The wonders of our government......?

Question

So here i was going through some articles on Military.com and found this article; currently the US military is issuing the M4 carbine assult rifle as the standard for all combat troops. I thought this was a step up for our troops until i saw this report. http://www.defensetech.org/
Now just a brief summary of this; the aberdeen test center conducted a series of test in a dust chamber, consisting of putting 6000 rounds down the barrel of 4 seperate assualt rifles to compare performance and reliability.
Here are the results
M4- 882 stoppages
H&K-416 233 total
FN Scar mk16-226 total
and the XM8 the winner with 127 total stoppages.
The military's response to this?

"The M4 carbine is a world-class weapon," said Brig. Gen. Mark Brown, the Army's top equipment buyer, in a Dec. 17 briefing at the Pentagon. Soldiers "have high confidence in that weapon, and that high confidence level is justified, in our view, as a result of all test data and all investigations we have made."

GunnyC- I understand the logic behind keeping a weapon that we have all the bits for and all that but is the money and logistics that we save really worth the lives of the soldiers that have to rely on these weapons? averaged out, with the 882 jams at 30 rds in a mag is every 68 rounds..... almost every other mag! That's insane from a sustained firefight point of view. Also pertaining to the XM8, what is there really to learn? And how hard do you honestly belive it would be to learn a new system? In every major action the US has been in in the last 100 years troops have constantly had to learn on the fly with new tech filtering down to them, I think in honesty the lag from learning is well worth it, if it saves lives. Right?

Answer 1

The US Army testing is from real world use.

Answer 2

The major problem is that there is a huge supply of M-16 parts and the support equipment is on hand for that weapon, the M4 being a modified M-16 much of the repair parts and tools are the same. You do not want to change a weapon in the middle of a war-simply put you would have to retrain people to use it, purchase new spare parts and repair kits and retrain the armorers on how to fix it. Staying with the M4 is the only thing to do right now, There is currently a program looking at replacing the M-16 and family with a new rifle but it is not complete yet. Personally I never cared for the M-16 as a main battle rifle and though better then the M-14 in jungle warfare it is not a superior weapon in most other instances. It will be seen whether or not the 5.56mm cartridge will remain with the new rifle and again I hope not; probably not back to a full power round like the 7.62mm NATO but should go somewhere between. The M1 was adapted in the early 1930's and had many problems and was not all worked out until the middle of WW2, the M-16 was hurried through to give a better jungle rifle and in my opinion should have never been adapted as the standard rifle.

Answer 3

my m16 a2 jams so much I spend more time clearing it than shooting it. The m4 is no better it is just shorter and lighter.
I would rather have an AK47 you can pull one out of the mud and it will still fire.