Army Chief Content With Improved M4

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11 years 7 months ago #23011 by jtallen83
Replied by jtallen83 on topic Army Chief Content With Improved M4
I could be wrong but I seem to remember having both while in Germany, 1986ish, very few of the A1's but I'm pretty sure the armorer said they were Vietnam era rifles. They always told us we would be issued "new" weapons and equipment for the real deal, the old stuff was just there to train with, I never bought that whole confidence game thing.......

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11 years 7 months ago - 11 years 7 months ago #23012 by Siscowet
Replied by Siscowet on topic Army Chief Content With Improved M4

jtallen83 wrote: I don't understand why they are not going the direction of the special operations guys, more choice for the individual soldier. Back in the day they needed everything the same, it took for ever to re-tool an assembly line, supply chains were less efficient. Today that isn't near the factor so lets open things up and give the troop more choices, let them shoot what he or she is comfortable with, taking skill and mission into account. I'm betting if they gave each troop a certain budget to equip themselves with out of an approved group of weapons you would see some serious competition. That is hundreds of thousands of customers to satisfy versus the winner takes all policy we have now. This would spur more start-up businesses trying to get their product approved for the list. They would make the product as cheap as they could so it fit the troops budget. it would also help with all that stuff that gets issued but never used or even needed in the first place.
This is essentially how the north won the civil war. Many individual units equipped themselves for combat. This did lead to some bad experiences with poor equipment but competition ran inferior equipment out and provided a huge leap forward in technology.
But here I go again thinking that anyone in charge even knows our history........ :twocents:

That would have put Armorers on tranquilizers, trying to keep a pipeline of replacement parts for all those individual weapons. If the military keeps the M4, I hope it is because there is a true game changing technology in small arms that they are striving for in the not-too-distant future. Out of my own curiosity I did a search and review of the Chinese PLA's small arms development, and it looks very disturbing. They are really doing their homework, right up to adopting a new product improved round of 5.8mm caliber. It would be unsettling to have them have a larger army, AND superior small arms. It looks like they borrowed from both the Stoner 63 concept and some Kalishnakov ideas. Proof of how good it is won't happen until they are in a shooting war, but it looks impressive.
Last edit: 11 years 7 months ago by Siscowet.

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11 years 7 months ago #23015 by jtallen83
Replied by jtallen83 on topic Army Chief Content With Improved M4
The idea is to get things so reliable the weapons won't need a big logistics tail. The way they set things up now the winners reap big rewards from the parts for maintenance, why change that from their point of view? I'd rather see more Armores than fewer choices, more competition with smaller deals than these all in one things.
I'm not saying it should be wide open, they just need more choices for the troop and more chances for bussines, that will spur innovation.

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11 years 7 months ago #23019 by OleCowboy
Replied by OleCowboy on topic Army Chief Content With Improved M4
That is always a hot topic: While I never carried or used the M4 I do have hands on exp with the M 16 and I have had the M 16 fail on me in combat. Not the best time for equipment failure. That said the failure was an early design flaw resulting from not enough testing.

That said and trust me, I have done a ton of research on this aided and abetted by a guy who worked for me that also sat on the Army board. Lucky for us he was a gun guy and my lead scientist, he brought a lot to the table for both my org and the Army board.

As for going the route of SpecOpns they use a different model than the rest of the military. They are truly mission driven. What is the mission, go get the best tools to accomplish the mission. Each mission is different. Having said that our military has a real problem. We should have seen the future in Vietnam, but we did not do very well. In Vn we fought 2 enemies: Vietcong and N Vietnam Regulars, one was a unorganized terrorist based effort the other a uniformed force. Now that has become the world standard: Radical Muslim Terrorists and the standing Armies of Russia, China etc. We find ourselves in the position to conduct operations against both.

To conduct opns against a standing Army you will do it with TO&E units against a well organized force.

The Terrorists on the other hand are not TO&E and operations against them are or should be hybrid mission driven task operations. To this we have to improve and widen the scope of our tools. I sense this has been done fairly well. We see this with issued ACOG etc etc.

Now to answer the question JT: Individuality in TO&E places a HUGE burden on logistics. Can you imagine this in a combat situation and your weapon is down for a malfunction and you have unique parts on yours. When my M 16 failed they sent out the armorer and he just brought a new and improved bolt assembly and we did a DX and he was back on the helicopter.

So what is the solution. Widen the base! Look hard at end user requirements and incorporate into ALL weapons platforms. Picatiny rail system is the key here. This makes additional systems simple to add on, be it ACOG or a night vision device. This may require the unit armorer to carry more components and this needs a HARD look.

The other component is changing our training to raise the level of the soldier from a 11b grunt and dogface into a higher level more educated and training soldier. Here we need to look HARD at SOF training and see what and how we can incorporate this into regular TO&E standard units...but now costs will rise dramatically.

Bear in mind that SOCOM does NOT win WARS and is not even in the war fighting business. Best example is Bin Laden operation. The mission was not to fight their way in and fight their way out, it was quite simply: 'kill or capture OBL'. They are sent out to go fight a war, not their job. Cost way to much to train them. You would not go to a brain surgeon if you have a head cold!

Along with all of this their are other obstacles: The military 'Up or Out' policy...stupid at best. A career should not be 20 years it should be as long as you provide a needed value and service to the military. I have seen many officers and enlisted they should have been retained at their current rank and would like to do so, but up or out put them out....

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