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December 28, 2005
Can We Do Better Than The M16?
Iraq, Summer, 2005:
Prosser shot the man at least four times with his M4 rifle. But the American M4 rifles are weak - after Prosser landed three nearly point blank shots in the man's abdomen, splattering a testicle with a fourth, the man just staggered back, regrouped and tried to shoot Prosser.
The preceding snip comes from Michael Yon's post entitled "Gates of Fire", a riveting first person account of a vicious back ally firefight in Mosul.
Ever since I read Michael's post, I've been bothered by his referrence to the standard issue M4 rifle as "weak". My knowledge of military firearms extends only to the level of the History Channel, but I do know the M16/M4 has been dogged with controversy since its inception in Vietnam in the mid '60s. Debate about reliability problems (originally caused by Army incompetence, not the designer's) and the knockdown power of the high-velocity .223 caliber bullet has obviously not been quelled in the ensuing 40 years.
Now Austin Bay cites an evaluation of the AK47 versus the M16/M4 at State Of Flux. See also Strategy Page and Austin's own post. The comments on all three of these posts is most interesting.
It seems clear that our infantry soldier needs an weapon with improved stopping power. Why we can't seem to come up with one is the 64 dollar question.
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Comments
Good god men. Stop and think for one second about what it takes from a high velocity bullet to deposit its energy into a living being!!! not green tip 855 nor m193 they both (at that velocity and small caliber) want to breeze right through the person/object. how about 63 grain jacketed soft points that will go splat and just about explode into 100 frags dumping most of the potential energy into the man instead of giving him a clean thru-and-thru hole. I'd bet 90 plus percent of these towel heads DO NOT own or wear body armor.
Posted by: Mike at October 19, 2006 01:40 AM
