Up Close And Personal With The Army’s Lethal New Sniper Rifle

Well, that was true in the 1960's. Gas impingement system have advanced a bit since then. A modern M4A1 can easily go 2,000 rounds without a cleaning and AR-10s like the LaRue OBR are often selected over bolt action rifles at a lot of the big sniper competitions because of huge advancements in accuracy. The biggest failing of earlier AR-15s and AR-10s was not actually carbon build up, it was that they couldn't handle heat stress very well. That's why even the conventional military is adopting a lot of the components of the SOCOM version of the M4.

Much of the initial issues with the M16 was they weren't even issued cleaning kits because they were supposedly "self- cleaning" rifles. Don't blame the rifle for systematic errors. In addition to the errors pointed out above, many issues I have seen with the M16/M4 are caused by faulty magazines, and not the action.

Also, while not mentioned in this article, the M110a1 is a short stroke gas piston design.

Guys I don't know what is coming out of the exhaust pipes of the vehicles you drive now a days. I don't think so, as a matter of fact, jams in testing have occurred in less than 200 rounds. What dramatic improvement happened between the M4 and the M4A1? changing from 3 round burst to Full Auto, Not a typical improvement for reliability, SOCOM barrel profile, not going to reduce cruddy carbon into the Bolt Carrier Group, or was there some new wonder crud less round? Not buying it.

Here is an extract of M4 testing from an Army times Article in 2007:
The test was measuring the ability to run with minimum stoppages in desert sandstorm conditions. 6000 rounds were fired through each rifle, and they fired 10 rifles of each model for a total of 60,000 rounds fired per model type. They also ran this complete test twice with the same set of rifles, to check their results. Here are the results of the latest test, measuring total number of stoppages across all 60,000 rounds fired among the 10 rifles used for each model type.

* XM8. 127 total stoppages. First place.
* SCAR. 226 stoppages.
* H&K 416. 233 stoppages.
* M4. 882 stoppages. Note: the M4's only had 307 stoppages in the first series of tests.
I know I can't do the new common core math worth a damn, so maybe I am on the slow bus, but when I went to school 6000 divided by 882 did not come out to 2000, it comes out to 6.8 rounds.

After 34 years of service, I can tell you I have never seen any stock mil spec M16/M4 platform that could go 200 rounds with out a miss feed , let alone 2000 rounds. Even with a new rifle and new magazines. I am throwing the yellow penalty flag on that one.

CW3 Kevin Storm - I joined the Army in 1996 and retired in 2016 and I have over a million rounds of experience with the AR-15 platform (M16A2, M4, M4A1, M4A2, M4MWS, and MK18). If you were experiencing stoppages at 200 rounds, you did not know how to use your rifle. After every 2000 rounds, I would only run a bore snake through my barrel three times, wipe my bolt, and remove any copper fouling. If I had a malfunction (extremely rare after 2001) it was because of a bad magazine and not because of the rifle. So, ya, I see your yellow flag and call bullshit on your "theory". This is the bottom line, if I folded sweaters for the Army for 34 years, I would not try to talk about the capabilities of a rifle that was outside my limited understanding and poor equipment (if your claim was even remotely true it was because you used shitty magazines...seriously, the Army hasn't has 200 round stoppages since Vietnam).

Yeah I can't wait until someone gets the bill for one that gets lost. Ouch!

CW3 Kevin Storm - One that gets lost? Do you realize how this just does not happen? I am sure that you are smart enough to realize that in the last 34 years technology has evolved. I mean it is simple technology...ya know righty tighty lefty loosey...but ya, there is some high tech science holding scopes to rifles in the "modern era".

Retail for scope around $3800 but I bet government got a deal ! BOHICA

Not full auto. Semi auto compact sniper rifle. Not a quick change barrel.

I don't know where I saw it...lol. It must have been a wish soooo bad that I saw something that wasn't there. And when I was saying extra berral and ammo I was thinking of our current 7.62 platforms . I shld have made that more clear. Thank you.