MAJ Ehrhart - Increasing Small Arms Lethality in Afgh.

[120mm]

Adding an op rod doesn't solve any of the issues with the M4. In fact, it adds some more.

A better solution is to move the gas port farther away from the chamber.

Ding, ding, ding.

But unfortunately, this doesn't pee away several million dollars and keep the development wonks employed.

While I'm on, here is some cool video of the M4A1 shoot to destruction test:

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2010/...ring-test.html

It's interesting to note that once the melted gas tube was replaced, the M4 functioned just fine with good accuracy. The gas tube fails at 911 rounds, btw.

And here's an oldie but a goodie when the old farts start waxing about what an awesome, infallible and perfect gun the M1 and M14 were.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...4292-2,00.html

When first introduced, the Garand was commonly known as "That Mickey Mouse Piece of Sh*t". But later, a General Officer who really never used one declared it to be the "Greatest battle implement ever devised."

Here is a bit about M4 reliability for a guy who shoots, and trains shooters for a living:

http://www.defensereview.com/the-big...m4-unreliable/

And of course, there is the story of "Dirty 14" the M4 carbine that has currently gone 39,000 rounds and counting without cleaning by Pat Rogers of EAG.

One other problem with comparing the M4 system to other historic small arms, is that never before have soldiers and police forces built up such insane round counts in training. Because of this, we know more now about what makes guns go (or not go) than ever before. Plus, training is different now than it was then. No-one took an M14 to a 360 degree firing range and shot 2000 rounds in two days, combined with rough handling.

Gun failures in the past, when they happened, mostly occured in combat situations where a detailed study of why and how was not really practical. The KD range just didn't expose a gun's weaknesses.

BTW, there are a bunch of M14s in theater. Most of which are lying broken in an arms room, gathering dust. Partially, it's because of lack of parts, but also because they are relatively fragile and unreliable.