M16A5 and M4A2 will never happen.

That's the point. It doesn't matter what odds and ends we could, maybe slap into the M4, because at the end of the day it will never happen due to the way procurement works.

The M27 is here and available, and procurement says it's far simpler to get that, than upgrade the M4.

Putting an external piston in the AR15 has turned out to be one of the worst developments for the gun in recent years, based on the myth that the AK is more reliable.

Many of us believed these things back before we had millions of rounds of data to analyze across wide fleets of guns and conditions, with nothing more than gun rag articles from the 1980s and gun shop counter tales to bias us in favor of the Russian assault rifle, which could survive an atomic blast and still keep on trucking.

Reality started to kick in once we took AKs and M4s into high volume shoot schedules.

The M4 proved to be one of the most reliable weapons ever fielded, whereas AKs turned out to be steaming piles of infested feces that break and malfunction with normal use.

Get the AK in harsh conditions, and it really starts to sputter and spit turds in the bed left and right.

But let's not allow those facts to stop us from jamming an exposed op-rod into the AR15.

No, we can't do that.  We must press on with making the design more complicated, less reliable, with more failure points that we never saw before.

Which everyone who has ever replaced a barrel, hand guard, and BCG on the AR15 knows immediately is total BS.

These minor issues have already been solved, and don't cost a lot of money like the 416 does.

The defense industry is not interested in low-cost solutions, so HK to the rescue-so predictable.

Since M16s have been purged from the combat units, there should be no resistance to upgrading with the enhanced BCG and a free-float hand guard.

Even a complete upper receiver upgrade would cosy a lot less, with a more viable solution that doesn't introduce the abortion op-rod design into the mix.

Makes too much sense, SOCOM already does it.  $3000 HK saves the day with tard sauce.

Ok. You can move to goalposts as much as you think you need to. 
The way you posed your question, leaves 458 rifles per Bn. 3 line companies per Bn, don't count the weapons platoons and 11K rifles is... enough to outfit all 24 Bn's line company line platoons (48 per platoon, times 3 platoons per company times three line companies times your 24 Bn's. math and structure people feel free to correct). 
That's even according to your perfect world numbers.  Now cut out the sick lame and lazy, cats on terminal, so on and so forth and that extends out enough to probably cover the weapons platoons as well.  



So yea, that's what you could do with just 11k rifles. Remember, your question was " how 11,000 rifles will be used by these 24 different active duty USMC Infantry battalions." any other stuff you want to add to make up for your question not fully accounting for an answer that shows 11K rifles nicely fits your problem you presented is a fault of how you asked it. 

I maintain what I said.

The Military as a whole will not upgrade the M16 or M4.

The M4A1+ was dropped like a bag of hot shit, and PEO said.



So with the Army not giving a shit about upgrading the M4, the Marine Corps are taking matters into their own hands, and since the Army is the project manager on the M16 FOW upgrading their version won't happen either....Thus the M27.

God damn real life getting in the way! 

What the military should do is buy the TDP and bid it out to whoever.(I believe this is the goal for the HK G28E, they made sure to leave room to buy the TDP.)

I imagine FN could deliver cheaper M27s than HK.

Lol

Wow, I never realized GD was this passionate about DI vs piston AR designs.

This is a great thread!

Proprietary mags?

Stick a fork in it

Not to mention that the m16 family gas system is far simpler than this piston they slap on there. And our resident Swede has said the 416s were having troubles for them. 

And hahahaha to anyone who thinks the Corps is going to spend the money to replace their barrels after 20k rounds. They'll keep those barrels going for way more round than that. 

Besides the fact that the original M4 barrel life is in the 20k range too.

The only units that can replace worn out barrels like chewing gum. Are SOF units. 

A bit off topic here, but has there been any extensive fielding or research done on the SIG MCX? I've been wondering how that stacks up.

"Most Marines have no clue about the greater organizational MTO&E because they don't need to know, and don't care to either. " 
The other problem with your 11k rifles per Bn is it doesn't take real life into account. 
11k rifles would never hit 24 Bn after the pouges and leadership got their cut because shiny new stuff. 

Also, you would be incorrect about most marines not having a clue about the greater organizational MTO&E since it's more or less required knowledge, or at least has been for quite a long time, and is relatively consistent since it's all organized repetitively under the MAGTF. It feels like you forget how much responsibility is pushed onto boot 4 year Marines? Maybe it's the Maritime tradition of knowing how much leadership can be wiped out, but having everyone know the higher jobs and organization is pretty important. 

We've told you before repeatedly.

The Army has already been upgrading M4s to M4A1 for years now.  Heavy barrels (although totally unnecessary, Full Auto FCG, ambi controls, heavier buffers, etc.)

The AR15 family has undergone numerous design changes throughout the life of the system, and has not remained stagnant.

I don't know why anyone would refuse to acknowledge these facts continuously and misrepresent them over and over, no matter how many times they are pointed out.

What makes an HK416 need it's own upper and lower? Why couldn't they have just retrofitted the HK piston system ala Adams Arms? The cost just seems stupid, especially since they weigh a couple pounds more.

They are both gas systems that activate a piston because a "DI" bolt carrier group is a piston. Knowing that, why would you want all that shit exhaust in your chamber.

There has been some initial operational test and evaluation by some units that like it a lot.

Give it 5 years of abuse in high volume in fleet and we'll know more as to what bugs will show up.

Every weapon system goes through this.

No way does the m4 have 20,000 rounds barrel life.

nutnfancy screwed one up so bad, SIG felt a redesign was necessary, so that isn't going in its favor

The only changes the M4 has seen is the RO921HB, the H2 buffer, copper extractor spring, new stock, 2 more adjustment notches, ambi selector , and the RIS.(I won't include the FCG as it's just a M16 FCG from 1960)

Other than that a current Army issue M4A1 is identical to the M4 in 1994.

And let's not get into numerous magazine revisions, because Magpul has pointed out how shitty the new EPM GI mags are performing with M855A1in current testing.

There will be no new BCG, trigger, Barrel, or rail system.

We're stuck with a button rifled, heavy barrel, M4 with a 7" non FF quad rail for the foreseeable future.

Unless the M27 gets a ton of traction....Which it might if the Marines fleet it.

Sidetrack, but I would be astonished if even you knew a fraction of the organizational structure, let alone doctrine of most USMC units.

I guarantee you that the Privates, Lance Corporals, Sergeants, and even most of the Staff Sergeants didn't know much about their MTOE at these levels, let alone what was going on in their own Battalions in many cases.

I've worked with ANGLICO, Force, Bn Recon, Infantry, Aviation, MI, and other units within USMC.

Motivation and readiness to do their jobs?  Very much so.

The Force and MI guys would have the big picture view more than others, especially officers. ANGLICO had to work with many different units, so they got a bigger picture perspective.

A lot of the guys were so dumb though that I'm surprised they were able to stay in without getting chaptered, Infantry E-5s included.  

I recall one Private at Camp Lejeune who confronted me and several other Army NCOs about wearing our berets as we exited the building.

This kid was one of the dumbest samples of a serviceman I had ever encountered, hadn't shaved in at least 24 hours, uniform looked like garbage, personal hygiene not checked by a supervisor in a while.

But no, here he was, confronting several E-6s and E-7s about the wear of headgear (which none of us were out of regs on BTW).

We could have crushed his nuts, but we were there for joint operations with much bigger fish to fry, and weren't interested in silly inter-service rivalry games.

Then it was on to being berated by a retired pogue working at MWR when we went to rent jet skis for R&R.  He just couldn't stand it that Army guys were on his base, renting out his equipment.

Between these guys, if you were to rub all their brain cells together, you couldn't power a small LED, but by golly, they were Marines.

No way could they even get the letters in the right order to form MTO&E, let alone distinguish Air Wing from an Artillery Battery if they were sober.

I've seen them go further than that.

Guess I was wrong, didn't see reality.  Maybe I need a reality distortion machine.

We're talking Colt button rifled barrels right? Not fancy CHF barrels?

I don't see how a Colt M4 barrel could maintain 4moa accuracy past 10,000 rounds....Much less 20,000.

There you go. Acting like HK turns barrels from Dragon's teeth or something. 

FN makes the best MG barrels in the world. Bar none. 

I do believe M4A1 uses a CFH barrel

M4A1 uses a button rifled RO921HB.

FN does make good barrels, excellent barrels, but their barrels on the M4 are button rifled single thickness chrome lined.

HK barrels however use a superior steel to 4150CMV, have a tapered bore diameter, are nitrided, and then chrome lined. They're just a superior barrel.

I've seen guns that were abused with the rifling eroding visibly hold better groups than newer barrels with only a few hundred rounds on them.

These were heavy barrels, but some barrels are just hummers.

Free-float would give the accuracy and eliminate a lot of the heat issues.  Too easy to free-float though.

HK for the win at $3000.  Hilarious.

You know what really made me pause about all this?

I watched this design from its inception, then watched as LAV began teaching open enrollment courses after being directly involved with the development of the HK XM4 and 416.

He could have a steady supply of them for free from HK for his courses.

Instead, he uses regular, well-built Stoner expanding gas AR15s in his courses.

Puzzling, wouldn't you say?

Then you had Magpul, with the open declaration that the only thing worth keeping from the AR15 is the front sight, and replacing everything else in the rifle.

They designed the Masada, then sold it to Remington/Bushampster.

The results, Magpul carbine courses run pretty much AR15s exclusively through their classes, with a heavily-edited sample of one guy with an ACR in one of the videos.

The bugs are still being worked out on the ACR, while M4s exceed it in round count by the millions.

Then there were some POF guns brought to courses back in the day.

Travis Haley referred to them as "POS" after seeing how they performed.

Any of the retired trainers who were in the Unit could easily call Hk right now and say,

"I really love your HK416 and want to feature it in my courses.  Can we do business?"

So far, I don't see anyone using them, and we're already on to HK416A5 upgrade of the upgrade of the upgrade in just the past few years since it was introduced.

You should see them everywhere.  I remember some units in LAPD SWAT who bought into them.  HK rep was there for one of their first high volume range sessions.  The results?

He returned to HK with all the rifles due to serious problems when shooting them.

Can't HK buy off at least one of these guys who is retired and get them to use their Bundes wares in their courses?

You know a lot of these guys train active military and LE HRTs, right?

Something just doesn't add up when you look at how people are voting with their choices.

The Army uses their barrels well passed "service life". They just don't have the funds to get new barrels all the time.  So even if you use the argument that the M27's barrel life is 6 or 7 thousand rounds higher,  the USMC will probably be keeping those same barrels for way more than that. And they'll probably cost way more for minimal improvement over a SOCOM barrel.

That does include optics and spare parts, right?

Yep, pistons just suck a bit less to clean when suppressed. They are still dirty, dirty creatures.

Import/export laws are why no one in the US civilian market has HK416A5s, and the MR556 has a shitty unlined barrel.

Not even LAV is above the law of Germany and the USA.

Once HK opens its Georgia facility and if they can get us semi auto HK416A5s look for people like LAV to start using them.

Here's the question I keep asking myself:

Why don't I have one of them?

It certainly isn't because of money or that I couldn't.

I've got a freaking personal arms room with better weapons than what were issued to me because I can, but no MR556.

At this rate, I think it would be more likely for Yeager to pimp 416s in his courses than any of the guys who were in the Unit or SF.

And yet I just saw video of his with something infinitely more rare than a 416 on US soil which can't possibly be imported to the US:

The SAKO Rk92S

Explain that one for me.

You can also do what Battlefield Las Vegas did and have a US hammer-forged barrel installed in your MR556.

You don't think any of these guys couldn't score uppers through HK-USA?

I could buy that rifle right now and install that barrel.

Oh wait, I never had any problems with Stoner gas AR15s.

First clue.  The old school pre-PIP M4s and M4A1s I abused were even fed M855 through old school mags with black and some green followers, which we all know are garbage.

Guess what?  They ran and ran.  I'm getting tired of mentioning it, but even to the tune of 1,100 rounds in 4 hours doing basic CQM work-up, no malfs.

Who's the fool?

On a kinda sorta related note, didn't the Marine Corps test the CETME Ameli for this role at one time?

IBTL

I dont think the M27 is a bad rifle.  It's probably a excellent one.  But it's almost 4 times the cost of an M4 and offers little,  if anything at all.

If someone would just spend a fraction of the effort they have into trying to fix what isn't broken and focus on a DM doctrine and MTO&E, we could have actual benefits to the units.

Spend a few million on a solid DM set-up and optics, mounts, and ammo, with a dedicated training program across the Marine Divisions and US Army Combat Divisions, with instructor courses at Benning and Quantico.

All this waste of time with mouth breathers getting frenzied over the prospects of an inferior design is disgraceful.

I'd like to know who made this decision and hear their rationale.

So then why are the Marine Corps seeing such a huge increase in reliability, durability and accuracy over the M4 with the M27?

I still don't see any modern rail being adopted any time soon for the M4.

Durability? M27's have NOT been in service long enough to see any form of durability increase, period. When they have rifles that have been getting kicked around, shot to shit and outright abused for fifteen years, then you can crow about "durability." My little cousin joined the Marines and he was issued an M4 carbine that is 20-some years old, it's older than he is, and yet he hasn't had any problems with it.

Any perceived increase in accuracy is just because it has a floated barrel, a non-burst FCG, and it's new. That's it. Take a brand new M4A1 with RIS 2, and that will be even more accurate. Colt Socom barrels are more than adequate in regards to accuracy.

You don't see a modern rail being adopted any time soon, huh...? I guess we all imagined the RIS 2 being adopted and fielded.

Is this our R0N?
http://soldiersystems.net/2017/02/10/usmc-begins-process-to-issue-m27-iar-to-every-rifleman-issues-rfi-to-industry/#comment-916091





If so, it kind of sheds a new light on this issue. I wish R0N still posted here.

I was a ROTC cadidiot in the early '90's, we were cleaning and turning in weapons.  I thought I was in for it when the Sergeant Major waved me over to inspect my weapon, expecting him to be a hardass.  While he was looking over my rifle, I overheard the Captain in the next line sending a cadet back to polish the inside of the handguards, the SGM just rolled his eyes and made a comment about focusing on what's important to weapon operation.

What's necessary to weapon operation isn't spending 2 hours fucking up the barrel running a cleaning rod through it like you're churning butter.  Use a good bore solvent (NOT FUCKING CLP), get the crap out (we were shooting blanks), make sure the inside of the bolt carrier and the locking lugs are clear of crap, and wipe down the rest.  Then you make sure it's oiled before it goes in the rack.  You don't need to scrub the anodizing off the receiver as is so commonly done.  The military wears out more rifles with stupid cleaning methods than they shoot out, and anybody who thinks the M27 will magically be immune to that has never spent time cleaning weapons in the military or seen what Joes do to weapons.  Remember the pic Free posted of the M4 where the barrel came off the upper, because the dumbass Ranger student wouldn't report a problem with his weapon?

You're one of the ones that drove him away is my estimation.  Why do you want him back?

Same type of thing happened with Pat Rogers (RIP).

People who refused to listen to dudes that have seen more rounds go downrange before the offending party was even born still want to pick a bone and double-down on their retardation.

I don't understand it really.

It's ok to be wrong and just learn.

Lord knows I've propagated a lot of bad info back in the day because I heard it from a guy at the gun store, or read it from some disgruntled Major in the Army back in an article from the 1960s about the Mattel rifle, and how a real man needs wood, steel, and 7.62 NATO.

Another source in this thread who has been driven away by your agenda actually knows exactly why this RFI was put out.

It was as a replacement for SAWs, which always had issues with the grip and fire control falling off, thanks FN.  At least Belgium bought into F-16s though.

I could crush the performance of the IAR with existing drop-in parts right now, and save the Marines $22 million with a $1000 upper receiver that any of their armorers could work on easily.

If they want a new LMG for the Fire Team, they need to look at the LSAT with the Army and do a joint solicitation for an even more superior system that will cut the soldier's load, increase hit probability, outlast the SAW MTBF, overmatch the PKM and SVD for effective range, and defeat modern body armor.

That makes too much sense though.

Better to go with the SVT-38 op-rod (which was a colossal abortion in the Winter War BTW) in an AR15.  That'll show em!

You're right, that is side tracking, plus you're making ab old claim then trying to support it with what you saw a private and a retiree do once. 

You're not making a solid case for anyone to buy into. 

" worked with ANGLICO, Force, Bn Recon, Infantry, Aviation, MI, and other units within USMC." That's what tons of boots for decades have done on MEU (SOC) and associated workups. 

No, you're an idiot because you're trying to claim more knowledge of what actually works than the people who actually use their rifles, apparently based on what you've read in magazines or online.  There are people in this thread that were probably using M16-family weapons while you were in diapers.  Heck, I probably have USGI wool socks older than you are.  People who have seen every possible failure type under almost every possible condition, from deserts to artic, and can tell you which weapons failed and why, who are saying the M27/HK416 isn't as reliable as HK claims.  But if we'd listened to all the HK fanbois back in 2004, our troops would have been stuck with the XM8 as an issue rifle.

It was already posted that whoever made the decision to go with the HK417 did it by IGNORING THE RECOMMENDATIONS OF THOSE WHO ACTUALLY TESTED THE WEAPONS.  Kind of like how the UCP pattern failed what limited testing it went through, while other patterns did much better in the uniform testing, but suddenly the Army adopted the ACU in UCP and nobody could figure out why.  And 9-10 years later, the Army is ditching the UCP pattern because it sucked balls and going with a pattern very close to what worked best in the trials.

Pat was before my time.

It's ok I got something working that if it goes through around March 15th will put an end to this debate once and for all...maybe....Either way it will be truly informative if it gets approved.

Chamber brush was probably trashed after that. 

I stand by my statement that most Marines do not understand, let alone posses much familiarity with their organizational MTO&E outside of their Squad, Section, Platoon, and Company, especially first-termers.

What you're expecting us to believe is that entry-level Marines have an officer-level grasp of the bigger picture, and that just has never been the case.

Sure, when issuing orders per NATO format, Private Jones' Squad supports his Platoon in the security element, in order to prevent enemy forces from penetrating objective X-ray, which is a critical component of the Battalion Commander's plan, but ask that same Private or even his Squad Leader about the numbers across the organization related to the fielding of rifles per billet and how that is coordinated through HQ USMC.

They won't have a clue, not that they need to.  That's the point.  Not sure where you are going other to have an argument, which is fine.  The main thing is that people within the USMC, those who were in it, and those who have never been in it clearly don't have a clue about the numbers this RFI is targeting when thinking that it is replacing all rifles, except for a few at HQ USMC.

Yet Gunner Wade acknowledged that he was learning things from the very people you refuse to listen to.

They took M4's off the rack and used old pool magazines (and that's been a frequent complaint - commands reluctant to replace magazines regularly.  20th SF (National Guard) back the in the '80's issued a complete set of new magazines to each soldier entering the unit for training use, while keeping a second complete set in the wrapper in their deployment boxes.  Every 2-3 years, they would issue out the set from the deployment boxes for training use and restock those with new.  Yet people on active duty talk about having to stomp bad magazines flat before turning them in or supply will just issue them to someone else instead of destroying them, despite the fact that they're officially supposed to be expendable items), and then, as noted, counted the normal fucked-up reset on the M4 burst trigger as a "failure".  Compared to brand new weapons selected by the manufacturer for testing.  The bulk of the reported failures were magazine or burst trigger related. When truly equivalent tests were conducted, there was no notable difference in reliability.

You're not listening again.

RFI is not even an RFP.  March 15th?  Goes through?  You should know what an RFI is by now.  

Even worst-case and the RFI comes back with an answer that HK is the only possible solution, you still need an RFP that has to be approved.

Sometimes the system prevents dumb people from making really dumb decisions like this one.

Other times it doesn't.  Look at the M14 and SAW if you want colossal failures as examples.