Second of Two Parts
A
post here yesterday explored some of the background to controversies surrounding the performance of M-16 and M-4 assault rifles in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The latest controversy followed the leak of an Army historian’s study that described weapons overheating and jamming in a
July 2008 battle in Wanat, Afghanistan. Nine American soldiers died in that fight, at a remote post that insurgents almost overran.
Similar
reports of malfunctions, and concerns that the M-16 and M-4 and their cartridges lack so-called stopping power, have created a sustained set of criticisms about the United States military’s primary small arms.
Some concerns predated the current wars. One study of the M-4 in February 2001, by the Special Operations Command, concluded that the weapon’s design was “fundamentally flawed” and prone to “alarming failures” when subjected to intense shooting. In 2004 the Special Operations Command contracted for a new rifle, the SCAR, to replace its M-4s.
In the ensuing years, data has been mixed. A
survey by the Center for Naval Analysis in 2006 found that 75 percent of soldiers reported overall satisfaction with the M-16 and 89 percent with the M-4. But the study also found that 19 percent of the soldiers surveyed had experienced “a stoppage while engaging the enemy.”
(The Center for Naval Analysis survey mentions soldier concerns with other weapon systems, including the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon and the 9-millimeter pistol, which has also attracted ire since its introduction. I’ll discuss some of these issues in a future post. I’m starting with the rifle, because it is by far the most widely issued arm.)
Few people doubt that the M-16 is, in the most simple sense, conceptually sound. All firearms are trade-offs between features, and the M-16 and M-4 represent a set of decisions that can make sense: they are light in weight, and so is their ammunition, which means troops can carry many rounds into battle. They are also highly accurate, especially at the ranges — inside of 300 yards — that history tells us are the typical ranges at which targets can be distinguished and effectively engaged by rifle fire.
The questions are whether the weapon is a step too far toward lightness, and whether its operating system — in which a direct blast of gas from the burning propellant forces a lightweight bolt carrier and bolt to begin the firing cycle — is as reliable as other options, including a slightly heavier, piston-based design.
The reports of failures and disaffection have driven the Army to test the rifles repeatedly. And this is where the arguments become curious, because the Army said that neither the official data nor contemporaneous reports from units in combat have matched the problems reported elsewhere.
The Army has fired more than 8 million test rounds through M-4s, according to Col. Douglas Tamilio, who supervises the rifle’s development for the Army Materiel Command, and found that the interval between stoppages exceeds 3,600 rounds. That would be 120 magazines of ammunition – more than many soldiers fire in a combat tour.
Even when rapid-firing tests are held, the Army’s standard-issue M-4 typically fires 500 rounds before malfunctioning. (The rapid-fire tests are significant because in them a weapon is not allowed to cool. The heat load literally makes the barrel red hot, simulating the conditions of the most intensive combat.)
Colonel Tamilio said the rifles’ reliability in tests has been “on par with any assault rifle in the world.” He added, “The data suggests we don’t have a systematic problem. The reliability issues we are hearing, let me tell you, I’m hearing from non-soldiers.”
He also said the rifles are constantly examined for potential improvements, and that
the M-4 alone had undergone 62 changes since its introduction in the early 1990s. The most recent change is a new magazine that has been issued this year. The magazine has a stronger spring and a different follower assembly, which the Army says pushes rounds into the path of the bolt more surely and smoothly, and reduces failures.
So how to square the official results with the accounts from war? Command Sergeant Major Jeffrey Mellinger of the Army Materiel Command said his constant queries to deployed units have never yielded complaints like he has seen in news accounts. As recently as last week, he said, he asked the sergeant major of a major command in Afghanistan to give him details of malfucntions.
“I said, ‘Tell me all of your weapons problems.’” he said. “He came back, ‘We aren’t having any.’”
When he does investigate complaints, Sgt. Maj. Mellinger said, they are usually minor. “I have no reports of a weapon that went down and couldn’t get started again.”
The Army said it is investigating the reported weapons failures at Wanat, and that it is too soon to draw conclusions. And after our phone conversation, the sergeant major sent an e-mail saying that all complaints from soldiers are fair grounds for thorough investigation.
“Every report of equipment or weapons failures or shortfalls causes our collective heads to turn and feet to go into motion, for those are our friends, comrades and countrymen on the other end,” he wrote. “We never challenge what soldiers say, but look at every instance and report on its own merits, and work hard to identify and rapidly field any materiel, training or equipping solutions needed.”
As for the questions of lethality, most units continue to use the standard M855 round with its steel core penetrator. Since the beginning of Afghan war, however, training has evolved in ways that suggest that soldiers and Marines know not to count on any one bullet to be enough.
The “one shot, one kill” mantra that was drilled into infantrymen for decades has been replaced by training that emphasizes shooting foes multiple times. One Marine warrant officer put it this way during training that I observed at Camp Lejeune in 2006: “Anyone worth shooting once,” he said. “Is worth shooting twice.”
That was understatement. On the range that day, in live-fire training for close-quarters battle, the Marines were required to shoot the vital areas of each man-shaped target three times. The vital areas, for the purpose of this test, were a circle the size of a pie plate centered the sternum and a three-inch stripe just above the middle of the face, centered on the eyes.
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17-10-2009, 14:13
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