I’ve discussed the operating problems of the M-16 rife and the M-4 carbine in May and August of this year.

The M-16 was designed to fight off the Communist hordes in the Fulda Gap, and didn’t fare well in the hot steamy jungles and paddies of South East Asia. Its smaller carbine model, the M-4, doesn’t function well in the sandpit of South West Asia.

There were design errors with both the M-16 and its ammunition that contributed to the deaths of US troops in Viet Nam and it took the Army time to get up to speed. Eventually they produced a pretty good weapon, even if the DuPont company refused to change its production line to manufacture a powder idealized for the weapon.

The M-4 suffers from several faults apparently, including an inability to prevent heavy sand and dust fouling and a round that is now outdated for combat. More about the 5.56mm round later.

Complaints about stoppage failures with the M-4 got no attention from the Army’s Ordnance Department until the issue got Congressional attention. Tom Coburn, the anti-science republican from Oklahoma, stepped up to the plate on this matter and has been pressuring the Army for an extreme dust test because the dust is an extreme problem. He placed a hold on the approval of Pete Geren as Army Secretary earlier this year until the Army agreed to give it a look.

A new article has details about the test, as well as possible solutions to the problematic M-4, which BG Mark Brown, the Army’s lead procurer, says is “a world-class weapon," adding that the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan "have high confidence in that weapon, and that high confidence level is justified, in our view, as a result of all test data and all investigations we have made."

I suppose the high level of confidence is what spurred the complaints to Congress. By the way – we pretend this is a family blog, so no commentary about BG Brown’s position as lead procurer.

After firing 6,000 rounds through ten M4s in a dust chamber at the Army's Aberdeen test center in Maryland this fall, the weapons experienced a total of 863 minor stoppages and 19 that would have required the armorer to fix the problem. Stacked up against the M4 during the side-by-side tests were two other weapons popular with special operations forces, including the Heckler and Koch 416 and the FN USA Special Operations Combat Assault Rifle, or Mk16.

Another carbine involved in the tests that had been rejected by the Army two years ago, the H&K XM8, came out the winner, with a total of 116 minor stoppages and 11 major ones. The Mk16 experienced a total of 226 stoppages, the 416 had 233. [emph added]

So, the weapon that did the very best, H&K’s XM8, is no good. Can you spell NIH*, friends? The M-4 had 863 “minor “ stoppages and 19 failures that would require second-level repair. That’s generally things like a broken firing pin, a separated case during extraction, or a broken ejector.

The Army was quick to point out that even with 863 minor stoppages -- termed "class one" stoppages which require 10 seconds or less to clear and "class two" stoppages which require more than ten seconds to clear -- the M4 functioned well, with over 98 percent of the 60,000 total rounds firing without a problem.

98%!!! Awright…. So does that mean that we’d only lose 2 GIs out of every 100 to weapon failure during sustained firefights?

Excellent…. Well done, Army.

A cynical man would wonder how BG Brown would consider matters if the Army only got his monthly pay right 98% of the time. After all, statistics is just numbers, right General?

So how did those other weapons fare?

[A Congressional] staffer offered a different perspective of how to view the Army's result. If you look at the numbers, he reasoned, the M4's 882 total stoppages averages out to a jam every 68 rounds. There are about 30 rounds per magazine in the M4.

By comparison, the XM8 [NIH] jammed once every 472 rounds, the Mk16 [OK, built here but a Belgian company] every 265 rounds and the 416 every 257 rounds. Army officials contend soldiers rarely fire more than 140 rounds in an engagement.

Let’s watch that 140 rounds figure. It’s important.

By the way, the US Special Ops community thinks so highly of the H&K 416 that they got themselves budgetary approval to purchase 416 upper receiver/barrel units and they graft them unto M-4 lower receivers.

Army officials say the staffer's comparison is "misleading" since the extreme dust test did not represent a typical combat environment and did not include the regular weapons cleaning soldiers typically perform in the field.

So the Army is sticking by the M4 and has recently signed another contract with manufacturer Colt Defense to outfit several more brigade combat teams with the compact weapon. Service officials say feedback from the field on the M4 has been universally positive -- except for some grumbling about the stopping power of its 5.56mm round. And as long as soldiers take the time to clean their weapons properly, even the "extreme" dust testing showed the weapon performed as advertised.

So, as long as GIs stop in the middle of firefights and clean their weapons after 4 magazines, we’re good to go?

There is a lot of grumbling about the 5.56mm round. Its lethality might have been oversold during the Viet Nam era. It’s a potent round, and quite fast, but its small size doesn’t deliver a lot of foot-pounds down range, where you need it. I witnessed people hit at 200 meters with a 5.56mm and, not always, but sometimes, still stand there, banging away with their AKs. Conversely, getting hit with an AK’s heavier 7.62 round puts you down, and that’s the only purpose of using a rifle.

Many end users feel the Ordnance Department needs to get their asses out into the field and actually be forced to use the weaponry they supply to the GIs. The bitter ash-taste of failure is remembered long after the sweetness of a Legion of Honor award is forgotten.

Though Army testers and engineers are still evaluating the data, officials with the Army's Infantry Center based in Fort Benning, Ga., said they planned to issue new requirements for the standard-issue carbine in about 18 months that could include a wholesale replacement of the M4. But the Army has been resistant to replace the M4, which has been in the Army inventory for over 18 years, until there's enough of a performance leap to justify buying a new carbine.

There’s a weapons company in the US named Barrett Rifles. They make that superior sniper rifle chambered in .50 caliber. Snipers love it because you can say “good night” to someone at 4,000 meters. The US military has purchased over 5,000 of these weapons.

They also have designed a new intermediate rifle cartridge, the 6.8mm, which has much more stopping power than the 5.56 currently used.

They designed a new infantry rifle to carry the 6.8 mm round and the M-468 is superior because of the round. It’s basically an M-4 reconfigured for the more powerful cartridge. It’s built to take all the bells and whistles available for the M-4 – the rail system is exactly the same. Because it’s an adapted M-4, you can buy just the upper conversion kit.

Though Army testers and engineers are still evaluating the data, officials with the Army's Infantry Center based in Fort Benning, Ga., said they planned to issue new requirements for the standard-issue carbine in about 18 months that could include a wholesale replacement of the M4. But the Army has been resistant to replace the M4, which has been in the Army inventory for over 18 years, until there's enough of a performance leap to justify buying a new carbine.

Eighteen months. Uh huh.

*NIH – Not Invented Here. The distressing tendency among US military to refuse to consider weapons systems produced in other countries