Weapons failed US troops during Afghan firefight

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Dennis Erectus	Weapons failed US troops during Afghan firefight		Lead	[-]
Member Posts: 11186 10/12/09 00:01:42	During my time in SE Asia it was quite common to keep an AK as back up because the US standard issue high maintenance M16 was essentially prone to jamming and repeated failures. Of course as is typical with government contract equipment it isn't the best platform either. Nothing appears to have changed in the last 40 or so years. - Black Blade Weapons failed US troops during Afghan firefight http://www.kansascity.com/444/story/1502088.html By RICHARD LARDNER Associated Press Writer In the chaos of an early morning assault on a remote U.S. outpost in eastern Afghanistan, Staff Sgt. Erich Phillips' M4 carbine quit firing as militant forces surrounded the base. The machine gun he grabbed after tossing the rifle aside didn't work either. When the battle in the small village of Wanat ended, nine U.S. soldiers lay dead and 27 more were wounded. A detailed study of the attack by a military historian found that weapons failed repeatedly at a "critical moment" during the firefight on July 13, 2008, putting the outnumbered American troops at risk of being overrun by nearly 200 insurgents. Which raises the question: Eight years into the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, do U.S. armed forces have the best guns money can buy? Despite the military's insistence that they do, a small but vocal number of troops in Afghanistan and Iraq has complained that the standard-issue M4 rifles need too much maintenance and jam at the worst possible times. A week ago, eight U.S. troops were killed at a base near Kamdesh, a town near Wanat. There's no immediate evidence of weapons failures at Kamdesh, but the circumstances were eerily similar to the Wanat battle: insurgents stormed an isolated stronghold manned by American forces stretched thin by the demands of war. Army Col. Wayne Shanks, a military spokesman in Afghanistan, said a review of the battle at Kamdesh is under way. "It is too early to make any assumptions regarding what did or didn't work correctly," he said. Complaints about the weapons the troops carry, especially the M4, aren't new. Army officials say that when properly cleaned and maintained, the M4 is a quality weapon that can pump out more than 3,000 rounds before any failures occur. The M4 is a shorter, lighter version of the M16, which made its debut during the Vietnam war. Roughly 500,000 M4s are in service, making it the rifle troops on the front lines trust with their lives. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., a leading critic of the M4, said Thursday the Army needs to move quickly to acquire a combat rifle suited for the extreme conditions U.S. troops are fighting in. U.S. special operations forces, with their own acquisition budget and the latitude to buy gear the other military branches can't, already are replacing their M4s with a new rifle. "The M4 has served us well but it's not as good as it needs to be," Coburn said. Battlefield surveys show that nearly 90 percent of soldiers are satisfied with their M4s, according to Brig. Gen. Peter Fuller, head of the Army office that buys soldier gear. Still, the rifle is continually being improved to make it even more reliable and lethal. Fuller said he's received no official reports of flawed weapons performance at Wanat. "Until it showed up in the news, I was surprised to hear about all this," he said. The study by Douglas Cubbison of the Army Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., hasn't been publicly released. Copies of the study have been leaked to news organizations and are circulating on the Internet. Cubbison's study is based on an earlier Army investigation and interviews with soldiers who survived the attack at Wanat. He describes a well-coordinated attack by a highly skilled enemy that unleashed a withering barrage with AK-47 automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. The soldiers said their weapons were meticulously cared for and routinely inspected by commanders. But still the weapons had breakdowns, especially when the rifles were on full automatic, which allows hundreds of bullets to be fired a minute. The platoon-sized unit of U.S. soldiers and about two dozen Afghan troops was shooting back with such intensity the barrels on their weapons turned white hot. The high rate of fire appears to have put a number of weapons out of commission, even though the guns are tested and built to operate in extreme conditions. Cpl. Jonathan Ayers and Spc. Chris McKaig were firing their M4s from a position the soldiers called the "Crow's Nest." The pair would pop up together from cover, fire half a dozen rounds and then drop back down. On one of these trips up, Ayers was killed instantly by an enemy round. McKaig soon had problems with his M4, which carries a 30-round magazine. "My weapon was overheating," McKaig said, according to Cubbison's report. "I had shot about 12 magazines by this point already and it had only been about a half hour or so into the fight. I couldn't charge my weapon and put another round in because it was too hot, so I got mad and threw my weapon down." The soldiers also had trouble with their M249 machine guns, a larger weapon than the M4 that can shoot up to 750 rounds per minute. Cpl. Jason Bogar fired approximately 600 rounds from his M-249 before the weapon overheated and jammed the weapon. Bogar was killed during the firefight, but no one saw how he died, according to the report. The meek shall inherit the Earth, but not the mineral rights!
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Dennis Erectus	Fallen Marine's father wants change in Afghanistan	#1	[url]	[-]
Member Posts: 11186 10/13/09 17:57:32	Fallen Marine's father wants change in Afghanistan This March 9, 2007, family photo provided by retired Marine 1st Sgt. John Bernard, right, shows him with his wife Sharon, left and late son, Marine Lance Cpl. Joshua Bernard, center, at Joshua's graduation from Marine boot camp, Parris Island, S.C. Joshua Bernard was killed in August 2009 while on patrol in Afghanistan. By DAVID SHARP, Associated Press Writer David Sharp, Associated Press Writer 1 hr 48 mins ago NEW PORTLAND, Maine - It was the last way John Bernard would have wanted his voice to gain prominence in the national debate over the war in Afghanistan. The retired Marine had been writing to lawmakers for weeks complaining of the new rules of engagement he believed put U.S. troops at unacceptable risk in the insurgency-wracked country. He got little response. Then Bernard's only son, 21-year-old Lance Cpl. Joshua Bernard - a Marine like his dad - was killed in an insurgent ambush in Afghanistan's volatile Helmand province, the latest victim of a surge in U.S. combat deaths. Three weeks later, Joshua became the face of that toll when The Associated Press published photos of the dying Marine against his father's wishes and John Bernard was thrust into a national debate about the role of the press in wartime. Suddenly, for all the worst reasons, John Bernard's voice was being heard. The loss of his son and the furor over the photo have given new resonance to his view that changes must be made in how the war is fought before President Barack Obama sends any more troops to battle the Taliban and al-Qaida. "For better or for worse, I may be the face of this. That's fine," said Bernard, sitting on his porch as he drank coffee from a Marine Corps mug. "As soon as someone bigger can run with it, they can have the whole thing." Bernard's criticism is aimed at new rules of engagement imposed by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the senior American commander in Afghanistan, five weeks before Joshua Bernard was killed. They limit the use of airstrikes and require troops to break off combat when civilians are present, even if it means letting the enemy escape. They also call for greater cooperation with the Afghan National Army. Under those rules, John Bernard said, Marines and soldiers are being denied artillery and air support for fear of killing civilians, and the Taliban is using that to its tactical advantage. In a letter to his congressman and Maine's U.S. senators, Bernard condemned "the insanity of the current situation and the suicidal position this administration has placed these warriors in." "We've abandoned them in this Catch-22 where we're supposed to defend the population, but we can't defend them because we can't engage the enemy that is supposed to be the problem," he said in an interview with the AP. The military says the new rules, while riskier in the short run, will ultimately mean fewer casualties. Before Joshua died, his father lived quietly as a professional carpenter and church volunteer. That changed on Aug. 14, when Joshua was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade while acting as point man for his squad in the town of Dahaneh. He died that night on the operating table. On Sept. 4, the AP distributed a photo of the mortally wounded Marine being tended to by comrades. Many newspapers opted against using the photo, and the distribution launched a fierce public debate, especially after Defense Secretary Robert Gates publicly criticized the AP. John Bernard still believes the AP's decision to release the photo - to show the horror of war and the sacrifice of those fighting it - was inexcusable, but he says the bigger issue is how the war is being conducted. As he sees it, the U.S. was right to go to war in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, but eight years later the focus has shifted to counterinsurgency instead of hunting down the enemy. Marines are trained to "kill people and break things," not to be police officers and nation-builders, he says. The Taliban "are tenacious and you have to fight them with the same level of tenacity," Bernard said. "If you're going to try to go over there as a peacekeeper, you're going to get your butt handed to you, and that's what's going on right now." Bernard also disagrees with U.S. troops working side by side with Afghan soldiers and police. The mission on which his son was killed was compromised by someone who tipped off the Taliban, he says, citing gunfire from all directions that targeted the Marines' helicopter when it landed. Bernard believes the Marines were led into a trap. Bernard writes a blog sharing his views with others. "I don't think John changed because his son died," his pastor, the Rev. Valmore Vigue, said. "He was committed to this cause because he believed it was right, and that's why he's doing it." It's been a little more than a month since Joshua was buried in a small cemetery about five miles from their 1865 farmhouse in the rolling hills of western Maine, where the leaves of maples, oak, birch and poplars are turning fiery red, orange and yellow. Bernard has accepted the loss, but his grief is obvious. He pauses from time to time to take deep breaths as he speaks of his son. Several times, he closes his eyes, as if remembering. Bernard, 55, joined the Marines in 1972 and served 26 years on active and reserve duty, leading a platoon as a scout sniper in the first Gulf War in 1991. Physically fit, with closely cropped hair and a Marine Corps tattoo on his arm, the retired first sergeant remains a competitive shooter. He and his wife, Sharon, raised Joshua and their daughter, Katie, 25, in New Portland, population 800. The family attended Crossroads Bible Church in nearby Madison. Father and son shared the same philosophy: service to God, family, country and Marines - in that order, Bernard said. Joshua was quiet, polite and determined. He led a Bible study in Afghanistan and earned the call sign "Holy Man." He also was a crack shot - best in his company, his father said. Bernard says the battle that claimed Joshua's life was just one example of all that's wrong in Afghanistan. When four Marines were killed in another ambush, near the Pakistan border, a McClatchy Newspapers reporter embedded with the unit wrote that its request for artillery fire support was declined because of the rules of engagement. The reporter quoted Marines as saying women and children were replenishing the insurgents' ammunition. In another recent incident, an Afghan police officer on patrol with U.S. soldiers opened fire on the Americans, killing two of them. The assailant managed to escape. The solution isn't that complicated, Bernard said. He wants the U.S. military to return to its original mission of chasing and killing the Taliban and al-Qaida. Otherwise, he said, bring the troops home. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, raised Bernard's concerns to Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during an Armed Services Committee meeting last month. "Getting this right in the long run will actually result in fewer casualties," Mullen said, according to a transcript of the hearing. "That doesn't mean risk isn't up higher now, given the challenges we have and the direction that McChrystal has laid out." Rep. Mike Michaud, D-Maine, also raised Bernard's concerns in a letter to Gates, requesting that someone from the Pentagon chief's office formally contact Bernard. So far, no one has. As a retired Marine, Bernard said he's obligated to speak up. His son is now gone, but he said others are still at risk. "We've got guys in harm's way getting shot at and getting killed," he said. "To me, it's immoral that anybody in this country wouldn't have that first and last on their minds." ___ On the Net: John Bernard's blog: http://letthemfight.blogspot.com/ http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091013/ap_on_re_us/us_fallen_marine_s_father Black Blade: Sadly we are going to lose another war thanks to incompetence at the top. Worse yet is that we will sacrifice many young lives all in vain before we give up and go home in defeat. I guess this is what we voted for on November 4th, 2008. A real shame. The meek shall inherit the Earth, but not the mineral rights!
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Dennis Erectus	How Reliable Is the M-16 Rifle?	#2	[url]	[-]
Member Posts: 11186 11/04/09 02:22:19	How Reliable Is the M-16 Rifle? November 2, 2009, 9:29 am By C.J. Chivers First of two parts Few issues are more personal to soldiers than the question of whether they can trust their rifles. And few rifles in history have generated more controversy over their reliability than the American M-16 assault rifle and its carbine version, the M-4. In recent weeks, a fresh round of complaints about weapon malfunctions in Afghanistan, mentioned in an Army historian's report that documented small-arms jamming during the fierce battle in Wanat last year, has rekindled the discussion. Are the M-16 and M-4 the best rifles available for American troops? Or are they fussy and punchless and less than ideal for war? Don't expect a clear answer any time soon. Expect several clear answers at once - many of them contradictory. This is because when talk turns to the M-16 and the M-4, it enters emotionally charged territory. The conversation is burdened by history, cluttered with conflicting anecdotes, and argued over by passionate camps. This much is indisputable: Since the mid-1960s, when at Gen. William C. Westmoreland's request an earlier version of the M-16 became the primary American rifle in Vietnam, the reputation of the M-16 family has been checkered. This is in part because the rifle had a painfully flawed roll-out. Beginning intensely in 1966, soldiers and Marines complained of the weapon's terrifying tendency to jam mid-fight. What's more, the jamming was often one of the worst sorts: a phenomenon known as "failure to extract," which meant that a spent cartridge case remained lodged in the chamber after a bullet flew out the muzzle. The only sure way to dislodge the case was to push a metal rod down the muzzle and pop it out. The modern American assault rifle, in other words, often resembled a single-shot musket. One Army record, classified at the time but available in archives now, showed that 80 percent of 1,585 troops queried in 1967 had experienced a stoppage while firing. The Army, meanwhile, publicly insisted that the weapon was the best rifle available for fighting in Vietnam. The problems were so extensive that in 1967 a Congressional subcommittee investigated, and issued a blistering rebuke to the Army for, among other things, failing to ensure the weapon and its ammunition worked well together, for failing to train troops on the new weapon, and for neglecting to issue enough cleaning equipment - including the cleaning rod essential for clearing jammed rifles. A series of technical changes sharply reduced (but never eliminated) the incidence of problems. Intensive weapons-cleaning training helped, too. But the M-16 has struggled over the decades for universal and cheerful acceptance. Some soldiers and Marines have always loathed it, and its offspring, too. To their critics, the M-16 and M-4 are ill-suited for Afghanistan and Iraq. Unlike the Kalashnikov rifles carried by insurgents, they are too sensitive to sand and fine dust, they say. They overheat quickly and in the worst battles are prone to fail. Critics also complain about the weapons' relative lethality. Their lightweight bullets lack knock-down power, they say, especially when fired by the M-4, because the reduced barrel length of the carbine results in a reduced muzzle velocity, which lessens the severity of many wounds. A discussion about the mechanisms of wounding could be a full post. One day I'll take that on. But any discussion about M-4 and M-16 lethality would be incomplete without mentioning an essential variable: bullet composition. The most commonly used round today, the M855, has a steel penetrator core and was designed to pass through Soviet body armor; some soldiers complain that when it strikes a man wearing only a shirt it can travel through him like an ice pick. Unless it strikes bone squarely, they say, it tends not to dump adequate kinetic energy inside a victim. Moreover, unlike the former round, the M193, the metal jacket of the M855's bullet tends not to fragment. This reduces the wound channels and energy transfer into a victim, too. First translation: the M855 is not the best cartridge for shooting lightly clad insurgents; it is a cartridge designed for a different war. Second translation: some complaints about M-4 and M-16 lethality are likely related to the ammunition, not the rifles. If all of this seems complex, it's only the background. Tomorrow we'll discuss the performance data from surveys of veterans and from reliability tests, and share the Army's position. Do American troops deserve a better rifle-cartridge combination? If yes, how to define better? More lethal? Greater range? More reliable? What rifle and what cartridge combination would work best? http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/how-reliable-is-the-m-16-rifle/ Black Blade: I think of all those times when we would have our M16 and yet grab a reliable AK47 when we found one as back up. That should tell you something right there. The meek shall inherit the Earth, but not the mineral rights!
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Dennis Erectus	The M-16 Argument Heats Up, Again	#3	[url]	[-]
Member Posts: 11186 11/04/09 02:29:39	The M-16 Argument Heats Up, Again By C.J. Chivers Second of Two Parts A post here yesterday explored some of the background to controversies surrounding the performance of M-16 and M-4 assault rifles in Afghanistan and Iraq. The latest controversy followed the leak of an Army historian's study that described weapons overheating and jamming in a July 2008 battle in Wanat, Afghanistan. Nine American soldiers died in that fight, at a remote post that insurgents almost overran. Similar reports of malfunctions, and concerns that the M-16 and M-4 and their cartridges lack so-called stopping power, have created a sustained set of criticisms about the United States military's primary small arms. Some concerns predated the current wars. One study of the M-4 in February 2001, by the Special Operations Command, concluded that the weapon's design was "fundamentally flawed" and prone to "alarming failures" when subjected to intense shooting. In 2004 the Special Operations Command contracted for a new rifle, the SCAR, to replace its M-4s. In the ensuing years, data has been mixed. A survey by the Center for Naval Analysis in 2006 found that 75 percent of soldiers reported overall satisfaction with the M-16 and 89 percent with the M-4. But the study also found that 19 percent of the soldiers surveyed had experienced "a stoppage while engaging the enemy." (The Center for Naval Analysis survey mentions soldier concerns with other weapon systems, including the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon and the 9-millimeter pistol, which has also attracted ire since its introduction. I'll discuss some of these issues in a future post. I'm starting with the rifle, because it is by far the most widely issued arm.) Few people doubt that the M-16 is, in the most simple sense, conceptually sound. All firearms are trade-offs between features, and the M-16 and M-4 represent a set of decisions that can make sense: they are light in weight, and so is their ammunition, which means troops can carry many rounds into battle. They are also highly accurate, especially at the ranges - inside of 300 yards - that history tells us are the typical ranges at which targets can be distinguished and effectively engaged by rifle fire. The questions are whether the weapon is a step too far toward lightness, and whether its operating system - in which a direct blast of gas from the burning propellant forces a lightweight bolt carrier and bolt to begin the firing cycle - is as reliable as other options, including a slightly heavier, piston-based design. The reports of failures and disaffection have driven the Army to test the rifles repeatedly. And this is where the arguments become curious, because the Army said that neither the official data nor contemporaneous reports from units in combat have matched the problems reported elsewhere. The Army has fired more than 8 million test rounds through M-4s, according to Col. Douglas Tamilio, who supervises the rifle's development for the Army Materiel Command, and found that the interval between stoppages exceeds 3,600 rounds. That would be 120 magazines of ammunition - more than many soldiers fire in a combat tour. Even when rapid-firing tests are held, the Army's standard-issue M-4 typically fires 500 rounds before malfunctioning. (The rapid-fire tests are significant because in them a weapon is not allowed to cool. The heat load literally makes the barrel red hot, simulating the conditions of the most intensive combat.) Colonel Tamilio said the rifles' reliability in tests has been "on par with any assault rifle in the world." He added, "The data suggests we don't have a systematic problem. The reliability issues we are hearing, let me tell you, I'm hearing from non-soldiers." He also said the rifles are constantly examined for potential improvements, and that the M-4 alone had undergone 62 changes since its introduction in the early 1990s. The most recent change is a new magazine that has been issued this year. The magazine has a stronger spring and a different follower assembly, which the Army says pushes rounds into the path of the bolt more surely and smoothly, and reduces failures. So how to square the official results with the accounts from war? Command Sergeant Major Jeffrey Mellinger of the Army Materiel Command said his constant queries to deployed units have never yielded complaints like he has seen in news accounts. As recently as last week, he said, he asked the sergeant major of a major command in Afghanistan to give him details of malfucntions. "I said, 'Tell me all of your weapons problems.'" he said. "He came back, 'We aren't having any.'" When he does investigate complaints, Sgt. Maj. Mellinger said, they are usually minor. "I have no reports of a weapon that went down and couldn't get started again." The Army said it is investigating the reported weapons failures at Wanat, and that it is too soon to draw conclusions. And after our phone conversation, the sergeant major sent an e-mail saying that all complaints from soldiers are fair grounds for thorough investigation. "Every report of equipment or weapons failures or shortfalls causes our collective heads to turn and feet to go into motion, for those are our friends, comrades and countrymen on the other end," he wrote. "We never challenge what soldiers say, but look at every instance and report on its own merits, and work hard to identify and rapidly field any materiel, training or equipping solutions needed." As for the questions of lethality, most units continue to use the standard M855 round with its steel core penetrator. Since the beginning of Afghan war, however, training has evolved in ways that suggest that soldiers and Marines know not to count on any one bullet to be enough. The "one shot, one kill" mantra that was drilled into infantrymen for decades has been replaced by training that emphasizes shooting foes multiple times. One Marine warrant officer put it this way during training that I observed at Camp Lejeune in 2006: "Anyone worth shooting once," he said. "Is worth shooting twice." That was understatement. On the range that day, in live-fire training for close-quarters battle, the Marines were required to shoot the vital areas of each man-shaped target three times. The vital areas, for the purpose of this test, were a circle the size of a pie plate centered the sternum and a three-inch stripe just above the middle of the face, centered on the eyes. http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/the-m-16-argument-heats-up-again/ The meek shall inherit the Earth, but not the mineral rights!
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Dennis Erectus	Comparison between the M16 and AK47 Platforms	#4	[url]	[-]
Member Posts: 11186 11/04/09 02:33:34	Pro & Con of both weapons in testing and combat situations: The meek shall inherit the Earth, but not the mineral rights!
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