After reading most of these posts I get the feeling that many want a totally new weapon to replace the m4 but I just don;t see this happening and IMO would be a mistake anyway. Here are a couple of facts from an old grunt that used these weapons a lot.
First in regards to the m-16. It is a precision instrument. It requires more maint than anything and a troop should be happy to do it. Your life may depend on it. I used to train people on this weapon. Usually someone experiencing problems could be placed on the operator. Lubrication, gas ring alignment, poor/incomplete cleaning. Most who experience this usually blame the weapon.
Now this is where I may offend some and I AM NOT criticizing the quality of our current troops but I think this has something to do with it. I served about twenty years ago. We didn't have all the technology available today. We didn't have internet, video cameras, cell phones and all this distracting gagetry. We spent our time cleaning, maintaining and training with our weapons and gear even if it/we didn't really need it. We did this primarily because there was nothing else to do. If lucky, we got one or two calls home a month while deployed. I have stacks of letters still today as reminders of this. I know guys now that take a cell or a laptop and talk every day back home. There are hundreds of videos on you tube right from the front lines. This is distracting from the job at hand and equipment suffers. I firmly believe this a factor in the m4 argument.
I don't see anything anything wrong with what our guys are using now. I didn't see anything wrong with what I used. When I saw what other forces where using it was easy to see I had the best.
The 1911 didn't need replaced-They did, and then we wanted it back.
The m-16 has been serving for around 40 years.
they tried to get rid of the m14 until we brought it back as the m21 and then the recent resurgence in popularity of the original m14.
The m16 was rushed into vietnam and we all know how those guys felt about it at first with all the problems it had. I don't think this would be a good time to introduce a new weapon anyway.
sometimes new is not better but that doesn't mean we can't improve upon it. There is a new gas piston system for the ar that I intend to purchase just as soon as I can afford it. I think if they wanted to improve the dirt tolerance factor for the m4/m16 then refit it with this. There is actually a kit in development that will utilize the orig bolt and reciever.
Check it out.
http://www.pof-usa.com/articles/P416Torture.pdf
Besides, our congress is much too busy to be bothered with the needs of our troops. There are much more important issues like investigating steroid use in major league baseball, building bridges to nowhere and CRAP like that.
