Colt's grip on military rifle market called bad deal
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 like Iraq, he adds, and requires far more maintenance than more durable carbines.
``And if you tend to have the problem at the wrong time, you're putting your life on the line,'' says Coburn, who began examining the M4's performance last year after receiving complaints from soldiers. ``The fact is, the American GI today doesn't have the best weapon. And they ought to.''
U.S. military officials don't agree. They 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 currently available.
``There's not a weapon out there that's significantly better than the M4,'' says Col. Robert Radcliffe, director of combat developments at the Army Infantry Center in Fort Benning, Ga. ``To replace it with something that has essentially the same capabilities as we have today doesn't make good sense.''
Colt's exclusive production agreem special operations forces, who have their own acquisition budget and the latitude to buy gear the other military branches can't.
Or won't.
``All I know is, we're not having the competition, and the technology that is out there is not in the hands of our troops,'' says Jack Keane, a former Army general who pushed unsuccessfully for an M4 replacement before retiring four years ago.
The dispute over the M4 has been overshadowed by larger but not necessarily more important concerns. When the public's attention is focused on the annual defense budget, it tends to be captured by bigger-ticket items, like the Air Force's F-22 Raptors that cost $160 million each.
The Raptor, a radar-evading jet fighter, has never been used in Iraq and Afghanistan. For the troops who patrol Baghdad's still-dangerous neighborhoods or track insurgents along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, there's no piece of gear more critical than the rifles on their shoulders. They go everywhere with them, even to the bathroom and the chow hall.
Yet the military has a poor track record for getting high-quality firearms to warfighters. Since the Revolutionary War, mountains of red tape, oversize egos and never-ending arguments over bullet size and gunpowder have delayed or doomed promising efforts.
The M16, designed by the visionary gunsmith Eugene Stoner, had such a rough entry into military service in the mid-1960s that a congressional oversight committee assailed the Army for behavior that bordered on criminal negligence.
Stoner's lighter, more accurate rifle was competing against a heavier, more powerful gun the Army had heavily invested in. To accept the M16 would be to acknowledge a huge mistake, and ordnance officials did as much as they could to keep from buying the new automatic weapon. They continually fooled with Stoner's design.
``The Army, if anything, was trying to sideline and sabotage it,'' said Richard Colton, a historian with the Springfield Armory Museum in Massachusetts.
Despite the hurdles, the M16 would become the military's main battlefield rifle. And Colt, a company founded nearly 170 years ago by Hartford native Samuel Colt, was the primary manufacturer. Hundreds of thousands of M16s have been produced over the years for the U.S. military and foreign customers. Along with Colt, FNMI, an FN Herstal subsidiary in South Carolina, has also produced M16s.
Development of the carbine was driven by a need for a condensed weapon that could be used in tight spaces but still had plenty of punch. Colt's answer was the 7 1/2-pound M4. The design allowed the company to leverage the tooling used for the M16.
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.
Along the way, Colt's hold has been threatened but not broken.
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 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. So do U.S. law enforcement agencies and militaries in many NATO countries.
More than $300 million has been spent on 221,000 of the carbines over the past two years alone. And the Defense Department is asking Congress to provide another $230 million for 136,000 more.
Keane, the retired Army general, knows how difficult it is to develop and deliver a brand-new rifle to the troops. As vice chief of staff, the Army's second highest-ranking officer, Keane pushed for the acquisition of a carbine called the XM8.
The futuristic-looking rifle was designed by Heckler &Koch. According to Keane, the XM8 represented the gains made in firearms technology over the past 40 years.
The XM8 would cost less and operate far longer without being lubricated or cleaned than the M4 could, Heckler &Koch promised. The project became bogged down by bureaucracy, however. In 2005, after $33 million had been invested, the XM8 was shelved. A subsequent audit by the Pentagon inspector general concluded the program didn't follow the military's strict acquisition rules.
Keane blames a bloated and risk-averse bureaucracy for the XM8's demise.
``This is all about people not wanting to move out and do something different,'' Keane says. ``Why are they afraid of the competition?''
As Colt pumps out 800 new M4s every day to meet U.S. and overseas demand, the company is remodeling its aging 270,000-square-foot facility in a hardscrabble section of Connecticut's capital city. New tooling and metal cutting machines have been installed as part of a $10 million plant improvement.
Many of the old ways remain, however. Brick-lined pit furnaces dating back to the 1960s are still used to temper steel rifle barrels.
``Modernizing the plant while trying to maintain quality and meet deliveries has been a challenge,'' says James Battaglini, Colt's chief operatiColt, using the acronym for the command. ``They wanted something unique.''
With the SCAR not yet in full-scale production, Heckler &Koch's HK416 is being used by elite units like Delta Force, the secretive anti-terrorism unit. The command would not comment on the HK416 other than to say there are ``a small number'' of the carbines in its inventory.
A key difference between the Colt carbine and the competitors is the way the rounds are fed through the rifle at lightning speed.
The SCAR and HK416 use a gas piston system to cycle the bullets automatically. The M4 uses ``gas impingement,'' a method that pushes hot carbon-fouled gas through critical parts of the gun, according to detractors. Without frequent and careful maintenance, they say, the M4 is prone to jamming and will wear out more quickly than its gas-piston competitors.
``A gas piston system runs a little bit smoother and a lot cleaner,'' says Dale Bohner, a retired Air Force commando who now works for Heckler &Koch. ``If the U.S. military opened up a competition for all manufacturers, I see the 416 being a major player in that.''
The top half of the Heckler &Koch gun - a section known as the upper receiver that includes the barrel and the gas piston - fits on the lower half of the M4. So if the military wanted a low-cost replacement option, it could buy HK416 upper receivers and mate them with the lower part of the M4 for about $900 a conversion, according to Bohner.
Yet outside of Special Operations Command, there seems to be no rush to replace the M4.
Brig. Gen. Mark Brown, head of the Army office that buys M4s and other combat gear, traveled to Iraq and Afghanistan last summer to get feedback from soldiers on Colt's carbine.
``I didn't hear one single negative comment,'' Brown says. ``Now, I know I'm a general, and when I go up and talk to a private, they're going to say everything's OK, everything's fine. I said, 'No, no, son. I flew 14,000 miles out here to see you on the border of Afghanistan. The reason I did that was to find out what's happening.'''
Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., says the troops may not be aware of the alternatives. He wants the Pentagon to study the options and make a decision before Congress does.
``Sen. Coburn has raised a good question: 'Do we have the best personal weapon?' And I don't know that we do,'' Sessions said. ``We're not comfortable now. Let's give this a rigorous examination.''
On the Net:
Colt Defense: http://www.colt.com/
U.S. Army: http://peosoldier.army.mil/
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 like Iraq, he adds, and requires far more maintenance than more durable carbines.
``And if you tend to have the problem at the wrong time, you're putting your life on the line,'' says Coburn, who began examining the M4's performance last year after receiving complaints from soldiers. ``The fact is, the American GI today doesn't have the best weapon. And they ought to.''
U.S. military officials don't agree. They 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 currently available.
``There's not a weapon out there that's significantly better than the M4,'' says Col. Robert Radcliffe, director of combat developments at the Army Infantry Center in Fort Benning, Ga. ``To replace it with something that has essentially the same capabilities as we have today doesn't make good sense.''
Colt's exclusive production agreem special operations forces, who have their own acquisition budget and the latitude to buy gear the other military branches can't.
Or won't.
``All I know is, we're not having the competition, and the technology that is out there is not in the hands of our troops,'' says Jack Keane, a former Army general who pushed unsuccessfully for an M4 replacement before retiring four years ago.
The dispute over the M4 has been overshadowed by larger but not necessarily more important concerns. When the public's attention is focused on the annual defense budget, it tends to be captured by bigger-ticket items, like the Air Force's F-22 Raptors that cost $160 million each.
The Raptor, a radar-evading jet fighter, has never been used in Iraq and Afghanistan. For the troops who patrol Baghdad's still-dangerous neighborhoods or track insurgents along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, there's no piece of gear more critical than the rifles on their shoulders. They go everywhere with them, even to the bathroom and the chow hall.
Yet the military has a poor track record for getting high-quality firearms to warfighters. Since the Revolutionary War, mountains of red tape, oversize egos and never-ending arguments over bullet size and gunpowder have delayed or doomed promising efforts.
The M16, designed by the visionary gunsmith Eugene Stoner, had such a rough entry into military service in the mid-1960s that a congressional oversight committee assailed the Army for behavior that bordered on criminal negligence.
Stoner's lighter, more accurate rifle was competing against a heavier, more powerful gun the Army had heavily invested in. To accept the M16 would be to acknowledge a huge mistake, and ordnance officials did as much as they could to keep from buying the new automatic weapon. They continually fooled with Stoner's design.
``The Army, if anything, was trying to sideline and sabotage it,'' said Richard Colton, a historian with the Springfield Armory Museum in Massachusetts.
Despite the hurdles, the M16 would become the military's main battlefield rifle. And Colt, a company founded nearly 170 years ago by Hartford native Samuel Colt, was the primary manufacturer. Hundreds of thousands of M16s have been produced over the years for the U.S. military and foreign customers. Along with Colt, FNMI, an FN Herstal subsidiary in South Carolina, has also produced M16s.
Development of the carbine was driven by a need for a condensed weapon that could be used in tight spaces but still had plenty of punch. Colt's answer was the 7 1/2-pound M4. The design allowed the company to leverage the tooling used for the M16.
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.
Along the way, Colt's hold has been threatened but not broken.
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 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. So do U.S. law enforcement agencies and militaries in many NATO countries.
More than $300 million has been spent on 221,000 of the carbines over the past two years alone. And the Defense Department is asking Congress to provide another $230 million for 136,000 more.
Keane, the retired Army general, knows how difficult it is to develop and deliver a brand-new rifle to the troops. As vice chief of staff, the Army's second highest-ranking officer, Keane pushed for the acquisition of a carbine called the XM8.
The futuristic-looking rifle was designed by Heckler &Koch. According to Keane, the XM8 represented the gains made in firearms technology over the past 40 years.
The XM8 would cost less and operate far longer without being lubricated or cleaned than the M4 could, Heckler &Koch promised. The project became bogged down by bureaucracy, however. In 2005, after $33 million had been invested, the XM8 was shelved. A subsequent audit by the Pentagon inspector general concluded the program didn't follow the military's strict acquisition rules.
Keane blames a bloated and risk-averse bureaucracy for the XM8's demise.
``This is all about people not wanting to move out and do something different,'' Keane says. ``Why are they afraid of the competition?''
As Colt pumps out 800 new M4s every day to meet U.S. and overseas demand, the company is remodeling its aging 270,000-square-foot facility in a hardscrabble section of Connecticut's capital city. New tooling and metal cutting machines have been installed as part of a $10 million plant improvement.
Many of the old ways remain, however. Brick-lined pit furnaces dating back to the 1960s are still used to temper steel rifle barrels.
``Modernizing the plant while trying to maintain quality and meet deliveries has been a challenge,'' says James Battaglini, Colt's chief operatiColt, using the acronym for the command. ``They wanted something unique.''
With the SCAR not yet in full-scale production, Heckler &Koch's HK416 is being used by elite units like Delta Force, the secretive anti-terrorism unit. The command would not comment on the HK416 other than to say there are ``a small number'' of the carbines in its inventory.
A key difference between the Colt carbine and the competitors is the way the rounds are fed through the rifle at lightning speed.
The SCAR and HK416 use a gas piston system to cycle the bullets automatically. The M4 uses ``gas impingement,'' a method that pushes hot carbon-fouled gas through critical parts of the gun, according to detractors. Without frequent and careful maintenance, they say, the M4 is prone to jamming and will wear out more quickly than its gas-piston competitors.
``A gas piston system runs a little bit smoother and a lot cleaner,'' says Dale Bohner, a retired Air Force commando who now works for Heckler &Koch. ``If the U.S. military opened up a competition for all manufacturers, I see the 416 being a major player in that.''
The top half of the Heckler &Koch gun - a section known as the upper receiver that includes the barrel and the gas piston - fits on the lower half of the M4. So if the military wanted a low-cost replacement option, it could buy HK416 upper receivers and mate them with the lower part of the M4 for about $900 a conversion, according to Bohner.
Yet outside of Special Operations Command, there seems to be no rush to replace the M4.
Brig. Gen. Mark Brown, head of the Army office that buys M4s and other combat gear, traveled to Iraq and Afghanistan last summer to get feedback from soldiers on Colt's carbine.
``I didn't hear one single negative comment,'' Brown says. ``Now, I know I'm a general, and when I go up and talk to a private, they're going to say everything's OK, everything's fine. I said, 'No, no, son. I flew 14,000 miles out here to see you on the border of Afghanistan. The reason I did that was to find out what's happening.'''
Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., says the troops may not be aware of the alternatives. He wants the Pentagon to study the options and make a decision before Congress does.
``Sen. Coburn has raised a good question: 'Do we have the best personal weapon?' And I don't know that we do,'' Sessions said. ``We're not comfortable now. Let's give this a rigorous examination.''
On the Net:
Colt Defense: http://www.colt.com/
U.S. Army: http://peosoldier.army.mil/
