Ditto.
My son carried an M4 on two tours, Liked it, he did say you had to do maintenace, esp the magazines.
He hated the M9, the magazines they issue are utter crap. I scored some commercial mags for him - in the end he carried a AK 47 or Mossberg as a backup. When he wasn’t humping a M249.
The 6.8 SPC is almost the same as the 7.62x39... the issue sems to be “when used in a M16/M4” weaponn...
http://www.ko-tonics.com/68-FAQ.html for a decent rundown.
Thank your son for me- I served last with the CENTCOM Fwd liaison in Iraq in 2003, mostly in South Iraq, retired in 2006 after a stint in ROTC.
I had trouble with M9 magazines as well-the bodies were fine, the springs were pretty weak. I had a small handful of my own commercial beretta mags and they served well; on the other hand the 9mm did not do much on taget-I too carried a Mossberg M590 12 ga. It did much better.
Out of a 24 inch barrel, the 6.8 does pretty good, but 20inch M16 or 14 inch M4, too much velocity is lost.
he was allowed to carry a personal ak47 and mossberg shotgun?
If this is the case, why not start a buy a gun for a soldier program?
If it has not been started already we could do this via one of the suppliers since they would have the expertese to get it to the solders through the approriate channels.