M4 rifle comes under fire

A survey of Iraq and SFlbAfghanistan war vets found 89 percent were satisfied with the M4.

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — No weapon is more important to tens of thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan than the carbine rifle. And for well over a decade, the military has relied on one company, Colt Defense of Hartford, Conn., to make the M4s they trust with their lives.

Now, as Congress considers spending millions more on the guns, this exclusive arrangement is being criticized as a bad deal for American forces as well as taxpayers, according to interviews and research conducted by The Associated Press.

“What we have is a fat contractor in Colt who’s gotten very rich off our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” says Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla.

The M4, which can shoot hundreds of bullets a minute, is a shorter and lighter version of the company’s M16 rifle first used 40 years ago during the Vietnam War. At about $1,500 apiece, the M4 is overpriced, according to Coburn. It jams too often in sandy environments such as Iraq, he adds, and requires far more maintenance than more durable carbines.

U.S. military officials call the M4 an excellent carbine. When the time comes to replace the M4, they want a combat rifle that is leaps and bounds beyond what’s available.

Colt’s exclusive production agreement ends in June 2009. At that point, the Army, in its role as the military’s principal buyer of firearms, may have other gunmakers compete along with Colt for continued M4 production. Or, it might begin looking for a totally new weapon.

William Keys, Colt’s chief executive officer, says the M4 gets impressive reviews from the battlefield. And he worries that bashing the carbine will undermine the confidence the troops have in it.

“The guy killing the enemy with this gun loves it,” says Keys, a former Marine Corps general who was awarded the Navy Cross for battlefield valor in Vietnam.

In 2006, a nonprofit research group surveyed 2,600 soldiers who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan and found 89 percent were satisfied with the M4. Though Colt and the Army have trumpeted that finding, detractors say the survey also revealed that 19 percent of these soldiers had their weapon jam during a firefight.

And the relationship between the Army and Colt has been frosty at times. Concerned over the steadily rising cost of the M4, the Army forced Colt to lower its prices two years ago by threatening to buy rifles from another supplier.

Some M4 critics point to the “SCAR,” made by Belgian armorer FN Herstal, and the HK416, produced by Germany’s Heckler & Koch, as possible contenders. Both weapons cost about the same as the M4, their manufacturers say.

The SCAR is being bought by U.S. special operations forces, who have their own acquisition budget and the latitude to buy gear the other military branches can’t.

Development of the carbine was driven by a need for a weapon that could be used in tight spaces but still had plenty of punch. Colt’s answer was the 7 1/2-pound M4.

In 1994, Colt was awarded a no-bid contract to make the weapons. Since then, it has sold more than 400,000 to the U.S. military.

In 1996, a Navy office improperly released Colt’s M4 blueprints, giving nearly two dozen contractors a look at the carbine’s inner workings. Colt was ready to sue the U.S. government for the breach. The company wanted between $50 million and $70 million in damages.

Cooler heads prevailed. The Defense Department didn’t want to lose its only source for the M4, and Colt didn’t want to stop selling to its best customer.

The result was an agreement that made Colt the sole player in the U.S. military carbine market. FNMI, an FN Herstal subsidiary in South Carolina, challenged the deal in federal court but lost.

And since the Sept. 11 attacks, sales have skyrocketed. The Army, the carbine’s heaviest user, is outfitting all its front-line combat units with M4s. The Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps and special operations forces also carry M4s.