M4 Finishes Dead Last in Army... Test

[uscbigdawg]

I'll still put up the dust clouds my helicopter kicks up against most anything they can simulate:

They don't call us DUSTOFF for nothin'!

Rich

Edited December 19, 2007 by uscbigdawg

[jobob]

The dust had to be really packed in there. The worst M4 won't jam that often under normally crappy conditions (That's a technical term I just invented!) unless there are magazine or ammo problems. Plus, I seriously doubt that the M4s malfunctioned on every 68th round. Malfs were probably weighted toward the end of each 600 round session.

[sniperfrog]

I have had M4s that never once malfunctioned after thousands of rounds. I have even done some training where I would go through 8-10 mags in a short amount of time and never had problems. However, I have shot a few M4s that constantly malfunctioned. Someone had said earlier in the post about how 1 or 2 guns could have messed up the results and that is very possible. But as far as the sandy environment, if you get sand in the chamber there is a good chance you will have a malfunction. Heavy lube is definetly not the answer. We always used graphite (dry lube).

[jobob]

Under NO conditions should any lubricant containing graphite be used with your

rifle. Graphite can encourage rapid corrosion to the aircraft-grade aluminum used in your

rifle.

-From the Armalite owners manual. http://www.armalite.com/images/AR10M15OperatorsManual.pdf

Edited December 20, 2007 by jobob

[uscbigdawg]

I think I'll just John Paul more than Armalite. Maybe that's just me though.

Rich

[Carlos]

They had to have the testers wear respirators and kyvex suits...this doesn't sound like any kind of normal use, or even field use test to me.

The dust used presumably contained sand. As sand is crushed and broken into increasingly finer particles (as it would be crushed by the weapons firing during such a test) the danger of silicosis rises dramatically (do a wikipedia search). This is why I wore a respirator while doing cabinet sand-blasting using ordinary playground sand (yeah, the same stuff kids play in). Playing with beach sand once in a while probably won't hurt you. Neither would an occasional Iraqi dust storm once a month. Crushing it up constantly during an 8 hr. shift probably will.

Moreover, 5.56mm NATO M885 primers are filled with lead styphnate. When was the last time you went through 6,000+ rounds of fun-auto fire in less than 8 hrs from inside a building?

I'd be shocked if they DIDN'T wear respirators.