[m21sniper]

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.