Battle of Wanat in 2008 at Combat Outpost Kahler in Afghanistan. Nine soldiers of the 173rd Brigade Combat Team — in a valiant attempt to prevent enemy insurgents from overrunning their positions — were killed and 27 others injured when numerous squad weapons to include M4s, M249s and MK19s stopped firing due to overheating.

The failures of the M4 carbines, caused by excessive sustained fire rates, were predictable and well known by experts. Army tests in 1990, and a 2001 report by U.S. Special Operations Command, documented this serious shortcoming and yet nothing was done to address it until after the avoidable deaths at Wanat.

Equal blame can be laid at the feet of those in Congress and our military leadership who support small arms programs...

[clamper1797]

My AR10 is heavier and has more ... lots more ... recoil than my AR15. That is not good for the “warrior” gag ... women slated to join / demoralize / disrupt / hobble / and otherwise debilitate front line troops

[Eagles6]

Easiest and cheapest short term fix for the M4 is replace the gas impingement system with a piston assembly.

[Frederick303]

Never anything more than a lowly POG state guardsman, never deployed out of state, never overseas. Qualification, NM competition and TAG matches are my only experience. But I was a SDM trainer/coach for a while at Fort Benning and while I know shit about MGs/heavy weapons I do know a wee bit about pistols, rifles and rifle shooting, having spent many an hour with 45B20s and at Camp Perry.

The article lacked reality. For example the M9. Every one likes to say how we need Glocks.. Why? what is so great about the Glock? Yes you do not have to actuate a safety, but because of the issue with AD, every Army I know of that uses them require them to be carried with an empty chamber and train their soldiers to rack the slide as the bring it out of the holster. Need both hands for that.

Now the M9 has the following nice features:

1) loaded indicator. Useful at night and can be felt when the pistol is holstered. For the Glock you have to feel the extractor position, which is not as natural nor can it be checked in a normal M12 flap holster.

2) very accurate: the acceptance spec is 10 rounds of M882 in~3 inches at 50 meters. better than the spec of the 1965 NM 45. Way better than the Glock 19 or 17.

3) Most important: the double action trigger prevents ADs. you can have a loaded M9 in the issue M12 holster, even frayed and pull the pistol out by the trigger (ie pressure on the trigger alone to lift the pistol out of the holster) and it will not go off. The Glock goes bang, which is why so many police departments have had ADs.

Fact is most servicemen do not get a lot of time on the pistol and for them the M9 is a pretty good, nearly fool proof system. I am sure the high speed folks do not have to worry about some issues regular soldiers do, but that is why Glock 19s are used by those organizations.

On to the M4A1, which is current state of the art, though most reserve and lots of combat support units still are issued M16A2/M16A4 rifles. The M4A1 has a heavy barrel and all sorts of small modifications to make it a much better carbine since the 2004 Trails /2007 tests. Fact is that it is pretty reliable and accurate with either M262 or M855A1. As in you can with the BUIS and a Eotech/M68CCO get consistent hits on a the D silhouette @ 500 yards once you know the hold off.

Everybody dogs on the M16...but what is better? The G36 used to have a lot of fan boys until the Germans found it would not hold zero when hot. Opps...they have decided that they are going to something else when they replace their rifles. The once vaunted L85A2...no...the UK special forces use the M4 instead of their own rifle. AUG... well I do not know but when in Australia shooting I talked to a few small arms guys who noted that versions of it had difficulties with grit being imbedded in the plastic frame and resultant malfunctions.

No army has dropped the M4 to go with the AUG, Malay dropped the AUG to go to the M4 and both Australia and New Zealand SAS use the M4 instead of the F88 (AUG).

Israeli dropped the Galili to go to the M16 in the late 1980s/early 1990s.

Now some would say the HK 416 is the end all...well talk to a Norwegian soldier and you will find that it has problems in cold weather with carbon lock with certain lots of NATO ammunition. Yep gas pistons have their own set of difficulties which the gas impingement systems avoid.

Fact is the M16, improved is still a modern weapons system 54 years after first seeing combat in June of 1962. Israelis, Canadians, Danish, Netherlands, Malaysia all adopted it in the 1980s and 1990s respectively. Samll incremental changes over time have made it a pretty good rifle/carbine

Now the writer missed the most significant reason the M16/M4 are very combat effective: The modular sighting systems. With a day optic, PEQ and night scopes the M16 is both accurate enough for a rifleman in day and capable of operating in any light condition out to 300 M, something the AK 47 does not do. To sit on a night firing range when the PEQ and the PAS are on and realize that anything that moves under 300m is dead, and they have no idea they are lit up. Of course these are expensive and POGs do not get them, but for the chaps at the pointy end of the stick, well they prefer to operate at night.

I could say more but this was yet another of the ill written articles that take a few facts out of context and paint a picture of US arms all out of proportion to the real story.

[kosciusko51]

The Navy had an SBIR solicitation for better cooling of barrels in 2008. I don't know if it was awarded, but there is evidence of at least one manufacture looking into this.

[eartrumpet]

“The M-60 had spare barrels and the A-gunner carried an asbestos mitt so he could swap out the hot barrels. “

A friend had that duty in VN. He said once in a fight he was more worried about the brush fire his hot barrel lit than he was of the flying bullets.

[FlingWingFlyer]

As Clintoon would say, "What difference does it make!"

We're already seeing stories of snowflakes firing AR-15s wetting and dirtying their pants, developing PTSD and then going into a coma. Obama's army is going to be afraid of guns.

[FlingWingFlyer]

Now that’s what I call an “assault rifle”.

[ozzymandus]

That is one cool diorama.

[PIF]

In the same vein:

How the Pentagon is Preparing for a Tank War With Russia
http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2016/05/how-pentagon-preparing-tank-war-russia/128460/?oref=d-dontmiss

[wally_bert]

Bring that back except as some kind of remote control or semi-autonomous platform.

[Spktyr]

The M4 has also jammed the most in every competitive test held since 1990.

The Israelis are replacing their M4s in many units with the Tavor and Micro-Tavor. The Mexicans are doing the same with the FX-05. When the Poles joined NATO, they had the opportunity to buy M4s, evaluated it, and decided it sucked so bad that they would rather build a new AK variant from the ground up to use 5.56 and modern weapon accessories.

By the way, the modular sighting gear? Most rifles produced today have been adapted (just like the M16 and M4 were) to use them. It's not an advantage unique to the M4. The Polish standard issue NATO AK has that capability:

And even the Russian AK has that capability as well.

Either with Western or indigenous Russian systems. To say nothing of the next generation of AK the Russians are looking at adopting:

Or what the Chinese have adopted.

[Spktyr]

They would do well to look at what the Russians did with their PK GPMG - they used an interesting air cooling system that reportedly almost completely obviates the need to change barrels in the field.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pecheneg_machine_gun

[Farmer Dean]

I think the M14 is a better battle rifle than the AR10.But that’s just my opinion.

[Farmer Dean]

“Every shot that misses it’s target is just useless fireworks.”
A WW2 vet once told me that.And he was a German.
You don’t need a lot of ammo,you need the skill to make your shots count.

[Mr Rogers]

"The 9mm M9 pistol is all but absent from tier-one unit arms rooms. It was replaced by inexpensive, more capable commercial handguns like the 9mm Glock 19."

First, I agree with you: "Why? what is so great about the Glock?" There is nothing wrong with a Glock, but I like the civilian 92 better.

Second, and maybe more important: How often does ANY front line troop pull out his M9 and shoot at anything? My SIL did two tours USMC Infantry in Iraq, and never pulled a handgun. Given how rarely it gets used, perhaps we ought to equip officers with a Beretta Pico instead...it would save space, at least:

;>)

[papertyger]

“Every shot that misses it’s target is just useless fireworks.”

Agreed. They need to stop worrying so much about the rifle performance and come up with a quantum leap in targeting.

[Chode]

similar to the distinctive Lewis machine gun designed during the World War I era.

interesting... what's old is new again

[Frederick303]

No doubt AKs are reliable and in some manner still first line after 67 years. Fact is though they cannot compare to the M4/M16 in terms of accuracy. Over the past 15 years in fire fights between AK troops with 7.62x39 and M4/M16, the AK guys get trounced every time. That was the lesson of Afghanistan (admittedly the Pashtuns were not exactly riflemen)

Now in the west 4 optimized designs based on the AK that have been fielded in the past 40 years: The Finn M60/M62, the Israeli Galil rifle, the FNC and the SIG 550/551/552.

The Valmet has never been sold widely, though it lead to the Galil, the Galil came and went, the FNC made it to Sweden and Beligum, the SIG550 is in service in Switzerland. With the exception of the Galil, all are still in service, but none seem to be doing anything today, no one seems to be galloping to adopt these designs while dumping the M16. meanwhile the M16 keeps chugging along.......

The XM8 came and went, THE FAMAS, the SCAR, which every one was sure was so much better....all pretty much on their way to being forgotten, the AR15/M16?M4 keep on chugging......

Why? Cause it is ergonomic, is easy to shoot and good enough that not one of these supper guns coming along is better enough to replace it. As for M16/M4 reliability: what you are failing to understand is how since 2002 how many small incremental changes have been made to the M4 design to improve it:

1) changed feed angle in barrel extension circa 2004
2) added a heavy buffer to help with bolt bounce (H2), helps feed dirty rounds.
3)New extractor spring/buffer, aids in extraction under adverse circumstances.
4) change to heavy barrel On M4A1, helps with heat.
5) change back to full auto, which in turns reduces the number of trigger components and improves trigger
6) two separate redesigns of the magazine to improve the function.

The end result is a very reliable rifle. Much the like the vaunted M1 Garand, the rifle every one recall and rave about is not the 1940 version, but the one post 1947 version. It took a lot of work during war time to get it to the rifle every one recalls so fondly.

In any case while interesting the real point is the article was crap. Yes the m16/M4 had some issues, so did every other rifles deployed to that part of the world, including the G3, the L85A2, and most interestingly of all...the G36. Every gun mag in the world was going on an on how great it was, it was the AR18 perfected, gas piston, blah, blah, blah. I confess I believed all that in the late 1990s, I thought the dual sighting system was very clever.

But in the end it failed in the same manner of M4 carbines that failed when used as automatic rifle, due to plastic issues and the german government has said, whatever their next rifle it will not be a G36 variant. Now HK is pushing the HK 416, which every one is sure is the greatest thing.......Except they ignore the issues the Norwegians have had. The new is always way better...until it turns out it has its set of issues to be resolved.

I keep going off on tangents. the point is the chaps who wrote this article is full of it. The US spends a lot of time and effort in small arms. Our stuff has been tested in war over the last 15 years. With the night vision/thermal sights SRM day optics and operator training US small arms are very good and very lethal.

[BwanaNdege]

.A friend had that duty in VN. He said once in a fight he was more worried about the brush fire his hot barrel lit than he was of the flying bullets.

I knew two guys who were A-gunners and deaf in one ear because their Gunner and been blown away by an RPG.

I was a field radio operator/81 mortars FO and a prime target. However, I would not have swapped jobs with an M-60 gun crew. ALL the NVA/VC were trying to kill them!

[BwanaNdege]

Bring that back except as some kind of remote control or semi-autonomous platform.

Great Idea!

Kinda like this?

Or this