M1 and M2 Carbine. They were issued by the ton in WW II and worked fairly well for the last year or so of the war. We took 'em to Korea. In the winter of 1950, it was discovered that the Carbine had a tendency to freeze up in extreme cold AND that it would not stop charging Korean or Chinese troops with heavy padded jackets. Voila, the Carbine disappeared almost overnight, replaced by the M1 which would stop most anything -- and do at reliably at 6-700meters.

The M4 worked reasonably well in Iraq, no one there had many complaints. OTOH, in Afghanistan, it had two big problems. Range for the open spaces and knockdown on stoned Afghans who are made of different stuff than Iraqis. Afghanistan was relegated to a side show so the fact that Iraq had no major complaints overrode the grumbling from Afghanistan. That grumbling will now get louder. We'll see what happens with that.

I mention the carbine only to highlight that we have in the intervening 59 years gotten so bureaucratic that we can no longer make life saving decisions in a timely manner...

I helped run the original troop test on then AR 15 in 1963. We -- the Army -- recommended that a few be bought for special purpose units but the M14 be retained for world wide service. That was based primarily on the 5.56 varmint cartridge rework poor results on the hundreds of pigs we killed for the Oscar Meyer Plant in Fayetteville. Instead, McNamara canceled the running M-14 contract and ordered the M-16 into production. I'm sure the fact that TRW had contributed to Nixon's campaign while Colt had contributed to Kennedy's had no bearing on the decision.

I carried one in combat for two years, It is not a good weapon, never has been and the dumb things the Ordnance Corps did to it did not help. Nor did Barry Mccaffery -- the godfather of the M4 -- help. I've always been fascinated by that bolt closure device on the Ma1 and it's clones...

As AlexTX ret says it's the weapon we have and there are sure a lot worse ones around, all it needs for now is a decent cartridge; the new Brown Tip may do the job. We'll see about that as well, I guess.