I was just at RetroBlackRifle.com looking at the 601 and saw a picture I didn't notice before.  It was an AF SP in Korea with a 601 in 1991.  When I was in an SP unit 79-81 we still had a green stocked AR with 1/14" in our arms room.  I didn't know much about it then, just it was "an old one".   The hodge-podge of mismatched weapons we had I always attributed to our Reserve/NG unit just getting everyone's cast offs.  I now appreciate the fact that the Air Force was just plain thrifty and smarter about material  than the Army.  It is a rare example of thriftiness in an otherwise bloated military system.  

I think, however, that it is a statement of just how good the original design is.  50+ years and going strong.  while there have been needed improvements (buffer, charging handle, chrome plating, etc.) none have been drastic re-designs, and all are completely interchangeable.  A 601 upper could be mounted to an M4 lower, and an M4 upper could be mounted to a 50 year old 601 lowere and work fine.  Pretty cool, actually.

Technically, an M4 upper receiver would have to be counterbored in order to mate to a 601 lower receiver.

true. the fact that its been in service for this long and even with the improvements in technology, they havent found a totally new replacement service rifle that justifies its cost.  there are some up & comers tho. i like the ACR and it will probably become the new service rifle if they dont just use an upgraded version of what they have now.  

This is the stupid part of your post. The Air Force is absolutely foolhardy with how they spend tax dollars, the pilots that run it simply never lowered themselves far enough to notice that you had an old rifle. Why buy you a new rifle, when they could have 35 seconds worth of jet fuel for that price?

True, but it would also work with a 1/4" clevis pin from the hardware store, or even a 1/4" wood dowel, for that matter.  I am sure more than one GI lost the 601 pin and used a field expedient stick in the bush.

Airforce 767 tanker widget.  $7000

Civilian 767 tanker widget.  $287

You have to be thrifty with something if you want to spend all your budget on barracks and bombers
Truth be told I don't think the USAF has a real pressing need for an up to date infantry rifle so it makes sense to use what you got.
Ralph

It's funny you say that, because I've actually never seen or heard of an Air Force M16A4.

They do, of course, have the M4, though. My brother is supposed to be issued one of those soon.

Golf course maintainance is expensive too!



 

That would be because the M16A4 is outdated already.

The USAF probably bought the M4 instead of the M16A4 because if you're going to carry a weapon that you'll (probably) never fire, the M4 is 'superior' in this role due to it's lighter weight and shorter length.  Base security types, from what I understand, usually only have to stand around and look scary to do their jobs, so the M4 is a better choice for them.  

The Army's decision to move to the M4 for ALL troops is simply retarded.  I recall hearing stories of vehicle crews and rear echelon personnel who were traditionally issued carbines as they did not require a full length rifle or did not have room for a full length rifle (IE: In a truck/tank/etc) getting stuck with M16A2s so that their M4's could go to front-line infantry.  This then led to the vehicle crews fitting collapsing stocks to their rifles in an effort to make them workable inside the cabs of their trucks so they could shoot back when ambushed.  When word of THIS got out, orders came down to stop as the rifles could potentially be damaged by this - Real world experience from the C7A2 be damned!

For a weapon that you're actually going to employ, I think the 16A4 is superior.  It's more reliable, more accurate, etc.

The M16A4 is no more mechanically accurate, and fractions of a single percentage point more reliable. Not worth the length. I think they should be maintained in inventory for limited uses. Infantrymen should have 20", 16 mid and 11.5 uppers available to put on a standard lower with a VLTOR A5 buffer. They can then pick the upper for the job.

After I ETSed from active Army in 1977, I did a couple years ready reserve. I joined the AF reserve/NG SPF in 1979.  Our 2 week "summer camp" was actually Dec-Jan.  It was supposed to be a SWAT school (or so I was told).  When we got to Lackland AFB in Texas, we immediately left to Camp Bullis, TX.  It is a small Army training facility that was a POW camp for German Wermacht prisoners in WW2.  When we arrived and were dismounting the bus, a Cadillac Cage V-100 came out of the brush with cammied-up troops with 203s, M60s, and M16s. riding on top.  I comment to the MSGT that was greeting us, "Oh Army troops train here, too?"  he said "No, that's AF Security police ABGD (the Air Force loves abbreviations)"  I asked what it was and he said "Air Base Ground Defense!"  I asked "Who does that?"  He said "YOU @**hole!"  I spent my my 2 week "swat school" humping a "pig" (M60) in the God forsaken brush of South Texas.  In the late 70s and early 80s, the AF had assumed defense of their bases, and they had terrible tactics!  All of us were prior service, and now civilian cops.  Humping a ruck WAS NOT WHAT WE HAD IN MIND when we volunteered for the school.

The base had one bus a day to Lackland, and was on the far side of East Jesus>  When not humping weapons around in the brush, we could only gamble, drink quarter beers and watch the topless dancers Fri, Sat, and Wed.  at the All Ranks Club (too small for NCO and O-Clubs)

Remember that the 16" mid-length rifles, and 14.5" barrels with mid-length gas systems, have been marketed as a way to get a more reliable carbine than M4 type setups.

As for accuracy, the longer 20" barrel also means a longer sight radius, which means more accuracy with iron sights.  Even with optics, I suspect that if 14.5" barrels were just as mechanically accurate as 20" barrels we would see far more shooters enter competitions with 14.5" barreled target rifles.  Probably a bigger issue though is the loss of muzzle velocity, since the 5.56mm needs speed to effectively fragment and kill.

True, M193 and M855 ball need about 2550-2560 FPS to fragment.  The 14.5 barrel chops 75-100 yards off even a 16" barrels effective rang.  I always thought  16" carbine with a mid-length gas system (or AR180 style piston drive) was the way to go, especially with 77 OTBT Mk 262 Mod 1 ammo.

M4s kill people just fine. 20" guns resist wind shifts better because of higher velocity too, but I'm unconcerned with 600m shooting. I have M240s for that. The military needs a product improved M4 and a brand new SAW in a larger caliber.

We should just change the law and buy expanding ammunition.

Honestly I think it's time to move to an 'M4A2' (Or maybe re-name it entirely and start with the M5 carbine series) thats got a 16" middy barrel and a telestock, and to get 20" M16A4s back in the hands of the riflemen.  I still don't accept the M4 as an appropriate replacement for the M16, but it is a supplement.

I agree.

For light infantry the 20" makes sense but it's a waste for mounted troops.

For several reasons, yes.  Mounted troops have a Brad with a 25mm thats got much better reach than any of their weapons.
...Unless you go total dumbass and replace your Brads with lightly armored eight wheel trucks that have nothing more than an M240 on the roof.

The AF may not know how to employ ground infantry tactics but then you grunts still talking about the "battlefield" haven't been in the CAOC's recently I'm betting. NOTHING happens in war without the Air Power (Navy and Marines too) giving a thumbs up or thumbs down to the operation. Even the ones you thought you were out on your own on were monitored pretty closely by close friends of mine. What you should be outraged by is how the battle priorities get categorized. You can have bad guys within 300 meters and not get air assets because you didn't bother to notify anyone that the battle scape "changed".

That being said, if you trust the average AF cop to shoot ANY long range weapons around the assets they are "defending"...you'd better have a good insurance policy. All the planes and satellite dishes will be peppered with friendly small arms fire LONG before any bad guys can hit one. Try flying your F-22 with a pin hole sized 5.56 round punched through the canopy. GOOD LUCK!!!

The "fighter mafia" mentality still reigns supreme all day long!

Almost everyone in my reserve SP Flight at the ABGD school was prior ARMY and full time civilian law enforcement.  We were all pretty savvy and good shots. I got top honors for the day (and free beer that night) for best at the M-203.  Some of the things the AF taught for ABGD in 79 or 80, however were NUTS!!!!!!!!!  There was a command "Assault on line"  where everyone would stand up, advance in a line, firing from the hip on FA, holding the forearm down from the top with the off hand! Yikes, that stuff went out with the demise of Napoleonic tactics at the end of the Civil War!!!  The universal comment from the rank and file when they explained and demonstrated it to us was, "You got to be F(reaki)ng kidding me??????"  They didn't even "slice the pie" clearing rooms!

I'd just be happy to see them change to 6.8SPC for SAW's and individual weapons. Rear echelon troops could still use the 5.56 until the changeover was complete, but new 6.8 uppers for front-line troops seems like a good investment.

To which law are you referring?

I don't want box fed IWs and belt feds using the same caliber. Bullet selection would be a clusterfuck, like SS109 all over again. 6.8 has an absurdly poor BC. Better to use 6.5 or 7mm, both of which have better BCs for weight.

My understanding is that while we are not a party to the Hague Convention, there is a law passed by Congress that mandates ball ammunition anyway.

Your serious, aren't you?...

You remember the Dancing Bears too?  I got a lap dance on my 19th birthday from one of the dancing bears.  I went through Camp Bullis in 1984-1985.  That was some of the funnest stuff.  I often thought about my counterparst from BMT going to tech schools that resembled campus life at a junior college while I ran five miles with a ruck sack in my boots!   I volunteered for and carried the M60.  Did your M60s fall apart while firing them too?

Hauge convention, IIRC.  It's an international law that we've signed on to, regulating the use of expanding bullets, chemical warfare agents, opening and cessation of hostilities, etc.

Well, they were "bare" and they were "dancing! THey gave lap dance and table dances, too, I don't think we called them the Dancing bears, though! HAHAHA!  I was an old man pushing 30 at the time.  There was a blond one, the youngest of the four, that was sensational... but back to retros.  My M60 did not fall apart, but the recoil spring went flying a time or two when cleaning it.  I was never much of a 60 gunner!  It was odd to think that I was getting paid by the Air Force for those two week of shooting, gambling, drinking, and well, ah... whatever  and being paid by the PD, too  for military leave.

Camp Bullis was a whole lot different than Lackland AFB.  Did you live in those wooden shacks as well?   I really enjoyed the simiplicity of the ergonomic sticks we used to prop open the bay windows.  While their we built an anotomically correct snow woman when it snowed there in January, 1985.

Yep, I stayed in the plywood hootches, not tent city.  They still had German graffiti carved in the walls, and the WW2 vintage oil heaters for heat.  only found a scorpion in my boot in the morning one time.. I will say that they still had good chow, though.  We at least got one hot meal a day, the others being C rats. That is where I first drank Lone Star pee, I mean beer.  It tastes and smells like skunk pee when it is warm..

Thats because for every guy that puts a quality buttstock with PROPER buffer on, there are 100 people that buy an el cheapo stock from the PX with a BB shot buffer.

They have it in the works, the Army is replacing the M249 with the Mk48 –– essentially a 249 scaled up to 7.62. They're also lightening the 240 by making it out of titanium. They tried aluminum but it didn't hold up to the stresses. The Mk48 does revert to bad old M60 days in one way, it will have a relatively short life, maybe 10,000 rounds.

The big problem with replacing M4s is that it's a really, really large amount of money for a really, really small improvement. That's what killed the XM8, the HK416 and more recently the Mk16 SCAR. Coming back to the point of this thread, the original design was good enough that it's held up really well. In 1958 when it was first designed, there were many rifles on the market, by 1979 it was pretty clear that only the 16, AK, FAL and HK were viable, and by 2009 it was down to 16 or AK. The choice of which, basically depending on whether your troops were professionals or illiterate draftees.

I do think the original ARs have some advantages over the later ones (going back to the ur-point of the thread). In 30 years of service I never needed the forward assist, and IMHO it was dead weight and a snagging protuberance for nothing. The A2 sights are superior for target shooting, but they're more vulnerable to being "adjusted" by the gun being knocked around. On the other hand, the change to optical sights was, in my opinion, long overdue. Putting the target and the sight in the same visual plane increases accuracy and builds troop confidence. And the wide distribution of NODS is a great thing.

But the original AR design was absolutely brilliant, the sort of brilliance usually associated with a single genius, even though it was really the work of a team. We used to play a game of trying to think what the oldest design of equipment is that is still in US Army service (I think it's the field water-cooler Lister bag, circa 1917). But when your weapons have been around in the same basic format for fifty or more years (remembering that the M240 is also that old, even though the Army didn't buy it for decades because of NIH Syndrome), and quite a few wars, then you have stuff that you can count on.

M2HB 1929 basic design 1919.
M240 1988 basic design 1958 (although the Army first bought them for tanks in about 1981 I think –– not a tanker).
M16/M4 199x basic design also 1958

The MK48 can only go 1100 rounds between cleaning and is maintenance intensive. The 240L is a step in the right direction but a PKM based weapon in 7X46 would be more like it. The M2 should be withdrawn an replaced by a modern weapon in .33-.40 caliber and a 15mm cannon. A PIP M4 could be phased in and significant parts of current weapons could be used, like receivers, in a retrofit program. Small arms are an almost insignificant part of the budget.

Another old design that lasted a long time was the venerable  M1 Carbine. 6.6 million made during WW2, still common in Vietnam, and still issued and used by Police and Israel for Mash Az Volunteer police (neighborhood watch with guns).  After 60 years, it is a viable choice. More energy at 100 yards than a .357 at the muzzlw, and probably close to at .44 Magnum at 100. When used within its capabilities (150 yards or less) it is very effective   110 JSP at 1950 fps gives about 900 ft lbs, WAY ahead of a 9mm or 45 carbine.  I killed a large deer at about 100 yards with a single heart lung shot. Box of truth even found FMJ fairly effective.  My Inland CMP will do 3 MOA with Remington FMJ and iron sights.  I carried one for my LEO trunk weapon most of my career, and it is still my favorite "house PDW"  After all, it is VERY retro!

The Air Force has always short changed the Security Police. In 1972 Korea (Kunsan) K-9 troops carried the GAU 5/A/A. If you were assigned to the POL you carried the 1897 Winchester 12.gauge with heat shield and bayonet lug. We did have Starlights when you worked Tower 5. I can not speak for the regular troops, but the guys in K-9 were all pretty good shots. The only thing I worried about was the guy down the taxiway with a slap flare without the parachute. You never knew when one would go bouncing by. In early 72 Camp Bullis was run by the Army. I guess it still is. My roommate was stung in the right nad by a scorpion at the VC Village. I cried in sympathy....lol.
That was three lives ago. God I am getting old

M1 carbine. Had a friend who carried an M2 in Vietnam not because he loved it, at the start, but because he didn't want to be the odd man out with mags and ammo, and his strikers had carbines. There were M1 Garands and other WWII weapons as well, but a four foot eleven Cambode isn't a good match for a Garand or BAR. So they carried M1s and M2s, and so did Ben. In time he came to love it.

The last carbine I saw in second-line service was in a South American country in the 1990s. The guards at HQ had them. The Infantry units were armed with AKs (from when the national strongman was a communist) and FALs (from when the government had looked to European trainers). Rather typically, they had no sight adjustment tools for the FALs. Numrich Arms and the diplomatic pouch saved the day.

I don't doubt that WWII weapons are still in use here and there –– Bolivia and Argentina still have honor guards wearing German stahlhelms and shouldering gleaming Mausers –– but most of them are quite out of fashion. I'm surprised that the Israelis would have any use for carbines –– they seem to have retired everything but M16s.

Until about 1992-94 they still taught WWII weapons to Special Forces weapons sergeants. Now they don't bother, they just have some ungraded familiarization with the retro stuff. But, at the start of the Afghan war you could find the most amazing things in Talib or warlord caches. I knew one artillery officer who found two muzzle-loading cannon and brought them home! We captured one of just about anything that fired a projectile in the 19th and 20th centuries. No US weapons, except for a few M2HBs, though.

The M1 Carbine is not an IDF weapon( though the designed the Magal, an M1 Carbine AK bullpup)  They are issued to auxiliaries like the Mash Az neighborhood watch.  It is not uncommon to see tour guides in certain areas of Israel toting M1 Carbines.
Israel Carbine

I would love to have an M2 carbine someday. My great-uncle carried an M1 carbine and a 1911 through Africa, Sicily, then France and Germany. He had nothing but good things to say about them, although he wished the carbine had a little more power. He said the 1911 saved his bacon several times. The M1 carbine is one of my facvcorite weapons, and the first semi-auto I ever shot. First shot was in the black, second shot keyholed it, then the owner didn't want me to shoot it anymore. Olgunner was there, he probably doesn't remember though. First time I ever shot a Garand too. Both are great weapons.

What a coincidence: M1 carbine was the first semi auto I fired.  My older cousin was a Postal Inspector and had one as a trunk weapon.  I was about 10 or 12 (1962ish).  Hit a "Bubble Up" can at 60 yards with the first shot!  I was stuck on the carbine ever since.  My dad was on Iwo Jima and carried an Inland Carbine, and his two brothers were Marine tankers all over the Pacific and had carbines.  They never said much about the war, but my dad did say he liked the carbine, and he was a great shot with it.  

I got my first carbine in about 1981 (A Winchester with an "ugly flip sight and no bayonet lug"  I traded it for an upgraded one. Was I stupid or what!)  I have continuously had a USGI M1 carbine ever since. I used it as a LEO trunk weapon most of my career.  Throughout the last 30 years, it is the one weapon I would feel naked if I didn't have it in the safe.  If I could only keep two weapons, one would be the carbine and the other would be my S&W 469 9mm carry pistol.  I worked on and fired M2 Carbines at the PD in the 80s, and really liked them.

My CMP Inland with all late features:  Wish I still had the 1911!

A picture in an earlier stock with some of my dad's Iwo stuff: