Problems with M4's

[longdayjake]

eye5600 Even when we were told to test the round count of the m-60 machine gun before a barrelchange I never got it white hot. First starts to turn green then orange then bends where shooting it would be unsafe (1400 rounds before it bent and it was slill orange)

Depending on how much light you have on the barrel it can be bright orange but look like it is white. I have seen it before. Outside the barrel looks white but once you get it in shade it looks orange.


On a different note, it sounds to me like we know the insurgent tactics in afganistan now. If we can't prevent this with superior tactics then our military is lacking in more than just what weapons we use. The sad part is that politicians destroy our military's tactical advantage with illogical rules of engagement. That is what really needs to change in Afganistan. Not what weapon we use, but how we use ALL the weapons available to us.

 

[JWJacobVT]

In the sand box the guys that DRIED thier weapons had jammng problems. I carried mine with a thin coat of CLP and rarely had jams. If I did I added more CLP if it started to jam. Adding lube to the M2 and others 249 etc always helped. It seemed the dry weapons jammed more.

 

[tju1973]

I kind of agree-- we did fire our M60e3 until the barrels were red and orange, but never white. One of our ammo men thought he could help cool their gun down by spraying CLP on the orange barrell-- which almost instantly caught fire-- I was his squad leaded and I promptly hit him on the kevlar with a punch rod....

 

[Noveldoc]

I was in USAF when they completed the switch from our trusty M1 carbines to that damned .22. We had a drill when we went off to fire full auto. Every guy in the flight tossed a quarter in a pith helmet. The guys who got most rounds through without a stick or jam won the money. And the range Sgts inspected our weapons so you can bet they were squeaky clean. Of course this was the original 16; they got some better when they chromed the chambers and Western ammo stopped making crooked cases.

Flash forward 35 years. My son is with 82nd Airborne in Korea. The Sgt takes some extra M4s to the qualifying range for the GIs to use when they get bad jams. And, in winter, you have to pee on the receiver to warm the thing up so it will work.

All this stuff about cleaning all the time and jam clearing drill is nice but misses the point. The only thing more extreme than idiot proof is GI proof. And even Pvt. Einstein is going to have trouble keeping up in the heat of combat. He has enough to worry about without remembering the jam clearing drill and worrying about his weapon. And have never been in a firefight myself but friends who have say this is not a situation where you are going to remember barrel cooling drills as opposed to pumping as much as you can down range. The adrenalin can kind of take over.

Anybody ever notice the enemy's AKs work just fine? I mean you do have to knot your shoestring, soak it in motor oil and run it through your piece a couple of times each week. And it is considered good form to brush the rust off that steel stamping. But the AK is even Russian and Afghani GI proof. There is a reason for that rattly bolt and loose chamber and even that steel cased ammo. Still works when things get hot and dirty.

Stoner was pretty smart but Kalashnikov was the greatest firearms genius since Browning and Garand. He was a veteran of heavy combat and knew what it took to work on the battlefield.

A matter of history. Custer's men had copper cased ammo for their Springfield carbines and you see how that worked when they got hot. A bit later, a reinforced squad using Springfields with brass ammo totally kicked butt against another mob of Indians in the Wagon Box Fight.

Tom

 

[ArmedBear]

If I did I added more CLP if it started to jam.

A non-drying lubricant would be better, and/or one that leaves teflon behind. Both are available, and preferred to CLP among civilians using the AR platform.

That said, if they made an automatic dispenser that added a little more CLP with each magazine change, the AR would probably function flawlessly with CLP...

 

[JWJacobVT]

tmpick I don't care if the next combat rifle comes from H&K or FN or Remmington. I do care that my fellow soliders and friends have the proper tools to do the job. Some general sitting in Washington buying the same firearm that has problems for $367 each to save $$$$ is not right.

 

[JWJacobVT]

GI issue lube is CLP

 

[supercopjason]

deleted because no matter what I say people will belive what they want

 

[inherentical]

tmpick I don't care if the next combat rifle comes from H&K or FN or Remmington. I do care that my fellow soliders and friends have the proper tools to do the job. Some general sitting in Washington buying the same firearm that has problems for $367 each to save $$$$ is not right.

I was a 2111 in the USMC and I saw fewer AR failures during my entire contract than I hear posted about when articles like this surface. 95% of the failures I did see weren't the fault of the part of the equation that goes boom. When I hear about an entire unit having such problems I tend to question their leadership and their priorities. Cleaning weapons religiously may not have been high on that list, but I don't know. I can only voice my suspicions based on my experience with the platform, which is far greater than most other people.

 

[supercopjason]

If you guys are still following this thread on tuesday Ill post a video.

 

[JShirley]

This is a ridiculous story, honestly. To begin with, to the OP, here at THR, a thread that begins with a news story should have some substantive dialog, in addition to just quoting the story.

Next, from the story, this statement is just silly:

do U.S. armed forces have the best guns money can buy?

It doesn't matter. It is impossible for ANY large military to have "the best guns money can buy". This is a matter of economics, more than anything else. It is more important to have a weapons system that is widely understood, has spare parts, and with which on has the ammunition for frequent practice than to have the elusive "best guns money can buy".

Next, logically, OF COURSE EVERY weapons system will "jam" at the "worst possible time" than any other. The worst possible times will include inclement or harsh environmental conditions and extreme circumstances- if a weapon will malfunction, logically, that's when it will happen.

Next, why are we focusing on the M4 when the story mentions two apparent (it's impossible to tell if one of these is actually a malfunction, or just a weapon too hot to safely charge) malfunctions from the carbines...but the same number from "machine guns"? This is a bogus story from beginning to end.

DagoRed, I can't speak for what any or everyone on the board knows (though it seems silly to believe that EVERY SINGLE MEMBER is intricately familiar with one single carbine used by the Army), BUT when I was at 1-5 Infantry 2002-2003, one of my squad's carbines was safe/semi/full. I did not go through and ask every other squad if they had any, either, but that was just one carbine out of 9, so it seems likely there were others in the 3 and a half platoons' worth of carbines in our company. FWIW...

Why are we still talking about this?

John

 

[Hammerhead6814]

Sounds like denial Dagored. The US army has been replacing the main-line M4 since the 90's and adopting the M4A1.

Here's the story from Yahoo! : http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_afghanistan_weapons_failures

Amazing. Anyone else notice that the biggest detractors to the findings of said article are AR owners/supporters?

Yet another reason I can't own the AR-15, can't join a community with it's head up its (censored).

JShirley, apparently the Taliban can afford weapons that don't have these problems...

 

[Marlin 45 carbine]

at anything near 'white hot' the bbls would have drooped like spaghetti al dente.

 

[ArmedBear]

Next, logically, OF COURSE EVERY weapons system will "jam" at the "worst possible time" than any other. The worst possible times will include inclement or harsh environmental conditions and extreme circumstances- if a weapon will malfunction, logically, that's when it will happen.

I wonder if the AK platform has really NEVER jammed in Afghanistan. Somehow, I doubt that.

JShirley is right that the "best weapon system money can buy" is elusive. It might also be illusory.

Money can buy different things, but not all at once. The ideal rifle for engaging the enemy at 500 yards isn't ideal for CQB, no matter how much money you spend, and that's just for starters.

I still think that the Army might do well to test modern lubricants before testing all sorts of new rifles -- rifles that, no matter how cool some of you think they are, will have their own problems that surface in combat.

That's how engineering works, and it's the reason that first iterations of ANYTHING have problems. Some things you only learn through real-world experience. I suspect that our military is better off with the devil they know, because the platform has been through a lot of real-world testing and improvement.

New platform, new problems. No way around it. Replacing the M4 might be the best way to make people wish they still had them.

 

[KW]

Well you can either buy into the news/internet myth, or you can get your own and find out for yourself. From my experience handling AR's the whole thing smacks of BS. My weapon was too hot to reload? Really? You keep one hand on the plastic pistol grip, use your forefinger to drop the mag, and then put the new mag in and slap the bolt release. You don't even have to touch the receiver, let alone the barrel. There's a vid out there on youtube of a guy dumping 1000 rounds through an AR in 15 minutes or so. He's not burning his hands reloading.

With regard to the news piece, for anyone who has done any research, the real story of Wanat is the poor strategy and planning that lead to sticking a lone platoon in a hostile area with no recon, and no resources to build their position. Blaming it on a few weapons that may have jammed while going cyclic to prevent being overrun is looking for an easy equipment scapegoat to what was really a leadership failure.

 

[Byron]

KW, do you have the link on You Tube? I tried to find and the number of video's on the 16 are quite a few. Thanks, Byron

 

[HGUNHNTR]

Why do you think the weapon of choice is the hand slung rock, anything more complicated is bound to failure in conditions like that.

Machines fail when subjected to extreme conditions, wow thats news.

 

[glockman19]

From personal experience with AR15's and M1A's I prefer the M1A to any AR variant.

In Afganistan a heaveier hitting longer trajectory i sprobably a benefit. I would bring back the M14.

I have NEVER had a jam FTF, FTE wiht my M1A Loaded. I have fired over 500 rounds without a cleaning and had excellent results...I have had multiple falures with many AR's and IMHO require cleaning after fewer rounds. I also prefer the M1A mag's over the AR.

I have also experieced equal or fewer FTF, FTE from my mini-14. If I had to be in battle with a 5.56 round I would rather have my mini than my AR strictly on reliability. i give them a tie in the accuracy department.

 

[ArmedBear]

I have also experieced equal or fewer FTF, FTE from my mini-14.

Me, too, but the thing gets HOT really fast, and I have had a broken part in mine. The rifle kept functioning, but I can't say it's never had any trouble.

An improved rifle with the Mini-14 design (improvements for longevity, mainly) would probably be more reliable in the dirt than the AR is. It surely would work better when dry. But the existing Mini-14 platform, as-is, isn't combat-ready IMO, and never was.

That said, if the SHTF, my Mini is coming with me and the AR will stay where it sits. But as a civilian, I don't expect to fire hundreds of rounds at a time. I just want a rifle that can be ignored, and will fire off a few rounds when needed -- and I trust the Mini to do that, more than my AR.

Again, that doesn't mean the Mini would be a better choice for the scenario in the story. Damn thing would probably have melted.

 

[FourTeeFive]

let me know which gun can shoot 12 magazines in a row without having problems..

AK-47

 

[84B20]

AK-47

Amen to that!

 

[briansmithwins]

Just buy a few hundred thousand AKs in 5.56, throw Aimpoints on them and be done with it. Anyone going overseas gets one. BSW

 

[coloradokevin]

Do we have anyone with experience of seeing a rifle barrel white hot? Maybe it's true, but I find it hard to believe that the weapon would continue to fire through all the shades of red and orange before it actually turned white.

Agreed. There seems to be a lot of anecdotal evidence stating that this has happened, and more than a few mall ninjas who claim to have seen it while shooting their AR-15's at the range. But, I also have trouble believing that you could ever get an M4 barrel to turn WHITE hot! Hot, yes; molten steel hot, doubtfully.

To be fair, I've heard these claims made most often in regards to belt-fed machine guns used in other wars. Maybe it is possible with a belt fed machine gun? Still, I am inclined to believe that the rifle would likely be out of service for other mechanical reasons before you got the barrel that hot!

 

[dom1104]

wierd how this causes so much emotion.



Does anyone doubt that an AK is more reliable than a M4? I dont think they do.

Should our military carry AKs? I dont think so.

If you dont like ARs, dont buy one.

I like ARs, but I am in the market for an AK now too.

Guns arent perfect. They have plusses and minuses.

This isnt "My woman is better than your woman" heh.

The story to me sounds very sensational, but by far my favorite quote was

at anything near 'white hot' the bbls would have drooped like spaghetti al dente.

that is just hilarious.


For me, I have put 900 rounds thru my brand new ar, and over 3k now of 22lr thru a stainless cmmg.

I have not had one jam, of any type. <which boggles my mind, especially on the 22lr!>

At the moment, it is FAR more reliable than my 10/22, or even my CZ pistol, which are the two most reliable firearms I own.

Hasnt beat the 870 yet tho

SO in my isolated, little case.... its the number 2 more reliable weapon I own.

 

[JimmAr]

Overheating hrm.. didnt they test hollowed heavy barrels with vacuum liquid nitrogen cartridges that were field carry?