#USArmy

The 2007 Dust Tests have come and gone. The IC Competition has completed. The M4 has remained the standard infantry rifle, and been upgraded to the heavy-barreled M4A1 standard. More upgrades are on the horizon, as part of the US Army’s effort to improve current infantry small arms. These “M4A1+” upgrades should indicate a certain level of satisfaction with the weapon – if the Army were unsatisfied, after all, surely they would divest themselves of the rifle entirely, rather than trying to improve it further.

The US Army has issued a request for information for new upgrades to the M4A1 rifle, seeking a new “M4A1+” standard. From Soldier Systems:

In 1963, on the eve of the M14’s cancellation, and the adoption of the AR-15 by the US Army as the M16 rifle, Guns & Ammo published a remarkably well-researched (if characteristically over-optimistic) article on the M14 rifle, its uncertain future, and potential new developments.

The U.S. Army is testing out a new type of hand grenade being referred to as stackable, although the actual connectivity brings to mind the methods used to connect cylindrical Legos. They’re called the Scalable Offensive Hand Grenade, and they far out-perform the standard fragmentation grenade. It’s their connectivity giving them this ability: soldiers can simply connect – or “stack” – the grenades one atop the other, creating chains up to three in length. And, of course, with each connection comes greater firepower.

After the U.S. Army’s rejection of the initial M9A3 proposal, Beretta is trying again with a new Engineering Change Proposal. American Rifleman’s Mark O’Keefe reports:

As our regular readers have by now guessed, early selfloading rifle design is a major point of interest for me. It’s not well-known, but before the US entrance into World War I, Ordnance was extremely interested in procuring a self-loading rifle design to arm US troops in combat. A significant round of tests followed as a result, and between 1910 and 1917, the US government tested designs from Standard Arms Co, Dreyse, Kjellman, Benet-Mercie, Rock Island Arsenal, Bang, Mauser, Mondragon, Rychiger, St. Etienne (what would become the RSC 1917), Stergian, and Liu, at least. One other rifle tested during this period was the Bommarito rifle, on which Forgotten Weapons has posted an article with description and photos.

In discussions about the suitability of the M4 rifle for combat, the Battle of Wanat comes up quite a lot. To some, Wanat represents the continuation of past mistakes; more dead soldiers with jammed rifles, of course of the faulty AR-15 pattern.

For many of you, it will feel like “that time of year again”, so many US pistol competitions have come and gone. The Army’s Modular Handgun System program is gearing up to replace current service pistols with a new suite of pistols, holsters, and accessories. Still, despite efforts to replace it, the M9 remains the standard handgun of US armed forces. Well, Paul M. Barrett (no relation), author of  GLOCK: The Rise of America’s Gun and writing for Businessweek has weighed in on the probable MHS contenders:

We’ve posted about the ACR Program here on TFB before, but there’s a lot of information available on the subject through DTIC. The Advanced Combat Rifle program was begun in the late 1980s as a research and development effort which would eventually lead to the next U.S. service rifle, replacing the M16. The intention was to field the new weapon, whatever it would be, before the end of the 1990s. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the ACR program withered, and the successor to the M16 in U.S. Army service became the M4 Carbine, another derivative of the Colt AR-15.

One issue with night time ops and the tracer rounds is that anyone watching can following the tracers back to their origin, giving the shooters position away.   The engineer’s at the Picatinny arsenal are working on the One-Way Luminescence, or OWL round.