Did Weapons Fail U.S. Troops During Afghanistan Assault?
 

Did Weapons Fail U.S. Troops During Afghanistan Assault? - International News | News of the World | Middle East News | Europe News - FOXNews.com

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.

maybe we should switch over to AK's like the rest of the world?

Saw this article as well. Pisses me off.

Mini-14's....

yeah who can you blame.....
Conspiracy's theories anyone?

wonder what the spec ops are buying.

I thought it was the FN rifle, the FN SCAR?

FM SCAR is already in limited service and likely to replace the M16 as time goes on. Like a lot of things in G'ment it is probably going to be a slow process.

The guys on the AR15 forum have been all over this article. Seems the claims of over heating is a little questionable. And the soldier's comment about tossing his rifle aside without trying to clear the jam was a little disturbing. Maybe he did try but the author didn't include it in the article. The article may not be the full story.

Ya gotta maintain them! The other thing is that the article stated that these weapons are at full automatic. That is simple BS, the M16 and the M4 only shoot three round bursts when in select fire. Also on the 240g as with any machine gun you have to swap barrels, ALL MGs require this. I am suspect of the claims on the 240g as this weapon in one form or another has been around since the 1930s (German heritage). I do not know how many times this crap has come up, but the claims with the Garand occurred in the early stages of WWII. There is such a thing as fire discipline.

Welcome back to 1965.

M4's and M-16A2 and newer models are among the finest small arms ever made. This article is nonsense.

Seriously, just read the article, and it becomes patently clear that the M4 is just being used as a scape goat. It's ridiculous. I would choose an M-4 over an FN SCAR any day of the week.

The FN SCAR will never replace the M16 in widespread use in the US military. It's simply not a significant upgrade.

The Soviet Union replaced the AK-47 in front line service over 30 years ago.

...would have over-heated long before the HBAR M-4s did.

Every rifle has a sustained fire rate. Exceed it for an appreciable amount of time and every rifle at some point becomes a paper weight.

The M249's mentioned in the article are considered to be the finest LMG's on earth, and even they malfunctioned after severe overheating. This article is all wet and looks to blame equipment for what was a manpower/staffing failure.

If you want to blame someone for these "disasters", blame Obama. He's the one that's dragging his feet on reinforcing our men in A-stan. Him, and no one else.

I've never served in combat but I must ask seriously... is a white hot barrel actually possible? Even red hot?

I'll start right off with a disclaimer: I have never been in a fire fight.

That said, WTF?? 12 magazines - 360 rounds fired in half an hour from the M4? Plus 600 more from the M-249? This is just one of each weapon. Can we assume the other soldiers were firing their weapons at approximately the same rate? That puts thousands of rounds downrange in half an hour, against what - 200 some insurgents? How many of them did they actually hit? Sounds like it should have been every damn one of them, several times over. Yet is also sounds like that was not the case. Is this sort of panicked, ineffectual "spray and pray" how they are trained to fight? Or does training go right out the window when it really hits the fan? I don't want to second guess these guys, as I will never "walk a mile in their shoes (or boots...), but this sounds like more of a training/discipline breakdown than a weapons breakdown. I'm not sure any rifle would hold up to that rate of sustained fire.

Yes.

Jeff modern US military thought dictates that you want to outweigh your enemies volume of fire to sieze the initiative and pin them in place while you manuever(or call in support assets/fires).

IOW, all that ammo that was fired was suppressive fire, not precision fire. Most of the MG firing was almost certainly grazing fire.

Volume of fire: http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier= ADA167920
Precision fire: http://www.answers.com/topic/precision-fire
Suppressive fire: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppressive_fire
Grazing fire: http://usmilitary.about.com/od/glossarytermsg/g/g2700.htm

Very, very, very little of actual infantry firing is directed at specific targets. In vietnam it was something like 300,000rds of small arms ammo fired for every inflicted casualty. Some 85% of all casualties in war are caused by fragments (from mortar/arty/air strikes and grenades).

Interesting tactic. I'm no military tactician and, again, have never been in a fire fight, but - it seems to me it would be far more effective to hold fire until you can actually hit someone or something. Especially in situations like this, with a finite number of men, rifles, and therefor sustained firepower. I would think it would be better to try to make every round count under these conditions.

Read this it should give you some idea as to the reasoning behind volume of fire type tactics.

http://www.themilitaryhobbyist.com/blog/2009/02/suppressive-fire-in-infantry-combat/

Suppressive Fire in Infantry Combat
Published February 3, 2009

Imagine for a moment that you are sitting in a small fighting position overlooking an open range of gently rolling hills. Your company has been deployed here to prevent the enemy’s advance on your local headquarters not far beyond your current location. You’re dug in well enough with a shallow trench and perhaps some sandbags, and your position gives you an excellent view from which to protect a nearby machine gunner.

Suddenly you detect movement at the edge of your vision. Before you can identify what it is, a bullet whizzes past your head. That bullet is promptly followed by several more, some of which impact the dirt only a couple of feet in front of your face, launching small clouds of dust into the air.

Now tell me, what are you more likely to do: bring your rifle up to a firing position, carefully take aim on what now appears to be one of the several dozen camouflaged men about 300 meters away from you, and fire; or will you drop to a protected position and then start thinking about popping up to squeeze off a few rounds before dropping to safety again?

If you said you’d calmly take aim and fire, then you’re a better man than me; better than most in fact, and probably lacking in a lot of survival instincts as well.

Instinctive response

Most people, when presented with well-aimed fire against their position, will seek to take cover from the attack. They have been suppressed by the enemy attack, and this provides the best kind of cover the enemy can have: they have a 0% chance of being hurt if they aren’t being shot at, and they can advance at will.

That’s why any defending soldier, unless pinned down by an enemy who has achieved a dominating superiority of fire (far greater volume of incoming bullets than bullets being fired in return, often achieved with intense machine gun fire) against him, is going to seek to pop up to fire off at least a few hasty return shots before returning to cover. Those rounds force the enemy to drop to cover as well, and the two sides can set into a protracted shootout rather than it ending in a close-ranged slaughter of the defenders or a total rout.

More rounds on a position adds up to a better suppression effect. Due to their rapid rate of fire, machine guns are the ideal candidates for laying down suppressive fire with small arms. Rifles can do the trick as well, but one machine gunner can put out the fire of several rifleman.

Aimed, not random, fire

While a combatant isn’t too particular over whether the bullets hitting near him are aimed or fired randomly, “suppressive fire” is usually used to refer to the deliberate firing of rounds at a position rather than an individual.

While initial aimed shots at an individual have a suppressive effect and cause him to seek cover, later rounds of suppressive fire remind him that the enemy has sights on his position and cause him to want to keep his head down, allowing them to advance further to his position and putting him that much closer to being overwhelmed.

Suppressive fire can be directed at targets merely suspected of containing enemies and will largely have the same effect as fire at targets known to contain enemies, but as the volume of fire will likely be less the suppressive effect will less as well.

Bigger is better

If aimed and suppressive rifle and machine gun fire can cause soldiers to take cover, surely something larger like an artillery shell would have an even greater effect, right?

Of course it would! And doesn’t it make sense? Several bullets nearly hitting you are scary, but an artillery shell exploding even a good distance away is very unnerving. Factor in the known deadliness of shrapnel, how loud an artillery shell explosion is, and the inability for an infantryman to do much about artillery except radio for counter-battery fire, and you have some very effective suppressive fire. Attacks by aircraft have a similar effect for similar reasons.

The deadliest round that never hit you

A bullet doesn’t need to hit you to kill you. It just needs to cause you to duck down long enough for the enemy to get close enough to you, and perhaps in a flanking position. The widespread use of suppressive fire is one major reason why the “rounds per kill” statistics for modern conflicts can become so high.

Ammunition is cheap, soldiers are expensive (in more ways than one).

Tags: Infantry, Tactics

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The bottom line is that it's not individual weapons that inflict casualties, but rather crew served weapons, indirect fire weapons, and air dropped weapons. The main #1 purpose of individual weapons is to provide suppressing fire to keep the enemy pinned in place for large weapons systems, or to keep them pinned down and unable to return fire as your elements manuever to outflank/encircle them, usually destroying their positions with grenades.

Thanks, that makes a lot more sense now.

How well supported by artillary, aircraft, and such were these guys? I get the impression not all that well, if at all. Are we really spread that thin over there, where our standard infantry tactics fail because the support that is meant to arrive during the suppressive fire stage never does?

then, under such conditions wouldn't a malfunction be expected? seems to me metal will change it's shape under such heat and cause a jam. No?

And in this instance it seems they had the superior volume?

Yep, happens everyday when you fire them at max rate. That is why during training you do not use your best barrels until later in the exercise. When shooting blanks for other exercises you use the worn barrels to keep the combat ready stuff, well, ready.

It is how your set up your fields of fire and specifically your Final Defensive Fire. Yes things can go to hell in short order. Also, you want to engage with all weapons at the maximum EFFECTIVE range. Keep them away from you as long as you can. Secondary positions and indirect fire help with both at range and close in.

I suppose you can't handle a firefight as if you were deer hunting.

But suppose you handled a deer hunt as if you were in a firefight?

Spot possible deer, let 'er loose - suppressive fire, crew-served fire, indirect fire, air support - would it work? What would be the ratio of rounds fired to deer taken?

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Army rifle under fire // Current

On suppresive fire, I can't image what those soldiers were going through but once learned a humiliating lesson in suppressive fire during a h.s. paintball game.

Near the end of the day an "enemy" was walking across an open field 75yrds away. I plinked at him but the paintballs would curve a foot after 10 yards.
Useless.
He noticed, did a slow jog away, and I chased him into a shack where I took cover behind a tree 50yrs away overlooking it.
After an exchange, he let loose a fusillade that splattered the side of the tree in one foot groupings several times a second.
After 3-4 seconds it stopped, I peeked my head out, and he came around the back of my tree! I was dead/captured. He had exited the shack and somehow ran the distance uphill while laying down accurate fire. Impressive.

The H&K416 w/piston looks to be a better varient than the Colt:

Discovery Channel testing: YouTube - Heckler & Koch - HK416
History Channel testing: YouTube - The awesomeness that is the Heckler and Koch 416
Another: YouTube - Future Weapons Season 2 Episode 6(First Strike): The HK 416
There's a video where a guy runs clip after clip after clip through it on full auto, then switches to 100rd drums and the thing just keeps going.

Weapons with pistons give up a lot of accuracy. IMO the M4 or it's operating system is not an issue. To the best of my knowledge simply using a piston does not increase the sustained rate of fire of a weapon in any case. The HK 416 was evaluated by the US military and found not to be a worthwhile upgrade.

In this case the M-4, a weapon with an over 90% satisfaction rating with the troops, is simply being used as a scape goat.

The guys I know swear by their M-4s, they don't swear at them.

I bought a civilian version of the M-4 as my own personal rifle. That about says it all wrt my opinion of the weapon.

In one part of the article the soldier says his M-4 overheated after he'd fired a dozen magazines. Well that is almost double the normal combat load out of 7 magazines.

If you're in a firefight where your M-240 medium machine guns or M-249 SAW'sare overheating to the point of becoming non-functional- purpuse built weapons designed for a high sustained rate of fire- it's simply ridiculous to assume that an M-4 carbine that's fired upwards of 400rds in a short time span should fare any better.

By that point a US infantry unit should expect support systems to be doing the real damage.

The battle of Mogadishu and the battles for the Interchanges of Baghdad during the initial invasion of Iraq were both protracted hours long firefights of extremely high intensity where the M-16/M-4 proved entirely capable of doing the job.

That being said the M-4 or any of the standard US small arms in use today could be made to have a much greater sustained ROF with quite doable modifications. Things like full profile heavy fluted and lined composite or exotic metal barrels or hi tech thermal coatings/finishes could probably increase the typical small arm's useful sustained ROF by about 10-15%, but it would cost quite a few bucks. Likewise high tech shell casings and/or propellents could improve sustained fire performance as well. Just a matter of spending the money.

By the way it's probably important to point out that the US forces won the battle. They were not over-run, they held their lines, their time proven weapons and their fighting spirit won the day yet again.

So you guys are seriously going to argue that in a close range firefight, an M4 is a superior weapons to an AK-47?

:rolleyes:

How many freaking report need to come back from the battle field? I mean, its a story that had been reported over and over again.

Advancing army, long range engagements, less intensity = M4 is superior weapon by a mile.

Schit hits the fan defensive battle, close range, lot of full auto fire = AK platform is superior.

The M4 platform is what it is. Much lighter bolt carrier throwing less mass around makes for WAY less vibration and flex in the system, and thus a far more accurate rifle. But blasting hot exhaust gasses into the breach comes with an obvious price.

AKs wiggle like a noodle when you fire them from that huge chunk of metal smashing back and forth, and are not accurate. But accuracy is not the primary issue when its 106 degrees, dusty, and there is a guy spraying you with 7.62 rounds from 40 meters away.

I find the army's dogged defense of the M4 platform disturbing.

BS.

After 40 minutes of getting their a55es chewed to pieces, air support arrived and saved their tailsides. Gee, good thing the Taliban don't have fleets of Apaches on call.....

[QUOTE=m21sniper;4948778]
The HK 416 was evaluated by the US military and found not to be a worthwhile upgrade.
QUOTE]

The US Army did try to replace the M16/M4 range.. ending up with the XM-8....but that was shelved for a number reasons.. possibly technical.. but politcial reasons seem to be the greatest ones so far.

Its been 5 years since that programme was shelved...

The main reason was to 'eliminate' the reliability problems associated with direct impingement gas actuation.

The M16/ M4 is a 'good' weapon.. but certainly not the 'best' there is at the moment...

The 5.56mm projectile (be it M193, M855 or Mk262) creates a far more devastating wound than 7.62x39mm 139gr FMJ, yes. Especially at close range. 5.56mm FMJ potentially also creates a significantly more devastating wound tract than FMJ 7.62x51mm NATO as well.

The 5.56mm rounds fragment violently on impact. The 7.62mm caliber rounds do not, they simply lack the velocity.

The M4 has an over 90% satisfaction rating among US troops.

No offense, but full auto fire sucks dick (the M16A1 was full auto, the 3rd burst of the M-16A2+ is considered an upgrade in the Army's eyes), and an AK will overheat even faster than an AR due to the larger propellant load in each cartridge. The problem is not exhaust gas blowing into the bolt area, the problem is the actual firing of round after round after round in the chamber in a compressed time frame. This causes the chamber walls to heat to the point of cook-off. As far as i know that has nothing to do with the M-16's direct gas operation system.

That being said, the M-4A1 (SOCOM model) is full auto.

Have you ever carried an M-4? If you had, you'd probably have a different opinion.

90+% of US troops love them.

In actual battle i'd probably rather have an M-16A4 because it's more powerful, but for actual every day use an M-4 is pretty close to the perfect military rifle IMO.

The XM-8 was a totally unneccesary "upgrade", that's why it was shelved. In the end it just didn't offer enough(if anything) over the M-4 to warrant such a drastic change and such a large expenditure of $.

The truth behind the recent M4 controversy | The Firearm Blog

"The truth behind the recent M4 controversy

Yesterday I blogged about the M4 reliability controversy story that was originally reported by the Associated Press. At best the writer of the AP article exaggerated many the points. The leaked draft of the of the analysis of the Battle of Wanat reads quite differently.

The AP infers that the barrels of many of the weapons were getting white hot. From the AP article:

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.

There is only one reference to a gun getting white hot in the draft report, and it is a SAW not a M4 Carbine"

--------------

Some actual fact From the Ground Precautionary Message:

(B) FIRING 140 ROUNDS, RAPIDLY AND CONTINUOUSLY, WILL RAISE THE TEMPERATURE OF THE BARREL TO THE COOK-OFF POINT. AT THIS TEMPERATURE, ANY LIVE ROUND REMAINING IN THE CHAMBER FOR ANY REASON MAY COOK-OFF (DETONATE) IN AS SHORT A PERIOD AS 10 SECONDS.

...
(D) SUSTAINED RATE OF FIRE FOR THE M16 SERIES RIFLES AND M4 SERIES CARBINES IS 12-15 ROUNDS PER MINUTE. THIS IS THE ACTUAL RATE OF FIRE THAT A WEAPON CAN CONTINUE TO BE FIRED FOR AN Indefinite LENGTH OF TIME WITHOUT SERIOUS OVERHEATING.

Back to the AP Article we read:

"My weapon was overheating. 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.”

And the blogger responds:

"I sympathize with the solider and would not dare to presume to question his actions in combat. He did what he had to do in the heat of the moment, but I cannot think of any current weapon in the M4 class that can sustain continuous fire. To make such a weapon it would need to have a heavy quick change barrel and maybe also include a heat sink. I doubt any soldiers will want to trade in their M4 for a heavy automatic rifle."

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This story about the M-4 is a total non-issue. The real story is that a platoon sized element of US troops and their M-4s and M-249s held off 200 enemy fighters and won the battle.

The enemy forces using AK's, and outnumbering US forces almost 3:1 LOST the battle.

Quite a feat for our guys IMO.

Here's the AR-15.com thread on this story:

http://www.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=1&f=5&t=939798

I wonder if firearms makers are feeding info to reporters? Several companies would love for the M16/M4 to be replaced, it would be a huge contract for whoever gets it.

The USMC wants to replace some M-16A4's with some new fangled squad automatic rifle that will automatically switch to open bolt operation when it heats up, so that they can increase the volume of fire of their units.

There are things that can be done to improve the M-4s ROF significantly, but they would cost quite a lot of money. Conversion to open bolt firing and the adoption of a thermally coated fluted heavy exotic material barrel would be the most impactful, but it would probably add about 30-40% to the cost of every rifle.

Another thing that would improve sustained ROF is simply switching back to the full length M-16A4. That would also increase range and hitting power, but the Army performed in the field tests of the M4 and the troops overwhelmingly favored the carbine over the full length M-16, that's why the M-4 was adopted to begin with.

Any weapon is a design compromise, the M-4 is no different. It is good at some things, and is not at all optomized for others.

"That said, WTF?? 12 magazines - 360 rounds fired in half an hour from the M4? Plus 600 more from the M-249? This is just one of each weapon. Can we assume the other soldiers were firing their weapons at approximately the same rate? That puts thousands of rounds downrange in half an hour, against what - 200 some insurgents? How many of them did they actually hit?"

300 AND 600 ROUNDS IN A "HALF AN HOUR". NO. MORE LIKELY 5 MINUTES. firefights have nothing to do with reality or reason. i am not a john wayne, just a saigon 68 guy.

After reviewing the incident I found it encouraging that ours guys seemed to all be firing back. In many past wars the US has had large problems with only a small fraction of the men in each unit actually fighting.

...With the AK-74; a weapon that uses the exact same design as the AK-47 - but with a smaller round.

The smaller round gives better accuracy, lower chamber pressures and temps, and better wound characteristics. However after over 60 years of deployment, they still feel that their simple piston blowback operation is better for their harsh operating environments and the under trained soldiers that many of their arms buyers use.

I'm not trying to knock your love for the M4, but don't knock the AK.

IOW the Soviets copied the US philosophy of a small medium powered round that creates a large temporary wound cavity.

Our own critics were bemoaning the "underpowered" 5.56mm at the same time the Soviets were copying it. Funny, innit? High powered 5.56mm rounds hit 1400fpe of energy(more than a .44 mag) and violently fragment on impact. IMO the 5.56mm round is a great military round, and almost ideal for APERS use.

I knock the AK because IMO it is useless as a real world precision fire weapon once the range exceeds about 100 meters(AK47) to 200 meters (Ak74).

Our troops in A-stan have made verified first round kills at 500 meters with their M-4s.

The AK is a good weapon for untrained peasants that cannot be counted on to keep their weapons properly clean. For a trained professional soldier the M-4 is clearly superior. Of course that's just my opinion. :)

Apparently according to one site i linked to it is not possible for a m4 barrel to be shot white hot. A dull red glowing hot, yes. Not white.

Edit: The AR-15.com thread is pretty interesting. http://www.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=1&f=5&t=939798