US Army Set to Kill Improved Carbine Competition

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Army Set to Kill Improved Carbine Competition

Army Set to Kill Improved Carbine Competition
May 02, 2013
Military.com| by Matthew Cox

The U.S. Army plans to cancel its Improved Carbine competition before conducting the final, soldier-evaluation portion of this multi-year effort to replace the M4 carbine.

Program officials are in the process of reprogramming the $49.6 million requested in the proposed fiscal 2014 budget to buy 30,000 improved carbines, according to a source familiar with the effort.

Army weapons officials recently completed Phase II of the competition where testers fired hundreds of thousands of rounds through carbines submitted by gun makers such as Heckler & Koch, FNH-USA, Remington Defense, Adcor Defense Inc. and Colt Defense LLC, the original maker of the M4 carbine.

The service’s original plan was to award three contracts to three gun makers for the final phase of the competition, which would involve soldiers firing nearly 800,000 rounds in three separate user evaluations before choosing a winning carbine.

Now the Army is rethinking how to use what amounts to more than $300 million the service budgeted for new carbines through 2018. The decision now rests with Secretary of the Army John McHugh, according to another source with insight into the Army acquisitions community.

Program Executive Office Soldier manages the Improved Carbine competition but officials would not comment on this story because it is a Department of the Army decision, PEO Soldier spokeswoman Debi Dawson said. Army Public Affairs did not respond to requests for comment from Military.com by deadline.

This latest development in the five-year effort comes six weeks after the Pentagon’s Inspector General announced it was auditing the improved-carbine effort. In March 19 testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the watchdog group said there were concerns that “DoD may not have an established need for this weapon nor developed performance requirements … such as accuracy, reliability, and lethality,” according to testimony.

Army officials and program experts were quick to point out, however, that the IG testimony contains misunderstandings about basic facts of the carbine- improvement effort. The Army established its requirements for the improved carbine effort three years ago.

The requirements document calls for a weapon that’s almost twice as accurate as the current M4. It also emphasized improved reliability, serviceability and a longer-lasting barrel.

McHugh is not taking the audit lightly.

“There has been some input recently out of the Department of Defense as to the Army’s requirement and lack thereof. We are trying to go through those findings to make a determination,” he told lawmakers during an April 25 House Armed Services Committee hearing.

The Army also recently decided to replace the standard M4 with the M4A1, as a result of its M4 Product Improvement Program. The M4A1 is the special operations version of the weapon that’s been in use for just over a decade. It features a heavier barrel and a full-auto trigger. The Army’s decision to dump the current three-round burst trigger will give shooters a more consistent trigger pull and lead to better accuracy, weapons officials maintain.

The Army has budgeted $21.2 million to buy 12,000 M4A1s in the proposed fiscal 2014 budget.

At the completion of the carbine competition, the Army had planned to conduct an analysis of alternatives to see if the winner is a significant improvement over the M4A1 to justify the investment.

Gun makers involved in the competition said they have heard nothing from the Army about Phase III of the competition. Competitors didn’t want to be named in this story but said they would not be surprised if the effort was canceled because they never believed the Army was serious about replacing the M4 family.

McHugh told lawmakers in late April that he hoped to update them by the beginning of the summer, but the Army could make an announcement much sooner, the acquisition source said. PEO Soldier has scheduled a May 23 roundtable for reporters which will include officials from Project Manager Soldier Weapon from Picatinny Arsenal, N.J. and the Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Benning, Ga.
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Its dead -- its been dead for a while, I was just made official today.

None of the submissions offered any general improvement over the M4A1.
Of course the requirements where written by a tool, so many companies opted out anyway at the onset.
 
I always found it funny that every time I have heard of the m16/m4 being phased out most of the substitutes are ar-15 variants hahaha mind you I'm only 23 and have only been into firearms for 5-6 years... SO my stats may be a little narrow... :p
 
I'm interested in seeing the results for Phase II.

You would think the companies that entered would be pissed. Waste of time and money. Plus it seems clear they have no real intentions to go with the winner at the end of the day.
 
Too much government....

Waste of competition also, they already have the guns out there being produced that should be updated into their line up. HK & KAC for all the elite units = Good enough. Way to much debate has been put into this stuff with public competitions being made by people who have no understanding or indebt knowledge of firearms/small arms or weapons procurement...To much politics and paid off Generals who have not been in the field for decades....There are a host of other AR companies that should have a piece of the contract for general issue weapons for example DD, Colt, BCM, LMT etc....


Really I would be buying HK rifles and sub contracting some of that out to other key manufactures like KAC,LMT and just going piston in many situations...There are a lot of things from KAC I would be looking at in key components like there MAMs break to add to the line up and flip up sights like the USMC bought....
 
Good to see but a little late. Too much of people playing around with money that isn't theirs. Not enough civilian oversight. I'm all for giving the warfighters the best kit and weapons possible but when you hear about the staggering amount of debt that country is in, yet the Pentagon still can't decide what camo is best or that they need to spend a few million on a "compact sniper rifle program" etc...there is some serious purging that needs to go on down there.
 
Firstly you needed to understand that IC was never a guarantee. The winner of IC, was going to be tested against the M4A1 PIP.
PIP has a new rail, new trigger, and potentially new bolt/carrier and coatings.

IC has to mount the M26 shotgun (a miserable POS) the M320 GL, and the M9 Bayonet, so right then many folks guns for SOF did not fit.
Most people don't give a #### about mounting that stuff, as they use a dedicated breacher, and a stand alone GL, and no one mounts a knife when they could mount a can.

IC was budgeted at 8K per current soldier -- now do you think the IC will give someone 10x more effectiveness than an M4A1? #### no!
Yes there are 'better' weapons than the M4A1 out there, but how much better, and would it be worth the cost.

We are cash strapped back here, and I believe that giving every soldier 8K worth of weapons training on their M4A1 would be a much better allocation of funds than buying a new gun.
 
C'mon Kevin, this is a government you're dealing with. You should know better than to propose solutions that make sense!!!!!!:p

8 grand would, I think, buy a LOT of M855 ammo, but not so much of that new ammo "green":rolleyes: ammo the US wants to use.
 
It features a heavier barrel and a full-auto trigger. The Army’s decision to dump the current three-round burst trigger will give shooters a more consistent trigger pull and lead to better accuracy, weapons officials maintain.
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full auto is more accurate then 3 round burst?
 
Ebola said:
full auto is more accurate then 3 round burst?
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No.

The burst mechanism has two disconnects and two disconnect springs.

The counting wheel has two different height detents that the burst disconnect engages. They create two different trigger pull weights, and are not consistent.

The FA mech is simpler than the burst mech and more reliable.
 
C77 said:
No.

The burst mechanism has two disconnects and two disconnect springs.

The counting wheel has two different height detents that the burst disconnect engages. They create two different trigger pull weights, and are not consistent.

The FA mech is simpler than the burst mech and more reliable.
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I can understand the FA to be more reliable and simpler but I don't see where your gonna get the accuracy improvement.
 
KevinB said:
Its dead -- its been dead for a while, I was just made official today.

None of the submissions offered any general improvement over the M4A1.
Of course the requirements where written by a tool, so many companies opted out anyway at the onset.
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Don't sugar coat it Kevin, just let it out.
 
Ebola said:
I can understand the FA to be more reliable and simpler but I don't see where your gonna get the accuracy improvement.
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The accuracy improvement is in the semi-auto mode of fire. The trigger is less of a POS when it is configured for auto/semi-auto than it is for burst/semi-auto.
 
The obvious solution is to make a piston driven m4. As I learned from red jacket it gives the accuracy of an m4 and the reliability of an ak.
It would be a game changer.
 
Ebola said:
I can understand the FA to be more reliable and simpler but I don't see where your gonna get the accuracy improvement.
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C77 knows what he speaks of...if the burst counter isn't re-set when you pull the trigger again, there is a different trigger pull. It is an inconsistent trigger mech from an accuracy context.

Boltgun
 
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