"WASHINGTON (AP) - In the chaos of an early morning assault on a remote U.S. outpost in eastern Afghanistan, Staff Sgt. Erich Phillips' M4 carbine quit firing as militant forces surrounded the base. The machine gun he grabbed after tossing the rifle aside didn't work either. When the battle in the small village of Wanat ended, nine U.S. soldiers lay dead and 27 more were wounded. A detailed study of the attack by a military historian found that weapons failed repeatedly at a "critical moment" during the firefight on July 13, 2008, putting the outnumbered American troops at risk of being overrun by nearly 200 insurgents. Which raises the question: Eight years into the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, do U.S. armed forces have the best guns money can buy? Despite the military's insistence that they do, a small but vocal number of troops in Afghanistan and Iraq has complained that the standard-issue M4 rifles need too much maintenance and jam at the worst possible times.Any soldier that has served in a desert region knows that weapons maintenance is a pain in the duffle bag. In my time it was the M16, faithful when it fired, but prone to jams with just the littlest amount of dirt. Many times it's not the weapons but the quality of the ammo, something that also needs constant inspection but often doesn't get it.
October 11, 2009
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Afghanistan
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