U.S. military losing edge in small arms.

• Author: Schatz, Jim
• Position: COMMENTARY

* Since the end of World War II, only 10 U.S tank crew members have been killed in warfare. This is an amazing testament to fighting vehicle technology and the money spent to develop and sustain that tactical edge over our enemies.

In that same period, the United States has lost some 60,000 soldiers in small arms engagements, an approximate one for one exchange.

Few foes on the planet could hope to dominate America in a tank, air or naval battle. Yet every bad actor with an AK-47 takes on U.S. and NATO ground forces in a small arms fight. We are no longer suitably armed to prevent it.

This happens because the current U.S. Army small arms development and acquisition system is dysfunctional and virtually unworkable, even for those within the system. It has not brought troops substantial evolutionary small arms and ammunition capabilities in years, or even decades, and too often not at all, and almost never on or under budget. Lives are often lost as a result.

Case in point is the Battle of Wanat in 2008 at Combat Outpost Kahler in Afghanistan. Nine soldiers of the 173rd Brigade Combat Team--in a valiant attempt to prevent enemy insurgents from overrunning their positions--were killed and 27 others injured when numerous squad weapons to include M4s, M249s and MK19s stopped firing due to overheating.

The failures of the M4 carbines, caused by excessive sustained fire rates, were predictable and well known by experts. Army tests in 1990, and a 2001 report by U.S. Special Operations Command, documented this serious shortcoming and yet nothing was done to address it until after the avoidable deaths at Wanat.

Equal blame can be laid at the feet of those in Congress and our military leadership who support small arms programs at best as an afterthought. Small arms are funded with the crumbs leftover from the big ticket programs that eat up billions upon billions of dollars developing high-tech weapons that too often are never used in modern warfare.

Small arms are the most deployed weapon systems in our arsenal, yet the age of America's eight most numerous conventional military small arms are on average more than 35 years old. While we have replaced uniforms, helmets, body armor, radios, rations and footwear countless times in three decades, the weapons and ammunition we use in 2015 are little more than variants of Vietnam-era technology possessing the antiquated capabilities of a bygone era.

The Army continues to procure weapons with old performance specifications that have been repeatedly eclipsed by superior commercial small arms used by our allies, our top-tier special operations forces and sometimes by our enemies. Elite units--with a few exceptions --do not use the standard-issue U.S. Army small arms or ammunition. Why? Because they are inferior to the more advanced weapons selected by these units. There is a fundamental difference between their acquisition process and that of the "Big Army," where there are hundreds of decisions makers and countless agencies and offices involved.

While some might argue that SOF units fight differently than conventional ones, in the act of aiming at and engaging the enemy with small arms the fundamentals are the same, as are the penalties for failure.

The rifle used to kill Osama bin Laden was not the standard-issue M4 carbine. In the military's top-tier SOF units, the M4 has all but been replaced by the commercial HK416 rifle, developed on a handshake by industry with no U.S. research-and-development dollars back in 2004. This rifle outperformed the M4 carbine in no less than four government comparison tests, multiple Army "dust tests" and the "individual carbine" program assessment at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland.

No less than five attempts have been made by the Army to replace the current M16 and M4 family of weapons since 2005, yet still today troops serve with a rifle and cartridge that was, in its earlier form, first fielded in the early 1960s.

While the current Army standard-issue M4 carbine has received a series of upgrades over time, not one of these improvements have made the weapon more effective where it really counts --in its effects on target and stand-off range beyond that of U.S. enemies. Yet, today we plan to procure tens of thousands of M4s with "new"...