So boys and girls, don't ever try to improve something because you'll be admitting it's flawed. Just dig in and claim it's perfect.
The thing is, the Army’s been denying the M4 has any problems for decades despite it losing in every Army organized objective field test in at least the last decade. The Army has been claiming it *is* perfect while most grunts are finding otherwise.
From Gannett’s Army Times:
USMC officials said the M4 malfunctioned three times more often than the M16A4 during an assessment conducted in late summer 2002 for Marine Corps Systems Command at Quantico, VA. Malfunctions were broken down into several categories, including “magazine,” “failure to chamber,” “failure to fire,” “failure to extract” and “worn or broken part,” according to the briefing documents. During the comparison, the M4 failed 186 times across those categories over the course of 69,000 rounds fired. The M16A4 failed 61 times during the testing.
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/the-usas-m4-carbine-controversy-03289/
That whole direct impingement system is terrible. The Army’s own tests show just how bad it is, but they refuse to acknowledge the results of their own testing.
Then there’s the famous 2007 dust test:
The M4 carbine, the weapon soldiers depend on in combat, finished last in a recent “extreme dust test” to demonstrate the M4’s reliability compared with three newer carbines.
Weapons officials at the Army Test and Evaluation Center at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., exposed Colt Defense LLC’s M4, along with the Heckler & Koch XM8, FNH USA’s Special Operations Forces Combat Assault Rifle and the H&K 416 to sandstorm conditions from late September to late November, firing 6,000 rounds through each test weapon.
When the test was completed, ATEC officials found that the M4 performed “significantly worse” than the other three weapons, sources told Army Times.
Officials tested 10 each of the four carbine models, firing a total of 60,000 rounds per model. Here’s how they ranked, according to the total number of times each model stopped firing:
• XM8: 127 stoppages.
• MK16 SCAR Light: 226 stoppages.
• 416: 233 stoppages.
• M4: 882 stoppages.