1st week of Jan ’91 – My Marine unit went to the range in Saudi Arabia right before the war was about to start. We were a proud unit and keep our equipment in immaculate condition. We cleaned our rifles twice daily and keep a very light coat of lube on them.

EVERY damn rifle in my company failed on the range. ALL of them. Some relatively minor stoppages, some just plain refused to work. We went back to camp badly shaken.

Guarding the perimeter of our camp were Saudi soldiers with nice new G-3′s. Every one of us was considering theft, and possibly murder for the upgrade.

Instead we doubled up on grenades and settled for AK-47′s a few weeks later as we started capturing Iraqis.

I won’t disagree that it’s not as reliable as, say, an AK-47, but it’s also a lot more accurate than an AK-47. I can make 200 yard shots with an AR much easier than with a Kalashnikov. The AR platform isn’t perfect, and under some conditions it might be downright unreliable, but it’s all tradeoffs. You can make a rifle more reliable by loosing up the specs, and making everything beefier, but then it gets heavier and less accurate. You can go from DI to piston and op-rod, but then you trade one set of problems for another.

I think we could probably do better than the AR platform for our soldiers, but I also think we could do worse.

The fact is the M16/M4 is a marginal rifle designed as a pilot survival weapon 50 years ago. It is arguably the worst and most out-of-date standard issue rifle in the world. Only ignorant shit-head officers are stupid enough to fault troops for their crappy rifles.

Lubrication makes the M16/4 work better at a nice clean range in middle America. In the desert it attracts sand and hastens the inevitable failures.

How about we decide on a decent caliber that is a better compromise between stopping power, accuracy, and ammo weight? Then we test competing samples from any manufacturer willing to submit one. Then, award the contract to the best submission – even if that company isn’t in Lieberman and Dodd’s district.

It seems to me that most of these soldiers (and marines) did a DAMN fine job. The malfunctions that have received so much attention were primarily the result of necessary actions.

TOW/ mk19s, 60 and 120mm mortars all rendered inoperable by overwhelming hostile fire, leaving a single M2 pounding.
A couple of 240bravos, SAWS, 203′s, and a bunch of m4s were the primary means by which the outpost attempted to achieve a volume of fire sufficient to hold off over 200 attackers.

It took about an hour for effective air support in the form of two AH64s to arrive. 155mm howitzers were available, but ineffective because the attackers were TOO CLOSE (less than 500 meters) to the perimeter of the outpost.

I am pretty sure there will be a big blockbuster movie about this in a couple years.

It appears the “white hot” barrel was an eye witness description of a 240B after about 30 minutes of sustained fire.

An m4 which can fire 12 GI magazines without serious failure is indicative of a well maintained piece of equipment. 12 GI magazines without an issue? That’s probably a miracle.

The 249 failing after having three belts dumped through it I can believe.

Sigivald is right, if they’re not going to provide artillery or air support, then the next step is watercooled guns. Very effective at controlling space with trained crews.

This is a failure all right – of planning, logistics, training…

http://www.battlefieldtourist.com/content/battle-of-wanat-historical-analysis-rough-draft-release/

It goes into detail on the weapon failures. The report also discusses the lack of fire discipline shown by some of the soldiers.

A lot of the report is based upon interviews with both the soldiers and their commanders. Only one higher-up refused to be interviewed.

The problem is that no gun exists that is both comfortable (lightweight) to lug around like an M4 and can take that kind of sustained fire.

I’m not sure one can be made with current technology – and if it can, it sure won’t be at a price anyone’s willing to pay.

Even assuming perfect maintenance and perfect fire-control by the troops, the guns just aren’t designed for that abuse. It’s not a “problem” for the assault rifle that it isn’t a water-cooled machinegun; the problem is having assault rifles when you need the MG.

I guess he must have needed to burn through a lot of ammo in a short time at the tail end of that half hour.

No one is cheapening the sacrifice of soldiers here. I think we all appreciate their service and understand that battle stress is difficult to relate to for someone who hasn’t experienced it.

This is a question of whether this particular malfunction is indicative that the M4 is an inferior weapon. I say it’s not, because most assault rifles would fail under the conditions described here.

It’s more the reports the weapons were overheating, which would indicate they were being fired at a faster rate than they were really designed for. Any assault rifle will have this problem, especially one with tight tolerances like the M4/M16.