{"id":190372,"date":"2009-12-05T06:31:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-05T11:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/12\/05\/this-is-the-argument-room\/"},"modified":"2009-12-05T06:31:00","modified_gmt":"2009-12-05T11:31:00","slug":"this-is-the-argument-room","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/12\/05\/this-is-the-argument-room\/","title":{"rendered":"This is the Argument Room"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It looks like they are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.armytimes.com\/news\/2009\/11\/army_M4_112109w\/\">looking at replacing\/upgrading the M4 carbine again<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>As a result of stoppages and other problems under very heavy use, they are looking at some mods:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"><p>Army weapons officials presented the proposed changes to Congress on Oct. 30. They are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Adding a heavier barrel for better performance during high rates of fire.<\/li>\n<li>Replacing the direct-impingement gas system with a piston gas system.<\/li>\n<li>Improving the trigger pull.<\/li>\n<li>Adding an improved rail system for increased strength.<\/li>\n<li>Adding ambidextrous controls.<\/li>\n<li>Adding a round counter to track the total number of bullets fired over the weapon\u2019s lifetime.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>I think that the gas tube operation has always been a problem, so going with a piston makes sense, and an improved trigger pull, making the weapon a bit more robust, and adding ambidextrous controls are all pretty common sense.  The heavier barrel is a trade off, more weight vs better performance under heavy use, and I don&#8217;t have the data for that.<\/p>\n<p>As to the round counter, it has to be designed such that if it fails, everything else works, because it add a lot of complexity.<\/p>\n<p>To my mind, the real solution is to go with a Bullpup design, which would be shorter, but have a longer barrel, and you can incorporate improvements in a new weapon.<\/p>\n<p>That being said, arguments over the M16 family, and 5.56mm rounds tend to be contentious.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It looks like they are looking at replacing\/upgrading the M4 carbine again. As a result of stoppages and other problems under very heavy use, they are looking at some mods: Army weapons officials presented the proposed changes to Congress on Oct. 30. They are: Adding a heavier barrel for better performance during high rates of &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1008,1006,1126],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-190372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-defense-procurement","category-military","category-weapons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190372"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190372\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}