[Bartholomew Roberts]

For those who are interested in military small arms, the anuual NDIA Conference (http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2006smallarms/2006smallarms.html) is a wealth of knowledge as well as an interesting look at where current research is headed.

This year's SOPMOD Program Review (http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2006smallarms/taylor.pdf) gives a lot of interesting information concerning which accessories have been removed from the program and which ones have replaced them.

It also has quite a bit of useful information concerning weapon life of the M4A1 carbine in the section discussing an integrated shot counter being added to the weapon.

The short summary is that the barrel and bolt are basically good for about 10,000 rounds under what SOPMOD considers a mild firing schedule (and about 6k at an "extreme" firing schedule). Minor cracks will develop in the bolt by 10k rounds (though the bolt itself may go thousands of rounds more without failure) and there is a 40% chance that the throat has eroded to the point where the barrel is no longer useful by that point (even better, current gauges don't seem to detect the erosion).

[SnakeEater]

I read it all, lots of good info there. The M4? I can sum it up in 4 words. The M4 is poop. It manages to make an already puny round even weaker, and in doing so increases wear and tear on the operating system. The popularity in the civilian world just demonstrates how people want what the military has, facts be damned, even if it's poop.

I'm pretty sure we're stuck with 5.56 for awhile, what we need is a new platform now. It's time to get the SCAR ball rolling. The Israeli Tavor looks pretty cool too.

[DMK]

This one's interesting: "5.56mm 30 Round Magazine Improvement Program (http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2006smallarms/foltz.pdf)"

Looks like we're going back to Orlites... sort of.

This one's a little ...um.. scary: "5.56mm Reduced Ricochet Limited Penetration (RRLP) Cartridge (http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2006smallarms/kim.pdf)"

[Bartholomew Roberts]

I don't know that I would agree with your assessment of the M4 :)

Both of the things you say are true; but obviously the need for a more compact weapons for MOUT and vehicle operations is driving the change. Look at the SCAR proposals.... the "standard" version has a 14" barrel and the "sniper" version has an 18" barrel. The MOUT/CQC version has a 10" barrel.

They could have mitigated a lot of the harder cycling issues by moving the gas port forward 2" on the M4 (like the current midlength designs do) without giving up any handling advantages; but at this point that change is probably not significant enough to justify the logistics mess it would create.