(M-4's) Weapons failed US troops during Afghan firefight

[Kegger]

The M16 series rifle is an outstanding piece of weaponry.

But in situations, where you have to use use it for heavy sustained fire, such as being surrounded, they can quickly become useless.

I've fired so many rounds through one once that the handguards started to melt. Then I had a cook off, and did exactly what that soldier did, threw it down. It's too dangerous at that point to fire it or even hold it.

[Moped]

In the service, I've had good ones and bad ones. The good ones were always reliable to a fault. The bad ones, I traded on and got a good one to replace it. There was never a problem with that. I don't know that I ever shoot one till it was "white" hot, but I've shot them till they glowed with no problem at all.

[Guest Marine03]

Personally, I have yet to talk to a soldier or Marine returning from a deployment that had notable issues w/ their weapon.

Then I'll be your first. If properly maintained the current weapons will operate semi-reliably. However when you've spent the last 8 hrs in blowing sand and things get bad you can't stop and "properly maintain" your weapon. I'd come off a patrol and my M16A4 would be so dusty it would only cycle 3-4 rounds before jamming.

Not to mention some of the stuff we had like our M2 .50 dated back to the 1950's. We were constantly haveing rivets fall out and guns fail gauging. They still had wooden handles that split in the dry desert. We had to have almost 30% of our M2's replaced in 6 months.

I'm not knocking the current weapons so much as the system that doesn't look for upgrades to known issues. There are weapons out there that can perform in crappy battlefield conditions. Copy those. The 240 is a incredible weapon. I can't remember one jamming while the 249 jams constantly unless meticulusly maintained. So make a 240 for 5.56 to replace the 249. My point is weapons have advanced greatly since the introduction of the M16. Take what you like and improve what you don't. Just do something other than claim the current weapons perform fine. Many of us who carried them daily disagree with that claim.

O.K. I'm off my soap box.

[Guest .45]

I've fired so many rounds through one once that the handguards started to melt. Then I had a cook off, and did exactly what that soldier did, threw it down. It's too dangerous at that point to fire it or even hold it.

now THAT actually makes sense...

wish he'd said that instead of "...I got mad & threw it down."

.45

[Daniel]

I had an issue with my M4 while on a live fire range in Iraq. We traded it for another from the armorer.

When I switched to a SAW gunner I had a feed pawl spring pop out. That required using magazines in place of a belt for a week waiting for a replacement spring. Luckily I didnt have to fire in that time as it is very bad about jamming with a mag I am told.

I am not saying the M4/249 are perfect. I just never had the same problems these guys are having.

[Jasongar8]

During the time that I have had with a M-249 (non-military gun, a dealers sample) it never ran more than 4 or 5 rounds when using a magazine. I think this was kind of an add on to make the gun more attractive to the military when they were trying to get it gun picked up. I have never heard of one running reliable with mags. But other than that the gun ran great with links. Again this was in a clean dust and sand free environment.

[ncomarc]

The springs in the magazines can't keep up with the cycle rate of the M249, hope the new troops have someone experianced to tell them so. As for the reliability of the weapon, I belived in it so much that I kept mine even though my duties changed while overseas. When your firing from a vehicle, or covering your buddies movement, theres nothing like walking in the rounds to your target. I'm 5'5', 155lbs and maneuvering the M249 with 700 rnds and gear is manageable. Not sure how easily an M240b would be moved around.

[mk19]

Stories like these are fueled by politicians/companies who want their guns to replace the current service rifles. Now i am not saying the the M16/M4 family of weapons is the best out there, there are better guns out there. But M16's are one of the best and if taken care of ,would not fail. Once we did a whole foot locker full of ammo through 5 M16's and we were shooting none stop and as fast as we could pull the triggers and no malfuntion. The hand gaurds were buring our hands even with gloves on and the guns were running fine. The problem is not with the guns it is with the reserve units using them. Units that never clean or take care of the guns. When i was in Afghanistan and Iraq, we cleaned our guns every moment there was down time, and we never had any problmes( not taking into account the sand storm that downed every gun we had)

[R1100R]

The problem is not with the guns it is with the reserve units using them. Units that never clean or take care of the guns.

I am sure your referring to USMCR units. My unit ritually took care of there weapons (USAR). Until this most recent conflict most units had hand me downs. Only upon deployment were our weapons swapped out.

BTW what are guns? Must have been in the Navy.

[Capbyrd]

I have heard bad stories about the SCAR's that are trickling over as well. There is NO foolproof perfect weapon for the conditions and fighting scenarios that our servicemen are fighting in.

[Guest 70below]

This is a little beside the point, but many of the weapons systems I've heard mentioned as replacements for our service men and women are built by foreign owned companies.

Given our economic conditions and jobs and factories continually leaving the U.S. I sure would like to see a push for the military to design, test, and produce the next platform right here at home using American owned companies.

I don't think that the military should sacrifice providing our soldiers with the best, but I think that as a country we are capable of producing the best in the world when we push ourselves.

[R1100R]

Colt just lost the rights to the M4 and has turned over all copyrights and plans to the Army in the last few months. FN who makes the 240/249 and SCAR and M16's are located right here at Ft Jackson/Columbia SC. You do see FN uppers on Colt lowers alot in the A2 configurations here used by the Trainees. Most of these weapon are well used and repaired and have had thousands of rounds down them. If you want a jacked-up weapon give it to a Trainee. The Drill SGT's here tell me the weapons are well abused in the teaching process and still work well.

[Mark@Sea]

The full AAR is a heck of a read. One of the SAWs that failed apparently had a bad barrel - after the action the barrel was replaced and it functioned fine. The other had a 'febreeze' bottle of CLP poured on it and still failed to function.

The one M14 in the fight was destroyed early on by a near-direct RPG hit.

There is a lot of chatter about fire discipline - the M4's that failed did so because their cylic rate was exceeded (by which, I mean they were fired faster and longer than the platform is rated to perform) - except for the one that had an AK round through the receiver. From survivor descriptions, this wasn't because of "poor fire discipline" or lack of training - they were fighting at what was described as "belt-buckle" range. It was shoot-or-die time. At one point in the fighting, it may have been 3 US troops (all wounded) against 100+ insurgents. They were tossing grenades right over the sandbags. So yeah, the guy that got mad and threw his non-functioning weapon down? I'd say it was understandable.

9 KIA in that action. God Bless our troops. They fought brave, fought hard, and stood their ground. They fought harder than the tools they were using could handle.

As for developing a new weapon system here at home; Kind of hard to do these days. Legal restrictions pretty much guarantee that if the next JMB tries to develop a new system in his garage workshop, he'll spend a lot of time in prison. Our best and most successful designs have in the past come not from corporate research, but from individuals. No, with notable exceptions (Ronnie Barret, for example), most of our new "innovations" are parts swapping, more or less, on the AR platform. Even the piston vice gas-tube designs are pretty much a 'module change' rather than a new idea.

The AR system (full disclosure here; I have never been a fan) is versatile enough that it has been around for decades. For decades, it has been reported as failure-intensive and lacking stopping power. No getting around it, we need a new system - there just isn't anything new available - only incremental improvements.

[~48_South~]

He was saying that they wait years and years to do huge leaps in small arms tech versus smaller incremental updates.

Yeah but sometimes they dont really need updates I mean look at the AK 47 who's design is going on 63 years old and it seems to be an excellent battle weapon when compared to the M16 and all of the updated variants.

[Daniel]

I guess you havent heard of the AK-74

[Daniel]

Or the myriad of other systems based off of the 47 design.

[mk19]

I am sure your referring to USMCR units. My unit ritually took care of there weapons (USAR). Until this most recent conflict most units had hand me downs. Only upon deployment were our weapons swapped out.

BTW what are guns? Must have been in the Navy.

I was trying to be nice and not start a Marine Corps vs Army argument what i meant to say was they jam because Army folks do not clean thier weapons as often as Marines do

[Daniel]

You cant make a blanket statement like that. While I do agree some people do not, nor do they even seem to know how to clean let alone shoot their rifle, that is not the case in the entire Army.

[mk19]

I know that, that is why i put it as a joke.

[Daniel]

Im just butthurt.

[Guest mn32768]

AR-15 and AK Dust test | The Firearm Blog

The Cav Arms guys did an extreme dust test on an AR-15. Turns out AR-15 cannot handle being buried in sand and then run over by a Jeep ... who knew? Apart from the "Jeep test", it did really well.

They also tested an AK derivative, a 5.56mm SAR-3, which did not do as well. It seems odd that the trigger group would fail to function.