Home Forums Miscellaneous Topics Military The next US Service Rifle???

May be the Brown Bess, 1744-179?.
Anyhow the M-16a2 is pretty accurate, just IMAO not a 7.62mm. Oh ya wood stock, I'm a Fudd and proud!

another alternative may be the magpul masada, magpul.com.

a modular design, gas piston, many innovative features. comes 3 ways, s.b.r. for c.q.b., precision long barreled and regular length rifle 14.5". a.r. 15 style trigger group. most else is different. light weight.

it also has it's own a.r. 15 compatible magazines with increased reliability. should give the 416 and the s.c.a.r. a run for the money, if given the chance.

hmmmmmmm

Pure Baloney.

When the 16 had a 14" twist that was the factor, since the
gravel belly target shooters had say so over Stoner's combat rifle it became good for punching paper.

The whole M4/16 5.56 are 40 year old dogs and need to be replaced.

Switching service rifles is a huge deal, both for logistics and for the troops...and especially while in the middle of a conflict.

I joined the Marine Corps in 1963, the year after the M14 replaced the M1...and was in Vietnam in 1967 when the M16 replaced the M14. In both instances it took quite awhile for the transition to be fully implemented and there were lots of problems both with training and with all the little kinks that needed to be discovered and fixed. I can recall numerous incidents when the wrong ammo was sent out to units in the field because the guys back in the rear had no idea what units had what rifles, and in some cases companies in the field had a mixture of both clear into 1968.

It�s a very slow process, and it is not like the rifle gets adopted on Monday and all the troops have them in their hands, and are fully trained with them on Tuesday.

It is my opinion that replacement of the M16 will take place only when a completely new type of ammunition is developed that requires a new type of rifle to use it. To replace the M16 with another rifle firing the same ammunition is utterly ridiculous.

Unfortunately, the best rifle and the most effective ammunition in the world is not of much value if the powers that be don�t allow the troops to actually aim and fire them at bad guys. Personally, I would much rather see all the time and effort that is being spent on new rifles to be spent on new �Rules of Engagement� that allow our young warriors to do their job of killing our enemies. If that happened you could arm them with just about anything and they would get the job done.

rick;

a lot of sense there. it does not matter what kind or how good the service rifle is, if the r.o.e. does not allow the troops to kill the bad guys with it.

the r.o.e. and the will to fight this war need a complete overhaul or we are destined to lose the fight in a politically correct way.

Before disuccing what the combat rifle should be, it's good to know the realities of combat. A start is reading "Operational requirements for an infantry hand weapon" by Norman Hitchman. To date, it is the only detail study of the effectiveness of rifle fire in actual combat, and was based on data collected from over a million casualties in WWII and Korea. Analysis of data procured in Vietnam, and the various Arab-Israeli conflicts also supported Hitchmans finding. Another good read is "an effectiveness study of the infantry rifle" by Donald Hall. You can get a great overview of these and other studies by reading Ezell's "The Great rifle controversy".

Basically, everything you know is wrong.

The average rifleman cannot engage targets beyound 500 meters. This is
primarily due to the fact that he cannot see the target because of
intervening terrain, camouflage, etc. Even if the soldier is capable of
shooting at longer ranges in formal marksmanship training. But it gets
even worse.

The majority of rifle fire is at 300 meters or less. 70% is at 100
meters or less, irrespective of terrain. This has been borne out in
Iraq, where most infantry rifle fire is in urban environments.

Firther, targets typically expose themselves for very short times. This
is the very reason the German army first adopted high cyclic rate MGs
and later the assault rifle.

The analysis in the Hitchman report ("Operational Requirements for an
Infantry Hand Weapon") contains some even more interesting material.
Contrary to legent, aimed fire has almost no effect on the production of
casualties. It is worth remenbering that Hitchman's data was from
actual combat, not armchair commandos.

"...rifle fire and its effects were deficient in some military
respects...in combat, hits from bullets are incurred by the body at
random:..the same as for fragment misileswhic..are not 'aimed.
..Exposure was the chief factor...aimed or directed fire does not
influence the manner in which hts are sustained...[Despite] evidence of
prodigious rifle fire ammunition expenditure per hit,..the comparison of
hits from bullets with those of fragments shows that the rifle bullet is
not actually better directed towards vulnerable parts of the body."

Since time and degree of exposure are the critical components in
producing a casualty, a lighter rifle capable of controllable
full-automatic fire was determined to be more effective thana
semi-automatic rifle. The M-14 is certainly not 'controlable under
fully automatic fire' by anyone's definition.

This is the reason that current research is focusing on weapons like the OICW/SABR/M-25. These weapons rely on 'smart' bursting munitions to increase hit probability.

Further, since infantry weapons only accopunt for a small percentage of casualties, most money goes to improved bomb, artillery, etc. Additional resources devoted to improve smallarms are likely to produce little or no additional benefits.

There are a couple of trends that are worth noting, however. Unban combat and counter-insurgency operations are increasing. This is likely to tilt requirements back in the direction of the individual soldier since big ticket items like smart bombs and tanks have little application in these operations. Unfortunately, expensive sexy projects like tanks and planes tend get more attention from procurement and development officers as these are better 'career' builders. No one care much about the infantry rifle (except infantryman).

The other nascent technology that may effect future combat is body armor. Current body armor is capable of defeating almost all existing small arms fire (excluding heavy machineguns, of course). Should body armor proliferate among our potential enemies, both the 5.56 abnd 7.62 class of small arms will become rapidly obsolete. A new generation of small arm will be required.

I expect the current generation of small arms to see only evolutionary improvement, with low cost improvements likely to be the only ones carried out. We are poised at a radical change in small arms and no one wants to finance an imporved 'longbow' when the next big thing is right around the corner. The Brown Bess served as the general issue rifle for over 100 years. It is quite possible the M16, with minor changes, will have the same kind of service record - and will eventually be replaces with a who new class of small arms.

Tod- Good observations but we have to keep in mind what we do with that information. Everything I know is not necessarily wrong

Artillery has been the biggest killer of soldiers since Napoleon, so nothing�s new there. A soldiers inability to kill the enemy has a whole lot more to do with psychology than the rifle he carries. And Hall�s information, especially in the context in which you quote, is of limited value. In the grand scheme of warfare, the infantry rifle plays a small, but significant role. It�s role is often more psychological than as a tool of war, but that�s a whole different debate.

The reality though, is that a war is the culmination of many different types of engagements, and some of those are classic infantry fighting. In those instances, the rifle reigns supreme, and we cannot forget that.

The US Military opted to give the M16 capabilities out to 800 yards was back in the �80�s. At the time, I thought they killed off most of the best features of the M16A1 when they developed the M16A2, primarily the light weight. In retrospect, they were quite prophetic in going against the grain of modern military thinking (for the past 40 years) in giving the M16 a long range capability.

In Afghanistan specifically, and to a much lesser degree in Iraq, long range engagements are not uncommon at all. We can debate the effectiveness of engaging in a long range affair all day long, but if it�s you in that foxhole, you�re going to want a rifle that will allow you to shoot back.

These days, there�s no reason why you have to have a complete compromise, and I think the M4 carbine does a decent job�Not great, but decent. It�s nearly ideal in the CQB role and it�s at least competent past 300 yards.

A newer rifle could potentially do a better job, but as I said in my opening post (and you reiterated), the M16 is a tough act to follow.

Saying that more casualties are produced with artillery as opposed to small arms fire is sort of like saying you can wet more blades of grass with a sprinkler than you can with an eye dropper. Also, comparing the huge battles of Army versus Army in previous wars is not real appropriate to what we are facing now.

Area weapons will always have a better chance at killing and maiming than will point weapons...but it�s pretty tough to call in a fire mission on the bedroom of a house you are clearing out.

It would appear that for the foreseeable future our troops are going to be facing an enemy dressed in civilian clothes and carrying AK47 rifles, RPG�s, light machine guns and intermixed with a civilian population that is going to preclude the use of the big-stuff.

In this type of engagement the M4�s (with the newer ammunition) are going to be pretty hard to beat until something very new and radical is invented.

Rick - Spot on