Army Awards M4A1 Production Contract to Remington; Part One of Two-Pronged Carbine Strategy
As reported by Defense Review and Military.com's KitUp! Blog, the Army has awarded a production contract for M4A1 carbines to Remington Arms, shifting away from the original producer, Colt. The $83M contract is for production of 24,000 M4A1 carbines. This is historic as the incumbent and primary producer of rifles for the US Army for the last forty-plus years will not no longer be delivering a rifle to Uncle Sam.
This award is part of an Army two-prong strategy to evaluate a new carbine direction. The first prong is the product improvement of the current M4. The Army assumed rights to the technical data for the M4 from Colt in 2009 (an event long delayed due to a successful Colt lawsuit in the '90s). By competing, the Army succeeds in driving down the price for the M4 -- the Remington contract price appears to be about 2/3rds of the price that the Army was paying Colt -- and begins product improvement by first adopting the SOF M4A1 version, which besides having some hardened components drops the three-round burst capability in favor of full automatic. The M4 had started adopting M4A1 components a number of years ago, with one example being the stiffer M4A1 "golden" extractor spring which reduced extraction jams.
Lest anyone decry the loss of three-round burst, training is the best burst limiter and means of conserving ammo. A lot of experimentation with burst fire showed that with three-round burst soldiers tended to overcompensate for muzzle climb and the burst was more likely to miss the target. Operationally nothing is lost by the return to full auto and the soldier gets a lot more choices for employment. But I digress.
The savings from the competition is about on par with the savings realized when the Army competed production of the M16A4 and the contract went from Colt to FN USA.
The second prong, of course, is the Individual Carbine Competition, which is going on now to assess commercial alternatives to the M4/M4A1. The winner of that effort is supposed to be compared against the current cost of M4 carbine production to determine if the Army continues to buy M4-series carbines or changes to a new weapon.
Frankly, as I've predicted before, I expect the business case analysis will favor keeping the M4, particularly when this new award to Remington puts the cost of an M4A1, with its improvements, into the $675/carbine range. Between the similarity in performance from most commercial offerings, the existing robust logistics tail for M4/M16-series weapons, and the fact that the Army owns the technical data and can continue to compete the M4 in the future, it will be very difficult for a new contender to overcome the incumbent's price and logistical advantage. A new producer will either have to "buy in" to the contract by selling a significant number of carbines at a net loss, or offer such a significant performance increase that offsets the higher price in a "best value" competition. Since I don't believe any of the ICC offerors has performance so exceptional that there will be a win on a best value basis, it comes down to cost. At the end of the day, it's almost always cheaper to improve what you've got rather than buy new unless there's a significant shift in requirements.
It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.
