Question for current Army infantry guys

[ABNAK]

Is the current issued weapon the M4A1 with SOCOM barrel and full-auto capability, or is it still the M4 with thinner barrel (under the handguards) and 3-round burst? Is there a mix of the two?

Really looking for basic Army infantry types, not USMC grunts or Rangers/SF/tip-of-the-spear guys.

As an aside, still using M855 for range time and M855A1 for "downrange" deployments?

[Skyyr]

Is the current issued weapon the M4A1 with SOCOM barrel and full-auto capability, or is it still the M4 with thinner barrel (under the handguards) and 3-round burst? Is there a mix of the two?

Really looking for basic Army infantry types, not USMC grunts or Rangers/SF/tip-of-the-spear guys.

As an aside, still using M855 for range time and M855A1 for "downrange" deployments?

Not sure if it counts but I just trained with a bunch of infantry back in January of last year. They were running vanilla M4's with a mixture of Aimpoint M4 and M4S optics.

[FireandFlames]

Depends on the unit, this unit has all m4a1, my old unit had about half the m4's turned over to m4a1. We use m855a1 at the range here, on deployment I had loads of mk318 and mk262 but that had a lot to do with who we were attatched to.

[ABNAK]

Depends on the unit, this unit has all m4a1, my old unit had about half the m4's turned over to m4a1. We use m855a1 at the range here, on deployment I had loads of mk318 and mk262 but that had a lot to do with who we were attatched to.

The M4A1's you guys have, are they just re-barreled M4's with the heavier SOCOM barrels or do they have the full-auto feature in place of burst? I guess it's better put another way: are they factory M4A1's with the happy switch or created M4A1's from older M4's that were refurbished?

[BufordTJustice]

Depends on the unit, this unit has all m4a1, my old unit had about half the m4's turned over to m4a1. We use m855a1 at the range here, on deployment I had loads of mk318 and mk262 but that had a lot to do with who we were attatched to.
Do you find the 855A1 to be more accurate than the old 855?

[FireandFlames]

The majority of m4a1's I've seen are refurbs, that being said the first m4a1's I saw at my old unit were brand new rifles, idk where they came from. As for what they replaced in m4's to get the a1's, that's a little harder to put a finger on, yes all of the a1's got the new barrels, fcg, and a heavier buffer. At my old unit it seemed a little sporadic on if they replaced just the barrel or the whole upper, at my new unit every single rifle has a new upper. I attribute this to the fact that my old unit were the lost boys of 10th mountain down at polk, and we got a1's about 2 years after the rest of the division.

Is m855a1 more accurate, well idk, I know that the round seems to have an issue with breaking apart in to its two pieces when hitting barriers like plywood. I have some laying around and I'll shoot some groups with it vs m855 with my spr, for science.

[BufordTJustice]

The majority of m4a1's I've seen are refurbs, that being said the first m4a1's I saw at my old unit were brand new rifles, idk where they came from. As for what they replaced in m4's to get the a1's, that's a little harder to put a finger on, yes all of the a1's got the new barrels, fcg, and a heavier buffer. At my old unit it seemed a little sporadic on if they replaced just the barrel or the whole upper, at my new unit every single rifle has a new upper. I attribute this to the fact that my old unit were the lost boys of 10th mountain down at polk, and we got a1's about 2 years after the rest of the division.

Is m855a1 more accurate, well idk, I know that the round seems to have an issue with breaking apart in to its two pieces when hitting barriers like plywood. I have some laying around and I'll shoot some groups with it vs m855 with my spr, for science.
For science. [emoji41]

Seriously, thanks bro. I'm genuinely curious. That was supposed to be a huge benefit for A1; that it fixed the fleet yaw and MOA issues.

[ABNAK]

The majority of m4a1's I've seen are refurbs, that being said the first m4a1's I saw at my old unit were brand new rifles, idk where they came from. As for what they replaced in m4's to get the a1's, that's a little harder to put a finger on, yes all of the a1's got the new barrels, fcg, and a heavier buffer. At my old unit it seemed a little sporadic on if they replaced just the barrel or the whole upper, at my new unit every single rifle has a new upper. I attribute this to the fact that my old unit were the lost boys of 10th mountain down at polk, and we got a1's about 2 years after the rest of the division.


Thanks for the input. I have thought for a long time that semi-automatic aimed shots were preferable to FA, but in one instance I can think of it can be helpful. Example: in a thickly vegetated AO (CONUS forests in the summer or jungle year-round) an ambush sprung against an infantry company/platoon in column formation would benefit from full-auto mag dumps as the guys hopefully were able to banana-peel back to establish a base of fire. Yeah, I know it's a limited application to justify FA but still.......

[FireandFlames]

Yeah auto would definitely be useful for breaking contact or picking up the rate of fire when the m249 inevitably goes down, it gets used about as much as burst in training though. Running your m4 on auto is guaranteed to piss off every first sergeant in a 50 mile radius. I'll be in the field for the next month, but when I get back I'll do that accuracy test if yall are interested. I think I only have 10 rounds of m855a1 but I may be able to source some more.

[cd228]

EX Infantry now POG.

My POG unit was just issued brand new in the box FN M4A1s (with FA) to replace M16A2s. I physically saw the boxes and if they were not in a no photo zone I would have taken pictures. We have been using M855A1 for about 1 years as well. I found that the m855A1 grouped tighter on zero and Alt-C qual than I remembered the M855 doing. But a lot of that depends on the shooter. I have not been able to shoot M855A1 at distance.

I can tell you that my prior duty station (2013) was using Winchester and LC head stamped M855 for zero and qual for maneuver units.