reliability and retirement

A couple of things I wanted to talk about.

First is the retirment of Adm Fallon. I know that the journalists are sugestinng that the Bush administration is at fault for effectively firing the Admiral allegedly because he disagreed with the administration. First, like it or not, that is the perogative of the commander in Chief. This is why we have a great nation with an elected government, and not another two-bit tinpot military dictatorship. The CinC can fire any general or private for any reason they deem fit. Certainly there will be times that this is a bad move, but the alternative would be a civilian leadership that cannot truly control the highest levels of the military. The dangers of this should be immediately apparent. Second, this retirment has been a long time coming, and is not like a bolt from the blue. Did Fallon and Petreaus have differences of opoinion? certainly. It is, again, the sign of a healthy military that subordinates can, when appropriate, question their superiors. This helps the cream rise to the top. So, what do I think actually happened? Well, I think that Fallon gave an interview to Esquire magazine, and then this writer spun things to make it appear as though there was dissention within the ranks. Once this happened, I think that it was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. I think that once this piece was released, Fallon realized that anything he did would be viewed through a political lens and not a military one, which means that he would be a liability to the prosecution of any campaign, especially the war on terror. So, Fallon did the hoonrable thing, and threw himself on a grenade. He is now a bloodless casualty of the war caused by the traitorous fifth column within our press.

Second is the AR reliability. I came across this article about the reliability of the M4 carbine. To sum up, it did very poorly when compared with other rifles. There was one stoppage for every 68 rounds fired in the "extreme dust test," whereaas the XM8, Mk 16, and M416 had one stoppage for every 462, 265, and 257 rounds, respectively. Now, in the article, there is a lot of hemming and hawing about the applicability of the test, and how closely it mimics actual combat conditions. Now, it should be fairly apparent to anyone that there is not any way you can really mimic true combat conditions in an expirement because you are trying to conduct a test in a controlled environment, and combat is about as far from a controlled environment as you can get. That said, the bad news is that the AR does have a relative reliability problem. The good news is that some 6,000 rounds were fired, adn that the odds are that the stoppages probably clustered towards the end of those thousands of rounds. I think that one valuable set of data points in this test would have been how many stoppages occured at each 1,000 round mark. Now, the good news is that the military is acknowledging the problems with reliability, and they are plannning on changing out the AR platform. It appears that this may now be the SCAR Mk16, but I have hear about Special forces getting neat, new weapons, only to see them taken back by the powers that be. *cough*6.8SPC*cough*. So, I am not sold that the mk16 will be the next service rifle. Time will tell. Unfortunately, they seem to brush over the other, and perhaps more fatal flaw in the AR, and that is the chambering of the round. 

Personally, I think that the military should go back to the drawing board, design a 6.65mm round, perhaps with a longer cartridge length (50mm or so), and then build a rifle around it. Make it a rifle which can reach out to 800 yards, but is still compact. Piston drive the action. Drop the in-line recoil system which mandates a non-collapsible stock, as well as provides a vulnerable catastrophic failure point. That means that if the stock breaks, then the rifle will not fire, and you now have a fancy paperweight. Float the barrel, do all those things that people are already doing in the civilian world. There should be BUIS, and a 2.5x scope on it. I also think that there should be a total of three barrel lengths: 10-12", 16-18", and 20-22." The short barrel would be for SOCCOM, and PDWs. The mid length should be for general service, and the long should be for designated Marksmen. These rifles should be designed with a 50 year, 500,000 round service life in mind.

Alright, enough. I need to get to work.

Respectfully Submitted,
-doc Russia