American Rifle - Alexander Rose [218]
Even so, two concrete conclusions did suggest themselves. As the M4 had been the only rifle out of the four not to rely on the gas-piston design, and considering that Colt had already claimed it had such a system in the works, it would make sense for the army to authorize a modification in coming years. The other was that a significant proportion of the M4 stoppages could be eliminated by simply altering the magazine design. More than a quarter of them had been caused by weak springs and feeding problems. Accordingly, army officials soon announced that they were considering upgrading the M4’s magazines.54
Those hoping that the test results would force the army to switch over from the M4 to an entirely new rifle—the HK416 or SCAR, perhaps—were bound to be disappointed. The army is irretrievably committed to the M4, not least owing to the practical difficulties of shifting tracks while a war is going on and M4s are streaming in ever greater numbers to deployed troops. In the past two years alone, 221,000 of them have been made (at a cost of $300 million), and the Pentagon has ordered another 136,000, worth $230 million.55Whether Colt will forever be the sole supplier is a different question: its exclusive production contract ends in June 2009, after which its rivals may compete for the business.
Another factor militating against the army adopting the SCAR or the HK416 is that both types of weapon were developed for use by Special Operations units accustomed to acquiring and customizing their own equipment. Accordingly, the quantities available are severely limited. “They can buy 50; we have to buy 50,000,” said an army official. “We are wise to watch them and follow them and see what we can learn from them, but that doesn’t mean that every time they get a new pair of boots that we need to get a new pair of boots.” The number of SCARs contracted for by SOCOM might be as low as 20,000—a far cry and a huge production-straining jump from the 800,000-plus army-standard rifles that would be required.56
What is clear is that we are reaching the beginning of the end of the road in terms of current rifle development. It is a road upon which we have been traveling ever since eighteenth-century Pennsylvanian gun-makers broke free of the musket and perfected the flintlock rifle, and while breech-loaders, metallic cartridges, repeaters, and semiautomatics have speeded our way, the amber light is flashing up ahead.
At their broadest level, the summer and winter 2007 tests demonstrated that the qualitative, statistical, and operational differences among the four top-of-the-line rifles are but minute. One can tweak current firearm and projectile technology to enhance performance only so many ways before the marginal costs begin exceeding the marginal gains. The army is confronting the dilemma by relying on the M4 to tide things over until the arrival of a quantum technological breakthrough. “We think that somewhere around 2010, we should have enough insight into future technologies to take us in a direction we want to go for the next generation of small arms,” said Colonel Robert Radcliffe, director of the Infantry Center’s Directorate of Combat Developments at Fort Benning, Georgia.57 What this breakthrough might consist of is an intriguing question, though almost certainly light, strong new materials (such as advanced polymers) and a great deal of computing power will be integrated into the weapon.
Before banking on 2010 as the date of the Great Leap Forward,