Why Did Army Terminate Carbine Competition

[Livefreeormass]

I understand it's a CTD blog, but interesting reading nonetheless.

Curious Goings-On in Cancelled Carbine Competition

 

[usp45ct]

Because the Army felt that the m4, and its variants, preformed reasonably well in the last two wars; as compared with other weapons systems and equipment that did not.

 

[cekim]

The theme that no one can show significant improvement over what can be provided by slight modification to the M4 base platform is a common thread and matches what we see in the civilian industry.

Yes, you can make it a little better, but there is no vast improvement worth massive retraining and additional/conflicting parts inventory to make a new gun worth it. The gains are too small to overcome the inertia of the existing gun.

At this point, a big change in ammo type/caliber or leap in materials technology (greater than just AL to plastic) will be required to impress and that is the way it should be.

 

[hurley431]

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[Reptile]

http://www.northeastshooters.com/vb...bine-because-wasnt-trice-good-current-m4.html

 

[rocket500]

As a taxpayer I appreciate that they didn't pay all that money to upgrade the whole military to a marginally better gun.

 

[ThePreBanMan]

I'm a little concerned about some of the stories I heard back from Afgan about the M4 overheating and jamming under heavy fire conditions. I suppose like anything you only hear the bad news as no one speaks up when things go well. But still, I want our troops to have a system they can have complete faith in.
Does anyone have any reports on how the H&K piston uppers performed?

 

[hurley431]

.

 

[ThePreBanMan]

That's why they're just going with the M4A1; it has a heavier profile barrel for extended firing. Many units already have them.

Thats cool. Glad it was only a barrel swap to fix the issue. That's a lot cheaper on the taxpayer.

 

[cekim]

I'm a little concerned about some of the stories I heard back from Afgan about the M4 overheating and jamming under heavy fire conditions. I suppose like anything you only hear the bad news as no one speaks up when things go well. But still, I want our troops to have a system they can have complete faith in.
Does anyone have any reports on how the H&K piston uppers performed?

I can't speak to Afghanistan at all, but I can speak to running these and other guns hard (as in FA/repeated mag dump) in summer temperatures and the reality is that any gun, piston, gas, AR, AK , or otherwise is going to have a lot of trouble with continuous fire in anything short of winter conditions.

There is an enormous amount of heat that needs to be dissipated. Piston is not a panacea. In the case of an AK, you can set the thing on fire with semi mag dumps faster than an AR will fail in full auto.

So, I feel quite safe in my asessment that there is no production gun that is going to provide any significant/meaningful improvement to the scenarios of failure that the Internet got all excited about in the past 10 years.

H&K's 416 in particular has a lot of new/proprietary parts/procedures for very small gains (and because they can in some cases).

Again, not saying the SCAR, 416 or something else could not be slightly better, particularly in dealing with poor cleaning and dirty environments, but it is incremental and thus will have trouble overcoming the logistics of deploying that many rifles.