Should The Army Replace The M4 Assault Rifle?

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Should The Army Replace The M4 Assault Rifle?
According to South (2017), the Army is replacing the M4 with a new rifle with a bigger bullet by 2020. This essay will start out with giving a brief history of the topic and discuss about the issue of the Army M4. Pro and cons on how to replace the weapons system would affect soldier maneuverability and combat effectiveness. There have been many upgrades and negative complaints from the soldiers down range in regards to the M16/M4 since it’s been used within the Army. Within the past 20 years, the Army spent a lot of money on the M4 carbine program, but Congress didn’t approved. They still certain that the M4 is a superior weapon against enemies (Freedberg, 2013). The Army should replace with…show more content…
A new platform would be more lethal, more effective, and more reliable than the M4.
A major concerned with the M4 is that the M4 is prone to jamming and malfunctioning due to fouling. Fouling is casued by carbon residue build up inside the weapon system. In combat situations the M4 has been unreliable, because the weapon misfires. M4 malfunctions include failure to fire, failure to eject, failure to chamber a round, and failure to feed. The Army conduct a dust test in 2007 for testing M4A1 reliability. The Army testers and engineers selected ten M4s and three other weapon systems shot 6000 rounds in the dust chamber. M4 has 683 stoppages and perform the worst against other weapons. In other words, the M4 jammed every 68 rounds (Lowes, 2007). The other selected weapons are the Heckler & Koch 416, XM8, and the FN SCAR. (Lowes, 2007). The XM8 jammed every 472 rounds and the HK 416 jammed every 257 rounds. The XM8 has the lowest stoppage rate. If the Army adopted one of these three weapons, it will significantly increases reliabilities in the combat zone. The second issue with the M4A1 is also closely related to malfunction. The M4 is easy to overheat after prolonged firing. There 's two factors that cause this problem. The first factor is the high pressure and high velocity round shooting out from the barrel. The other factor is the gas operation mechanism of the M4A1 uses hot air recycle into
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