Interesting look at politics, lobbists, and the service carbine

For a company with no lobbyist the past decade, Colt has done pretty well. First, they manage to convince a federal court that the M4 is a new weapon compared to the M16 and that they have exclusive rights to the TDP.

Then after losing M16 production to FNMI, they manage to convince the Army to buy M4s as a replacement. Normally a new rifle would require an open competition; but now Colt argues the M4 is just a derivative of the M16 and so no open competition is necessary.

Then to put the cherry on top, the XM8 program is successfully killed off when it tries to pull the same trick as opponents argue that the XM8 is sufficiently different from the XM29 that won the open competition to require a new open competition. Instead of a new competition, the program gets the axe entirely. Interesting that H&K submitted the XM8 for the dust trials and did well; but is submitting the HK416 for the M4 Replacement Trials. In fact, given all the development on the XM8, it is strange you don't see it anywhere. Bet there is a good story behind that...
 
I agree. The rumors in the Army behind the XM8 is that there were some back room deals between HK and the commander of Infantry Branch (located in Ft Benning, GA) that if Infantry Branch selected the XM8 that HK would build the factory in Columbus as well as finance the majority of the then-planned Infantry Museum in Columbus. Both were built, but of course Colt successfully blocked the Army from adopting the XM8 in court.

The M4 was originally designed for and adopted by SOCOM. The real question is how did the rest of the Army choose to replace the M16A2 which cost $181 and had max effective ranges of 300/800 meters with a carbine that cost 5 times as much and has max effective ranges of 250/600 meters? I certainly don't want to turn this into a debate about the M4. I am more interested in how politics play into all this. If you study how the Stryker was chosen, you will see a lot of similarities including West Point classmates, paid retired generals on coprorate boards, powerful senators, etc.

And no, my real name is not Jesse Ventura.
 
I read that the XM8 was discarded due to issues with sustained fire or something like that.

But the adoption of service arms has always been political.


Look at Canada's Ross rifle. Terrible. (Although Soviet marksmen won some medals with it), but since it was designed by a Canadian, it got adopted and killed or maimed lots of soldiers.

Look at Czechoslovakia. They discarded the CZ 52 for the Makarov, an inferior pistol IMO. They were under Soviet influence (but they did keep the vz. 58)

Also the adoption of the M9.

etc.
 
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