M4 "Loses" Dust-test

[SinnFéinM1911]

I am a bit suprised that they used proprietary magazines (as implied by the statement that the M4 had 239 magazine related stoppages), or would fault the magazines during the test. It seems that by using different magazines in each weapon induces 4 new variables to the test.

I think the reasoning behind that is, they wanted to test the weapons as they come from the manufacturer. The magazine is a part of the system (or major parts groups) so to take them out and use the standard "GI" type magazine would take away form each system and its individuality.

[Failure2Stop]

I think the reasoning behind that is, they wanted to test the weapons as they come from the manufacturer. The magazine is a part of the system (or major parts groups) so to take them out and use the standard "GI" type magazine would take away form each system and its individuality.

Agree to a point. Since the requirement for the weapons to operate with standard GI mags is (or was) present in the requirements, it stands to reason that they are expected to perform with those GI magazines in hostile environments. We all know that standard issue GI mags have issues, and room for improvement is vast (MagPul makes a little bit of money from improving GI mags I hear).

It seems to me that since the lowest common denominator is the GI mag, they should have at least been included in the testing for each weapon.

But, they weren't, and regardless of how I feel about that relatively insignificant issue, we have some good data on what to expect out of weapon performance. 882 compared to 127 is a pretty large gap, and closing that gap should be on the short list of weapon improvements.

[DocGKR]

The Army is trying hard to spin this one. As Brett states, the actual report goes into much more detail. The M4 did NOT do well in this test. The 416 did better than indicated, as there was one problematic 416 that had numerous failures, while the other nine 416's ran better than XM8. Note, that while the XM8 is a POS, that I despise for many reasons, it does have a good reliable gas system.

[rhino]

Hopefully this will induce a lot of people to sell their pathetic AR-based carbines for attractive prices.

[KevinB]

Now granted it been a long time since I took Stats classes in university - but IIRC the sample size (N) is suppose to equal greater than 32 for a "better" (here is me not being currenent is stats) accurate rate in the test.

Thus to me they should have tested 32 M4A1's, 32 Hk416's, 32 Mk16, and 32 XM-8
- the mags should be standard- as should whatever else can be.

More realistically they should have had sub variants of systems as well
4 subsets of the Hk416
Hk416 system (Hk lower and Hk mag)
Hk416 - Colt M4A1 lower - USGI-MAG
Hk416 - Colt M4A1 lower - Hk Mag
Hk416 - Colt M4A1 lower - PMAG
Becuase realistically the beauty of the Hk416 is you can just buy the upper and drop it on an in service lower.

So by Kev's math the testing should have been

Colt M4A1 (baseline) USGI mags (all testing done with 32 units of each subset)
M4A1 - Hk Mag
- PMAG

XM-8 - HK mag
- USGI mag
- PMAG

FN Mk16 - FN Mag
- USGI Mag
- PMAG
- Hk Mag

Hk 416 - Hk lower - Hk mag
- Colt M4A1 lower - Hk mag
- Colt M4A1 lower - USGI mag
- Colt M4A1 lower - Pmag

[Erick Gelhaus]

Doc or Brett -

Any pointers for .mil to the complete test reults?

Erick

[Rmplstlskn]

I just threw all my ARs out.

I'm SELLING all mine to other suckers... see EE soon.

Going back to FAL...

Rmpl

[C4IGrant]

882 out of 60,000?

If so, that is a failure rate of 1.47% which, on the surface, sounds entirely reasonable. Also, I do not see an indication of the dispersion of the events. One of the M4's could have been a "problem child", and taken the lion's share of the 882 failures. Not sure though...

If the 416 makes it lower, then I can understand why Army/Delta would want something that fails less.

I agree. That isn't a bad average. I am also willing to bet that the Mag is accountable for about half of the stoppages and the extractor spring/insert claimed a good portion of malfunctions as well.


C4

[DocGKR]

The Big Army does NOT want the real test results to be seen--the dog and pony show by Brown and the other usual suspects today was a joke.

[SinnFéinM1911]

Doc or Brett -

Any pointers for .mil to the complete test reults?

Erick

I just got copes late last week of a couple, I wish I could share it but, its a confidential report as of now. I hope you understand.