By Charlie Cutshaw For those of you who may have been on another planet for the past three or four years, our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are having serious reliability issues with the M16 rifle and M4 Carbine, especially the latter. The basic problems with the M16 and M4 are nothing new. M16 reliability issues date to the mid-1960s …

by David Crane david@defensereview.com This just in: DefenseReview has been told by one of its sources that FN Herstal’s/FNH USA, Inc.’s SCAR/SOFCAR (Special Operations Forces Combat Assault Rifle) program competition winner utilizes an updated/upgraded FN FNC upper receiver w/M1913 Picatinny rail system, mated to a modified M4/M4A1 Carbine-config/type lower receiver. Supposedly, the M4/M4A1 Carbine-config/type lower features an HK M4 (a.k.a. …

by David Crane david@defensereview.com Included in Gary Paul Johnston’s October 2003 "Soldier of Fortune" article is some great info on both the Armalite Mid-Length Carbine and A.R.M.S. Mid-Length S.I.R. System. The Armalite Mid-Length Carbine was designed specifically to overcome the long-known gas system-related problems associated with the standard M4/M4A1, problems that have been plaguing end-users for years. These include greatly …

By Jeff Gurwitch It’s been 8 years since my last Competition to Combat article, written back in 2018. It was the last year of use for both the Daniel Defense 10.3 CQBR upper and the 14.5 RISII non-front sight post upper. Beginning in 2019, U.S. Special Forces started to switch over to the Giessele URGI upper with mid-length gas system …

By Toby Melville March 10, 2020 Last updated on 3/10/20. The AR-15 is arguably one of the most prolific and modular rifles ever created. Not only has Eugene Stoner’s creation been in service for over 55 years, to date, the AR-15 sets the standard for accuracy, reliability, and modularity by which all modern rifles are measured. Due to the AR-15’s …

By Jeff Gurwitch June 4, 2018 I first came across the M855A1 Enhanced Performance Round (EPR) during my first deployment to Afghanistan back in 2012. At the time, M855A1 was only being issued in war zones, so none of us had any experience training with it prior to the deployment. While the penetration capability of M855A1 was pretty well documented …

By Jeff Gurwitch April 22, 2018 M855A1 ammunition has been in use overseas since at least 2011, and has been in widespread service at most U.S. Army bases since 2014. I myself first saw it in 2012 in Afghanistan. Now, when M855A1 first came out, like many others, I heard the stories that due to the increased pressure the round …

By David Crane david (at) defensereview (dot) com March 9, 2015 Last updated on 3/12/15. American Defense Manufacturing (ADM), long known for making superlative mounts for tactical AR (AR-15) accessories, is now making some pretty cool complete rifles. To that end, ADM COO John Gross recently showed DefenseReview (DR) a prototype piece of beautiful ballistic badassery known as the ADM …

By Mike Pannone July 11, 2011 I’ve been shooting 5.45 [5.45x39mm Russian] AR platforms for several years now, but the Spike’s Tactical is the best, by far. The names of the other brands are not important, other than the fact that they all ran well and were both direct impingement and piston driven. Reliability being the same, overall accuracy and …

By David Crane defrev (at) gmail (dot) com All photos contained in this article were shot by DefenseReview.com (DR), and are copyrighted. DefenseReview.com owns the copyright on these materials. The photos were shot with a Canon PowerShot S90 10-megapixel digital camera (still camera with video capability). May 15, 2011 Last updated on 6/03/11. While the production-version Atlantic Signal (AS) DOMINATOR …