Army refuses to consider better battle rifle in new purchases
Take a look at the photo to the left. To most people, that’s a soldier or marine with an assault rifle. If you’ve been in the military recently, you’d probably say that marine is carrying an M4. Of course, you’d be wrong.
In fact, that is a HK416. It looks an awful lot like a plain-old M4, but internally it’s got new features that cause it to go much longer between failures and be less susceptible to dirt and sand. It doesn’t cost much more than a standard M4, it fires the same ammunition, and you can even replace M4 components with HK416 components to achieve the same low level of failures.
Naturally, you’d think the Army would be snapping these bad boys up to replace the M16s and M4s that are wearing out or need to be replaced. Of course, you’d be wrong. In fact, the Army is planning on buying even more of the older-style M4s.
Well, all of the Army except the boys and girls in the Special Operations Command. If you’re SPECOPS (Special Forces, SEALs, Delta Force, etc.) you can pretty much buy what you want - and what they want is the new HK416.
In exhaustive tests with the help of Delta Force, the upgraded weapon was subjected to mud and dust without maintenance, and fired day after day. Despite this treatment, the rifle showed problems in only 1 of 15,000 rounds - fully 3 times the reliability shown by the M4 in US Army studies. The H&K 416 was declared ready in 2004.A rifle with everything they loved about the M4, and the fire-no-matter-what toughness of the Kalashnikov, was exactly what the Deltas ordered. SOCOM bought the first 500 weapons right off the assembly line, and its units have been using the weapon in combat ever since. Other Western Special Forces units who liked the M4 Carbine have also purchased HK416s, though H&K declines to name specific countries. US Major Chaz Bowser, who has played a leading role in SOSOCM’s SCAR rifle design program:
“One thing I valued about being the weapons developer for Special Operations is that I could go to Iraq or Afghanistan or anywhere with whatever weapons I wanted to carry. As soon as the H&K 416 was available, it got stuffed into my kit bag and, through test after test, it became my primary carry weapon as a long gun. I had already gotten the data from folks carrying it before me and had determined that it would be foolish to risk my life with a lesser system.”
I’ll admit that SF operators should be the first to get the weapons, but what about the rest of the warfighters in Iraq, Afghanistan, and all the other crappy countries where people are shooting at us? Sorry, not going to happen.
Why you ask? Well, money of course.
The issue currently hangs in limbo, along with the FY 2007 supplemental defense funding bill, as the FY 2008 defense budget slowly makes its way through Congressional committees. The Army says the M4 isn’t broken, and adds that an Army-wide fix would cost $1 billion. Critics contend that when the army is already spending $525 million to re-equip the force with M4s, a competition to see if a better rifle exists is a moral and financial imperative.
Sounds good to me. The last word will be left to SOCOM’s MAJ Chaz Bowser:
“We buy new laptop computers every few years across the gamut, so couldn’t we do the same with our single most important piece of military equipment? …. Waiting for a leap-ahead technology based on a kinetic energy weapon platform is a waste of time and money, so we need to look at what is out there now…. What the Army needs is a weapon that is now ready for prime-time and not a developmental system…. The requirement comes from the field, not from an office in some garrison activity, not from some consultant and definitely not from a vendor.”
Let’s do this quickly without all the bureaucracy typically associated with change. Find someone in our ranks who can make a decision - who hasn’t floated a retirement resume with a gun company - and make the decision now. Just look how fast we were all issued the ‘highly coveted’ black beret or the digital uniform. Find that recipe card, change out the word ‘Velcro’ with ‘battle rifle’ and that may be a start to finding a solution. Our men and women deserve much better than we are giving them, and shame on us.”
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I honestly have no idea why the switch to HK isn’t across-the-field, their pistols outperform the Beretta M9 by all standards, and the 416 is the obvious choice for fighting in rough terrain. Which we are…
Love your blog, DT.