/20091011/...apons_failures

Weapons failed US troops during Afghan firefight








By RICHARD LARDNER, Associated Press Writer Richard Lardner, Associated Press Writer 32 mins ago
WASHINGTON In the chaos of an early morning assault on a remote U.S. outpost in eastern Afghanistan, Staff Sgt. Erich Phillips' M4 carbine quit firing as militant forces surrounded the base. The machine gun he grabbed after tossing the rifle aside didn't work either.
When the battle in the small village of Wanat ended, nine U.S. soldiers lay dead and 27 more were wounded. A detailed study of the attack by a military historian found that weapons failed repeatedly at a "critical moment" during the firefight on July 13, 2008, putting the outnumbered American troops at risk of being overrun by nearly 200 insurgents.
Which raises the question: Eight years into the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, do U.S. armed forces have the best guns money can buy?
Despite the military's insistence that they do, a small but vocal number of troops in Afghanistan and Iraq has complained that the standard-issue M4 rifles need too much maintenance and jam at the worst possible times.
A week ago, eight U.S. troops were killed at a base near Kamdesh, a town near Wanat. There's no immediate evidence of weapons failures at Kamdesh, but the circumstances were eerily similar to the Wanat battle: insurgents stormed an isolated stronghold manned by American forces stretched thin by the demands of war.
Army Col. Wayne Shanks, a military spokesman in Afghanistan, said a review of the battle at Kamdesh is under way. "It is too early to make any assumptions regarding what did or didn't work correctly," he said.
Complaints about the weapons the troops carry, especially the M4, aren't new. Army officials say that when properly cleaned and maintained, the M4 is a quality weapon that can pump out more than 3,000 rounds before any failures occur.
The M4 is a shorter, lighter version of the M16, which made its debut during the Vietnam war. Roughly 500,000 M4s are in service, making it the rifle troops on the front lines trust with their lives.
Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., a leading critic of the M4, said Thursday the Army needs to move quickly to acquire a combat rifle suited for the extreme conditions U.S. troops are fighting in.
U.S. special operations forces, with their own acquisition budget and the latitude to buy gear the other military branches can't, already are replacing their M4s with a new rifle.
"The M4 has served us well but it's not as good as it needs to be," Coburn said.
Battlefield surveys show that nearly 90 percent of soldiers are satisfied with their M4s, according to Brig. Gen. Peter Fuller, head of the Army office that buys soldier gear. Still, the rifle is continually being improved to make it even more reliable and lethal.
Fuller said he's received no official reports of flawed weapons performance at Wanat. "Until it showed up in the news, I was surprised to hear about all this," he said.
The study by Douglas Cubbison of the Army Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., hasn't been publicly released. Copies of the study have been leaked to news organizations and are circulating on the Internet.
Cubbison's study is based on an earlier Army investigation and interviews with soldiers who survived the attack at Wanat. He describes a well-coordinated attack by a highly skilled enemy that unleashed a withering barrage with AK-47 automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.
The soldiers said their weapons were meticulously cared for and routinely inspected by commanders. But still the weapons had breakdowns, especially when the rifles were on full automatic, which allows hundreds of bullets to be fired a minute.
The platoon-sized unit of U.S. soldiers and about two dozen Afghan troops was shooting back with such intensity the barrels on their weapons turned white hot. The high rate of fire appears to have put a number of weapons out of commission, even though the guns are tested and built to operate in extreme conditions.
Cpl. Jonathan Ayers and Spc. Chris McKaig were firing their M4s from a position the soldiers called the "Crow's Nest." The pair would pop up together from cover, fire half a dozen rounds and then drop back down.
On one of these trips up, Ayers was killed instantly by an enemy round. McKaig soon had problems with his M4, which carries a 30-round magazine.
"My weapon was overheating," McKaig said, according to Cubbison's report. "I had shot about 12 magazines by this point already and it had only been about a half hour or so into the fight. I couldn't charge my weapon and put another round in because it was too hot, so I got mad and threw my weapon down."
The soldiers also had trouble with their M249 machine guns, a larger weapon than the M4 that can shoot up to 750 rounds per minute.
Cpl. Jason Bogar fired approximately 600 rounds from his M-249 before the weapon overheated and jammed the weapon.
Bogar was killed during the firefight, but no one saw how he died, according to the report.

Link to the draft of the study...or an awfully diligent fraudster with way too much time on his hands.

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

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"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it."
George Bernard Shaw

MN returned lots of Mk82 because their shells were cracked.

Thunder Supports Rafale
http://rafale.freeforums.org
http://rafale.freeforums.org/rafale-vs-f-16-aerodynamics-compared-t69.html

Decent rifle, but given the current wartime environment they are in, very inadequate. All them M4/M16 nuts out there can make all the excuses they want, but when there are so many deaths being linked to weapon failures at critical moments due to jamming/overheating in Iraq and Afghanistan, a replacement is in order. It is now clear that the M4 is unsuited to last in prolonged heat and dust exposure.




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"Made from 100% Quality Korean Genes"

^^^Find me any rifle of any type that's immune to dust, extreme heat, and doesn't jam. I've experienced all of these problems but this article is taking it out of context. I don't recall anytime in Iraq where it jammed, had a malfunction or stoppage when i needed to fire my M16A2.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haPVfBcNk2s

5 shots out of my Norinco M14 clone, which is WAY BETTER THEN AMERICAN BUILT ONES....LOL


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The animal world

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc3PY9NJAuo

My $400 Chinese M14 is Better than Your $2000 Springfailed.


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The animal world

Conclusion: US made rifles are overprice and not so good.

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The animal world

^^^LOL yea.. ok. You forget that real quality comes with a bigger price. Those Norinco M14 clones are reported to use cheaper metals on their bolts, hence many buyers often opt to refit their bolts with quality grade metals. Furthermore, you forget that the pricing of the rifle itself has more to do with the cheap slave labor Norinco (as most chinese companies) practice, not quality. So once again, and may I remind you when it comes to products, China and quality doesn't mix.

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Some US experts said something about heat treatment, although Canadians said it is not needed for the new M14 clones shipped at 2008/2009 I think. They also complain US M14 used their brand name to justify the extra cost and not workman ship since it is not as accurate as the Chinese clone M14.

So Polytech 305 M14 are better than Springfield M14, according to Canadian gun pros.

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The animal world

The M-4 is the standard weapon that pretty much all Special-Forces use. The US special forces use it, the British SAS use it, the Canadians/Dutch/Australian/NZ etc special forces use it. It has been used all over the world in every type of terrain and climate. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the weapon. Talk of weapons overheating from firing 12 magazines in rapid fire is to be expected - any weapon system won't take that abuse forever. Same with MGs - fire enough rounds without changing the barrel and bad things are going to happen. That's physics. Talk of weapons failing to fire on the first shot is simply down to bad maintenance or handling.

Having said that, I really like the F88 carbine I get issued. I've fired literally tens of thousands of live rounds through them, at the range and on exercise and on ops, in desert and jungle, hot and cold, and I've only ever had ONE stoppage, and that was a double feed due to a broken magazine. Keep any weapon well maintained and it will worked when needed.

The Terrorist do not have this kind of problem for their AK47.

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The animal world

^^Funny I found quite a few comments and reviews from users of both the Norinco and Polytech M14 clones to be quite the opposite. Here's an interesting article I found:

http://www.savvysurvivor.com/polytech_m14_rifle.htm

Polytech M14 Rifle

Both Poly Technologies and the infamous Norinco of China had offered reverse engineered M14 type rifles on the US commercial market in the 1980s, and some Chinese M14 type rifles are still offered on the Canadian market through importers, most notably Marstar international. There were a number of US import M14s from China in varying levels of fit and quality, ranging from pretty decent to downright miserable. None were known to deliver match grade accuracy, but the chrome lined bores, cheap spare magazines and ready availability of spare parts had made them attractive to a lot of survivalists. Not to mention the generally conventional appearance of the M14 rifle has been found to be less alarming to those who are hostile to civilian ownership of assault rifles. The lack of a full auto selector on civilian legal M14s has been considered hardly a handicap since the guns were less than controllable on full automatic anyway.

M14 rifles are now made by a number of boutique and custom manufacturers, many of which are one and two man operations. The Chinese M14 was the last of the under $500 M14 rifles ever to be sold in the US as most M14 type rifles reached well over the $1000 mark by the year 2000. That has put upward pressure on the value of the import M14 type rifles floating around on the used gun market, but they still only rarely break over $1000 and usually will trade hands among shooters in the $600 to $800 range with no particular value to collectors. That makes the Polytech a prize sought after by survivalists who still want to have a usable M14 without totally flattening the wallet.

The guns can still be found in varying grades of condition floating around a number of US gun shows, shops and even flea markets and classified ads. We also see a small number trickle down from Canada, usually done on the sly when enterprising border traders in Canada want to barter their way into some unregistered handguns with their neighbors to the south. With Canadian prices hovering in the $500 range, and the rifles typically trading for around $800 in the US, the math is not too hard to figure out.

Performance on the rifles varies widely, with the Polytech rifles usually performing better than the Norinco samples. The Polytech rifles usually have chrome lined barrels, a feature absent from most M14 and M1A rifles produced in the US for the US market. While many "sniper" purists disdain chrome lining as a possible threat to precision accuracy, it greatly increases the longevity of the barrels and makes the guns more tolerant of lower quality ammunition commonly found on the surplus market and sold in bulk by the Chinese. Other parts have been a mixmatch of quality, usually with a gray parkerized finish. Most of the parts for the guns are rough machined castings, but the Polytech rifles tend to feature heat treatment and metal quality that rivals the current production US guns which make extensive use of castings in parts that had traditionally been machined out of bar stock. This is why some of the better known custom M14 gunsmiths have been using Chinese M14 type rifles as the basis for custom builds. Stocks on the Chinese rifles usually feature good metal work, but the wood is badly inletted for the actions, often poorly matching the contours of the original USGI specifications. Thankfully, surplus GI fiberglass and custom wood stocks are readily available on the open market. The stock in my sample Chinese M14 had dried out badly due to being stored in a very dry environment for several years and had cracked. The replacement was a fiberglass stock picked up on Ebay for $50 and glass bedded to match the action. This was a great improvement over the factory stock, but on testing, it also showed how this configuration is poorly adapted for use with a scope. Next on the shopping list is a raised cheek pad made by Eagle Industries and purchased through lightfighter.com, but that situation led to a long backorder situation.

Firing the rifle with the half case of Indian made 7.62 NATO ammo that came with it has produced laughably dismal accuracy. Although part of this problem may be attributable to the scope blowing out some part and giving a "wandering zero", even performance with iron sights is worse than even the most crude AKs, a problem accentuated by a slightly crooked front sight. The only (small) saving grace with this rifle has been its reliability with the Chinese magazines which came at a fairly moderate cost of only $20 each. Not quite in the league of the AK when it comes to reliability, the Polytech M14 is still pretty decent. At this point, the package proves the old adage that there is no free lunch, or even a good cheap one when it comes to putting together a reliable and accurate semi-auto rifle in a larger caliber with sufficient firepower to serve as a midrange support weapon. So far, the Chicom M14 has proven not to be it.

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"Find me any rifle of any type that's immune to dust, extreme heat, and doesn't jam"

the AK-47, nothing even comes close to it. Like a military rifle should b it doesnt need any care, use it or abuse it, put it inside a water barrel for a month and it will still fire like brand new. Doesnt jam, doesnt break, damn easy to use. The ultimate assualt rifle ever.

Got to give it, no matter what the US says, the kalashnikov is a legend.




colours of Kaziranga

Even the AK-47 suffers from the same problems, just not as much. The AK-47 is a legend indeed, proven over the decades and responsible for more deaths than any weapon system made on the planet, but the Legend of it being a perfect rifle is far from the truth.

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The AK-47 may be extremely reliable, but you better hope your target isn't >200m away, because otherwise you are not going to hit it. The reason the AK-47 is so reliable is because of the extremely loose tolerances, which doesn't translate well to accuracy. It may be fine for militias or conscript armies, but for a professional army that expects its soldiers to hit man sized targets at >500m, it is a particulary poor choice.

why not the hk416 or the scar which would be a good or instead why not use the inside parts of the hk416 and still make it look like the m4

http://www.savvysurvivor.com/polytech_m14_rifle.htm

This is from an Old US website that has since close their business, they probably tested an pre-1989 Chinese M14 rifle before the import ban. Since it is an old website their information is outded, the comments from youtube is latest about the new Chinese M14 which is better than the US made ones.

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The animal world

an unfortunate incident, but always happen.
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