The US Army is set to announce a competition for that service’s next generation infantry rifle, potentially breaking the hold Connecticut-based Colt has had on the contract for the last decade. This has brought legions of lobbyists – including the first for Colt over the intervening period – circling about the trough:
For nearly a decade, Colt Defense went without a lobbyist. The legendary gun maker based in West Hartford, Conn., had an exclusive deal to provide combat rifles to the U.S. military and didn’t need a hired gun looking out for the company’s interests in Washington.
Times have changed. After buying more than 700,000 Colt M4 carbines, the Defense Department has started a search for the rifle’s successor, giving Colt’s competitors the long-awaited chance to break the company’s grip on the market. So Colt turned to Roger Smith, a former deputy assistant Navy secretary-turned-lobbyist, to be the company’s voice in D.C. His fee is $120,000 a year…
Remington has spent nearly $500,000 on lobbyists over the last two years alone in a push to get more of its weapons into the hands of U.S. troops, according to lobbying records filed with Congress.
Remington, with its headquarters in Madison, N.C., and a manufacturing plant in upstate New York, is represented by the firms Winborn Solutions and Nelson Mullins Riley and Scarborough. Remington will offer its multicaliber Adaptive Combat Rifle.”The biggest thing that Remington wants is the ability to compete for contracts,” said Jason Schauble, vice president of Remington’s military products division…
FNMI sells a combat rifle called the SCAR to the U.S. Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla. The command has its own acquisition budget and the latitude to buy gear the conventional military branches can’t. FNMI also sells machine guns to the Army.
Fighting FNMI’s battles inside Washington’s Beltway is the American Business Development Group, a firm that boasts a roster of retired military officers who “provide strategic guidance and access” to the leadership at the Defense Department and other federal agencies. FN Herstal pays the firm $120,000 a year, according to disclosure records…
Smith & Wesson, known more for handguns than military rifles, will also bid for the carbine work. The company, based in Springfield, Mass., pays the firm Greenberg Traurig $360,000 a year to be its Washington representative, disclosure records show…
It is to be hoped that the Army will evaluate and procure the best infantry weapons money can buy. The gun makers are taking no chances, and are providing the funding for the best Congress that money can buy.
It is to be hoped that the Army will evaluate and procure the best infantry weapons money can buy
That has to be the funniest thing that I’ve read today.
I hope HK is in the running. Thier XM-8 and 416 have won competions for reliability run by the Army, but HK is Not Made Here, even though it is. In Georgia.
XM-8 has front trunnion issues. And the carbine’s barrel length was way too short. And it was basically a G36 in a fancy shell anyway just without all the configuration options the G36 has.
“Not Made Here” hasn’t been an issue for years considering HK, Beretta, Sig, and FN are all already supplying weapons and grenade launchers.
I’d be highly highly shocked if the DOD ditches the M4, but wouldn’t be shocked at all if the M4 contract got handed to somebody else besides Colt.
Beretta builds the Pistols, H&K nibbles around teh edges among the SOC types, not to the mainstream of the services. FN supplies GPMG and the SAW. Both are excellent weapons. But, I have a problem with the 5.56mm round we shoot both for range and terminal ballistics.
The M-4 really needs to be replaced. Badly. The original M-16 was a marginal weapon because of teh type of powders used in milspec ammo, which burns dirtier than IMR powders, which is what Stoner expected to use. It also is not reliable without a lot of maintenance effort. The action could be improved dramatically by using a piston driven action as opposed to direct impingement of powder gases, which is quite dirty and is the cause of the majority of reliability problems (assuming you use the proper lubricant).
I like both H&K and FN weapons
The original AR-15 was actually considered a fantastic weapon by the SF and related types that got it. Before McNamara got to it anyway.
It actually is very reliable with minimal maintenance effort and the DI isn’t a big deal. The major problem was that from Day 1 of general issue until very recently (and not everywhere in the DOD) the way servicemen were told to maintain the M16 was retarded.
Spade, much of the problem with the Stoner action is direct impingement. because of my experience I bought a Daewoo 200 and have never had problems with the piece. The Stoner action, when used with ball powders, requires religiously regular maintenance. Many times, that’s simply not possible.
The Air Farce had the AR-15 before anyone else did. LeMay was the one that got it adopted. It was OK for those types, but not those who actually had to carry it to the field. SOF types operated under different conditions, but they had regular problems with it as well. I knew two guys who were with the National Park Service who had been Army SF in Vietnam. Both thought the weapon acceptable, but barely so. Both H&K and FN are making service rifles that outclass the Stoner design.
Also, this article is a little off about the FN SCAR. SOCOM is buying some of the 7.62 NATO versions but canned the 5.56mm Mk16 version.
And the ACR isn’t that great but I’m still bitter about the Masada.
On the other hand, S&W makes a pretty good M4 I’ve heard.
5.56 SCAR was canned for money reasons only…the big services will supply “free” M4s, but SOCOM would have to buy and maintain and SCARs.
the last time us ground pounders got the best Infantry weapon money could buy, it was the Garand…
just sayin.
…You got that right!
Maybe I’m dating myself, I first carried the M-1 30cal – nice weapon, didn’t jam much, what you hit went down, needed to put out more round min tho. Then carried the M-14, what you it went down, didn’t jam much, could put out a lot of rounds, didn’ cut bush tho. Then the M-16A1 – jamed at the wrong time(!), put out a lot of rounds, what you hit did not always go down, but sure cut the bush. The M-16A2 didn’t jam as much, did’n have any range worth a dam, what you it didn’t always go down, but sure cut the bush! I suspect the Army knows what it needs but did not want to argue with the Congress for the money to rearm the Infantry.
I’m actually surprised, given the large number of Lefty anti-gun nuts in Congress, that they are actually considering buying ANY ASSAULT RIFLE for our military. Them bein’ so horribly violent and all. Not issuing or training with weapons would also have the benefit of no longer loosing hordes of retired ‘potential terrorists’ on the public when their years of service are deemed no longer necessary.
And YES, I AM being sarcastic…..for the most part.
But will the Chicoms lend us money to buy anything?
You may have put your finger on the most important part of the problem.
The Army has spent 3 decades trying to replace the Colt family of rifles. Every time they came up with a superior, shinier, and much more expensive model. And the program was killed every time, usually on cost. The Army will probably repeat its past mistakes… see the XM8… and come up with a new rifle that has all kinds of Aliens-Halo features to it, and result in a price running in 5 figures. My money says that ten years from now, the standard issue rifle will still be an M-16 derivative, and it’ll likely be made by Colt.
“It is to be hoped that the Army will evaluate and procure the best infantry weapons money can buy. ”
The army may well do that, but if things in the US work like they work over here, that choice will be ignored by the politicos in congress or the white house who’ll select something else entirely based on “political expediency”, in other words which manufacturer hands out the most bribes to politicians.
…May I make a suggestion? How about we allow actual combat units to vote on which rifle they take into combat? So if there’s (say) a Marine battalion with a jones for the AR-10 (or modern equivalent), let them go to town. Let an Air Cav unit try out their favorite H&K, and so on. After six months or so, lets gather all the data, and see how various weapons performed under various circumstances.
After listening & lurking over the years, the choice seems fairly split between the “.22″ crowd and the “.30″ crowd, with a countable minority giving a call-out for SCARS and such.
From general reading I suspect the 5.56 is the better round for “knife fight” situations one finds in & around cities. When you get into the wilderland, the 7.62 performs better under the longer ranges encountered the past generation.
…And, yes, I can foresee at least some of the objections…
Beretta will just bring important people to Italy on junkets. The 160 will win! Ciao….
http://www.berettadefence.com/index.aspx?m=53&did=145
Interesting add, but I thought the SEALs were using the H&K Mk 23 “SOCOM” pistol.
More than likely, they’re using HK USP Tactical or Compact Tactical, which are significantly smaller than the Mk23 (itself, the size of a Desert Eagle). I’ve read the Mk23 was pretty much universally loathed amongst the SF community, for its enormous size, weight, and relatively limited magazine capacity.
I’d take a Desert Eagle in .50 AE
I’m a very firm believer in the “big hole” theory.
Just prior to walking away from my last big job, 5 years ago, that was close to this thread, I met with some people who were embarking on the same search for the next UK infantry weapon. Bearing in the more radical views circulating when our current one was introduced (we’d have been better, financially at least, buying off the shelf M16′s) I do hope there is less of the debacles usually associated with this process. The current 5.56mm `SA80` Bullpup design is, at last, a decent piece of kit, its UGL being particularly potent. But it took several goes to get it right and, most seriously, these `goes` were after it had been issued to front line troops, who don’t take kindly to stoppages and bits of plastic falling off just when they call in a contact. Casey makes the point about the calibre arguments. We had to rustle up PDQ an automatic 7.62mm to plug a deficiency gap realised in the wadis and green zones of Afghan and even then it’s only there as one or two amongst a section. Ironically, if you purely choose on the basis of accounting, the most reliable, cheap, robust piece of value for money still happens to be the AK74. But we can’t have our chaps kitted out with vfm stuff made in China now, can we.
Please, God, don’t let this whole thing wind up with another 5.56 abomination. It is a varmint round and is the majority of the problem with any modern AR platforms. Give us 6.8 or 7mm at about 120 grains. Give us something that will kill someone at 500 meters and in.
Enough of this McNamara/LeMay nonsense. Forty-five years of a failed cartridge is 40 years too long.
Amen. But I don’t have much hope for a good decision – They’ll want to avoid a caliber change so we’ll get stuck with another lipstick on a pig option.
I was disgusted when the 5.56 became a “NATO” round. I’d really like to see something in the 7mm class. There was a wildcat round that necked down the Win .308 to 7mm that seems to work well. I suspect the Garand action would work well with it, since the powder charge is similar and would probably not need a head space change either.
I like the idea of the AR-10, but wouldn’t like the realization if it uses direct impingement as the AR-15 does. I could live with the M-14 if we could lighten it somewhat, and we probably can. The M-4, and the Stoner action, though, really does need to go, and i hope it does. But, I’m not going to hold my breath.
Ah, a fellow 7mm crank, trying to bring the Light to the heathen.
[...] blogs were all over this last night, mostly on the angle that lots of contractors were hiring lobbyists to get the inside track on the competition. Big surprise [...]
There might be hope for the 5.56 round yet… http://communities.canada.com/ottawacitizen/blogs/defencewatch/archive/2011/05/13/the-quot-green-bullet-quot-an-environmentally-friendly-way-of-killing.aspx
The problem is that some in big Army (civ and mil side) are so in love with Colt that they want to keep the M-4. Same thing happened with the M-14. Even when they had to field the M-16, they (and Colt) cut so many corners that the results was a weapon more dangerous to Joes than to the enemy.
The big problem is that we have 40+ years of marksmanship instruction and TM’s that would need to be re-written. I got to play with a SCAR and Bushmaster ACR in the PX’s gun shop. The SCAR’s sights were nice for my near-sighted eyes, but the ACR? No sights and a $2,700(!) sticker price. An M-4 clone with a surefire, grip and EOTECH holographic sight was selling for $2,100.
Colt whined to the Army times when AT ran a story on the HK416. They sued HK when the rifle was called the HK “M-4″ (416 is a jab at colt).
Despite Colt’s sweetheart deal with Malaysia, Norway, Poland and Turkey use the 416.
The XM-8 tried to re-invent the wheel. Inseat of rails, it had oval holes in the hard guards for non=standard accessories. Add in an “adapter” and you have a heavy expensive weapon. Making all our lights, optics and grips obsolete didn’t endear HK to the brass.
When this was tired in the 1980′s, congressmen in Colt’s district tired to tell the Army “We want a rifle 50% better”. Never happened. Althou caseless ammo of the HK-11 may see active service the rest of the efforts fell flat.
There are still those in uniform that make really silly (and stupid) arguments against replacing the M-4.
“Piston guns weight more” (More PT!)
“Soldiers are happy with the M-16/M-4″ (if you skew the survey yea)
“Pick a US company!” (ok that’s more of Colt’s line but still…)
The next carbine needs to be easy to use, be cheap and be easy to maintain. It can be done. The company needs to send trainers to get Joes familiar with the weapon.
As a notorious 7mm (and proud of it) crank, I think yer all nuts. (ok, 6.8 might be even better)
Really, somewhere around .27-.28 caliber seems to be a sweet spot for smokeless infantry rifle cartridges. The British were going to adopt it, then the Great War intervened. We were going to adopt it, but Douglas MacArthur pointed out that we couldn’t afford it, and besides, we had all these millions of .30-06 cartridges, and rifles for them. later, after the FDR War, the Brits tried again, only to be bullied out of it by us, with the .308.
I think that it should be mentioned that MacArthur had a point about the .30-06 being abundant. We’ve only just seen the last of the surplus US ammo leave the CMP stores.
What would be different today is the civilian market is more than willing to absorb any surplus 5.56 created by a new chambering; and be perfectly willing to pay to absorb it. When the decision to scrap .276 Pederson was made in lieu of the .30-06 there just wasn’t a market for the surplus.
A bit OT but…. I just learned how the Texas Navy – yes, the Republic of Texas once had a Navy – saved Colt’s butt.
Colt was one of the first to patent a repeating revolver pistol. But nobody was much interested in it, nor saw any value in it. Finally, the Texas Navy bought a number of the Colt, 5-shot Paterson revolvers. While it was prone to problems, Texas Rangers Colonel Jack Hayes and Captain Samuel Walker saw the great value in a repeating pistol to combat mounted Comanche warriors firing multiple and repeated arrows.
After going bankrupt, and now with the help of Eli Whitney and Texas Ranger Walker, the much-improved Walker Colt was developed. It turned the tide in the Indian Wars of the Comencharia, made the Rangers national heroes, and it led to the famous, Colt 45 Peacemaker.
Were it not for the Texas Navy and the Rangers, Colts might not exist.
link
[I suppose all you right wing, NRA card-carrying Texans know all this already. But for this moonbat socialist lefty, it was interesting and fascinating learning. ... OT as it may be. ]
I believe a lot of Colt Navy Six revolvers had their cylinders roll-marked with a scene of the Texas Navy kicking Mexican Naval butt.
I shot a Navy Six replica, once, and I swear a blind man could make hits with it, it pointed so naturally. (I couldn’t hit with it until I ignored its “sights” and just came down on the target from “raise pistol.”) Easy to take apart and clean it, it was, too.
It is a perfect “end of the world”, or TEOTWAWKI weapon. There ain’t even a sear between the trigger and the hammer, IIRC.
I am not much of a shot, and I mostly never get to exercise with pieces, living in Flourdough, as I must do at the moment, but I will say again that that Navy Six is a natural point-shooter. I betcha I could shoot holes in the tires of golf carts with one from ten yards without hardly looking.
It is interesting to read of the troubles that faced the M-16 in Vietnam and how Colt sent their representatives to evaluate the claimed problems and recommend fixes. The result seemed to be a lot of letter writing and eventually new parts for new rifles but few for existing problem rifles.
It is even more interesting to read of how Colt did things when attempting to sell the M1911 to the Army, in which they sent Browning himself to address any problems.
The success or failure of a rifle in military tests rests, I believe, upon a very simple policy: Send the best gunsmith you have, give him the authority to make changes, and tell him not to argue with the troops Your design is supposed to be soldier-proof. If it’s not, your job is to make it so. Soldiers need a rifle that goes bang when the trigger is pulled and stops what it hits. How difficult can that be?
– Max
Just as no plan survives contact with the enemy; no weapon design survives contact with the infantry.
Max:
“…Soldiers need a rifle that goes bang when the trigger is pulled and stops what it hits. How difficult can that be?” is the money quote.
Nobody seems to be mentioning the factors related to the soldier CARRYING various kinds of ammo in various critical quantities. All is tradeoffs…life is tradeoffs.
I would rather have a rifle that doesn’t jam, can reach out and touch the enemy, and having that one touch be all that is needed.
The troops are always going to complain -weight, gear, chow, weather,…. when have they not? It is an honorable and expected part of being in uniform.
Seeing a target and not having a rifle that can engage that target, or having done so, not kill him, would piss me off much more than a few pounds more of ammo/rifle.
I was talking about the cartridge, not its launcher.
The cartridge needs to be big enough to knock a man down, and small enough that a man can carry a whole bunch of them. I am a crank about this, but I am in good company. The ordnance establishments of both the UK and the USA concurred with me, as long ago as 1914, that a cartridge of about .27 or .28 caliber was about the optimum.