Weapons failed US troops during Afghan firefight

MyWay ^ | Oct 11, 8:28 AM (ET) | RICHARD LARDNER

[lqcincinnatus]

WASHINGTON (AP) - In the chaos of an early morning assault on a remote U.S. outpost in eastern Afghanistan, Staff Sgt. Erich Phillips' M4 carbine quit firing as militant forces surrounded the base. The machine gun he grabbed after tossing the rifle aside didn't work either.

When the battle in the small village of Wanat ended, nine U.S. soldiers lay dead and 27 more were wounded. A detailed study of the attack by a military historian found that weapons failed repeatedly at a "critical moment" during the firefight on July 13, 2008, putting the outnumbered American troops at risk of being overrun by nearly 200 insurgents.

Which raises the question: Eight years into the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, do U.S. armed forces have the best guns money can buy?

Despite the military's insistence that they do, a small but vocal number of troops in Afghanistan and Iraq has complained that the standard-issue M4 rifles need too much maintenance and jam at the worst possible times.

[lqcincinnatus]

My God, can we do nothing right?

[The KG9 Kid]

Evidently not, since there's an existing thread with the same title:

Weapons failed US troops during Afghan firefight

[vox_freedom]

I would hope there will be a full evaluation of what went wrong in this situation, including this weaponry “malfunction” issue. Could there have been sabotage with the ammo or the weapons themselves? Given our enemy’s cunning strategic moves, I wouldn’t doubt that they had methods to affect the supply chain.
Just speculating here and answers are needed.

[Cicero]

I was in the army quite a long time ago, when the weapons primarily in use were the M-1 Rifle and the Carbine. It was customary, back then,to consider the Carbine as a kind of toy. Even if it didn’t jam, it would hardly be the weapon you would want to hold off a mass attack of people armed with AK-47s.

The second question is, who was responsible for it jamming? Was it the supply chain, or was it improper maintenance within the company. We don’t know the answer, but I would suspect that it was a supply chain that was not being fed proper and timely equipment. I can’t imagine any troops in a dangerous and isolated outpost not maintaining their weapons carefully. So the likely answer is that the carbine was old, maybe ground down with sand over the years, and overdue for replacement.

And it should have been replaced with a proper weapon, not a bloody carbine, IMHO. This isn’t some sort of Fourth of July Parade, this is a deadly war.

[444Flyer]

Weapons shmeapons! For Barry, it's all about Gays in the military silly!

“President Barack Obama says he will end ‘don't ask, don't tell’ military policy.”

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2359747/posts

[MNJohnnie]

Or is this the standard Associated Propaganda hit piece based on rumor and hearsay rather facts? Would love to hear some credible freeper gun enthusiasts or resent combat vets give some validation to this claim before trusting AP's spin.

AP has a long history of publishing hysterically inaccurate, fraudulent hit pieces when it comes to the US Military. This reads like one of them. Sounds suspiciously like the stories told about the M-16 when it was 1st introduced in Vietnam.

[MNJohnnie]

Except that someone posted two threads of the same article is not validation of the article's credibility

[Gaffer]

From reading this article it sounds like heat dissipation and contaminants from the conditions aren't something an M4 can handle. I guess there are ways to maximize effectiveness by controlling fire, but when the shit hits the fan, having to slam through 12 mags of 30 rounds continuously through until the barrel is white-hot is something that seems to me to be prompted by desperation. Don't get me wrong, were similar circumstances put to me, I'd probably do the same thing.

Bigger, heavier and battle proven means just that - heavier ammunitions, weapons and logistics. M-1 Garands, M-14s, M2HBs - all good, but take a lot of support.

I guess that if you're going to have your soldiers work with arms limited in some fashion they need to be backed up by other support (close air support, etc.). This sounds like they didn't have that and were caught in an untenable situation.

[lqcincinnatus]

I wonder if there was any air support?

[FreedomPoster]

I want to know if the new, more restrictive ROE prevented CAS strikes and/or artillery missions against the attackers.

[Dumpster Baby]

Bill Clinton ordered 750,000 of these destroyed.

[org.whodat]

The M16, now called the M4 has always been a POS when compared to the Russian AK, damn shame.

[Eagles6]

Think I’ll wait for the report, I think this is an AP story. They’re usually pretty happy when US Forces die or can be made to look bad.

[lqcincinnatus]

ditto

[behzinlea]

There’s a trade-off. The M4 is far, far more accurate than the AK-47 at distance. Close-in, you want to point and shoot and have it go *bang* every time.

[Gator113]

“nine U.S. soldiers lay dead and 27 more were wounded.”

Meanwhile, Obama intends to drag his feet over the reinforcement request for ‘several more weeks’.