6/18/2008, 4:20 AM, Wanat village, Nuristan province, Afgahnistan. Around two hundred Taliban insurgents are firing on two dozen Afghan soldiers and forty-eight Americans. Cpl. Jonathan Ayers and Spc. Chris McKaig held off the insurgents from a crows nest, firing over three-hundred rounds. By McKaig’s twelfth magazine, his M-4 carbine overheated, and he dropped his gun. As insurgents advanced he picked up his gun to return fire and found that it had been jammed. In the firefight Cpl. Ayers was shot and killed. In the end nine American soldiers had been killed in action, and twenty-seven had been wounded.
Why were poorly armed Taliban forces able to overtake a NATO coalition so easily? Though numbers represent a decisive disadvantage, our troops are trained to fight in situations where they are out-numbered. The real problem with today’s infantry forces is that they are being supplied with outdated technology. The M-4 and M-16 variants have been in use for over sixty years. Though updated versions have been released since its introduction (The M-16A4), the rifle remains largely unchanged.
The AR-15 was designed as a civilian rifle with the purpose of killing animal pests. President John F. Kennedy and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had the rifle militarized into an addition known as the M-16. When compared to the M-14, the M-16 completely outclassed the previous standard rifle in all categories. It was lighter, more accurate, and had a mode for automatic fire. This new rifle also utilized a gas pressure loading system, which expedites firing.
This system is the weapon’s Achilles heel. When debris enters the barrel, the loading system jams. In the Sandstorm reliability test, the M-4 came in last place. Kalisnakovs (Used by insurgents through out the world) are known for their durability. These rifles fire around a hundred and forty rounds a minute without jamming, the M-16 fires roughly half that. Today’s military landscape calls for a rifle that can withstand treacherous climates; the M-4 is not that rifle.
But our military has the largest budget in the world? Where is all of this funding going? This year Boeing rolled out the new F-35 stealth fighter, a trillion dollar project, retailing at 101 million a jet. The world is entering an era of conflict where ground soldiers are becoming less and less of a factor in conflict. Drones are being utilized more frequently, and combat is becoming smaller in scale. This transition is not happening fast enough; eighty percent of American casualties sustained are by infantry.
So how do we fix this problem? One solution is to accelerate the process of the smaller, more efficient fighting force, where fewer soldiers are required. However, the field of war will always require actual soldiers. The military must develop a new rifle for infantrymen. The department of defense estimates that it would cost two billion dollars to develop a new assault rife. Though today’s conflicts call for small-scale operations, who knows what the future military landscape will hold? One thing we do know is that an effective rifle is the difference between life and death. The American military needs to invest more in its infantry rather than other sectors of operations.