A buddy of mine and I were having a discussion the other day about how Colt no longer sells the civilian M4 with the carry handle, and usually attaches a MagPul MBUS (although I’ve seen photos with the Matech sight).
It dawned on both of us that we’re curious as to how the dot-mil gets them.
Carry handle? MBUS? Matech sight? When a new military M4 is uncrated at the base, what comes with it?
This also led to a discussion about other things: What are the standard optics, lights, rails, etc. on an issue M4? I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a complete breakdown with specifics. If one were to want to duplicate a military M4 as close as possible minus the naughty bits of course, what accessories would one need?
For a clone get a Matech rear sight that doesn’t work, a scratched up rail, and a CCO, with missing elevation/ windage covers, that is also scratched and dented. Oh, and Peq15.
Pretty much any picture you see, or video of the Army has the standard M4.
We got fielded the A1s within the last year. They come with the Matech rear sight, KAC RAS, seven EPMs, and the same black sling that they’ve come with for decades. Optics and other stuff are separate and unit dependent but its a mix of CCOs and ACOGs for most of the big Army.
Does the military even use the carry handle sight any more? Now I happen to like it since I started with the M1/M14/M16A1 and still at age 69 like iron sights. And you can mount optics to the carry handle. Nevertheless I suspect that the world is moving on and optics are now the favored sighting device.
About 5 years ago a Ft Sill I saw some soldiers carrying M16 of some type with that odd carry handle & red dot setup in front of it. They were arty guys of some flavor, but I haven’t seen any since.
My old squad leader said they used them for agitated crowd control right after the invasion of Iraq in 03. In my 4 trips overseas mine stayed in the bottom of my seabag.
We were issued the M4A1s recently. They came in card board boxes with Ma Tech BUIS, black GI Slings and RAS rails made by P&S. A KAC style vertical fore grip and rail covers were also included.
Nope. I went through infantry OSUT back in 2011 and we didn’t even do the bayonet course. Most units have giant tough boxes with them just sitting around, and some have even started turning them in I believe.
OP,
Thank you for bringing this up…what about other stuff? For example, can a soldier decide to buy a bunch of Brownell mags, their own sling & optic? Or, what about being “in country” and needing something? I recall reading that many 30 round magazines cam from family and unofficial channels during Vietnam. Do soldiers still get sent gear, knives, etc?
Thank you.
Much of that depends on chain-of-command(COC). For example, in 2013 my COC only allowed black furniture since the rifles were issued with black furniture. Many of us purchased our own magazines, sling, etc. I didn’t have need of much since the Army was pretty much caught up on supply by the year, esp where I was. You will probably hear something different based on command, location, year, and branch. Everyone knows POGs have it easier than grunts, but when we’d work with the Sir Force, even our POGs looked like grunts, and all the Air Force personnel had to do was ask for what they wanted.