JACK ARMY, scanning my sector!
"Use the right lube and your weapon should work fine". I'm making that my new motto.
"Use the right lube and your weapon should work fine." This is not always the case. I been on many patrols where the dust buildup was so severe that a weapon was rendered inoperable when oil based lubricants were used. As I see it, we can always buy a new M16 when one wears out early due to the use of graphite lubricants but we cannot buy a new life because my M16 did not function.
BUT, we do not have to rely on graphites in a dusty environment. I have found that a wax based teflon lubricant designed for use on bicycle chains if far superior to graphites and oils. [url] http://www.bicyclebuys.com/
Items...SKU=1736387PART [/url]When applied sparingly to all sliding surfaces it completely eliminates the metal on metal sliding/grinding sounds you thought was an accepted characteristic of the M16. Liberal use inside the bolt makes cleanup much easier too as the carbon wipes off with the wax/teflon even after several hundred rounds fired.
We used Militec-1. Great stuff and approved. Their website with ordering (NSNs) info: Militec-1.
They also have an offer for a free supply for the troops.
Go with Miltec. It worked great for us.
Yeah, another vote for the Miltec here. We love the stuff. We even use it on our 240's and M2's.
Clean your weapon often and don't use so damn much lube. Too many troops think their weapons should have a slick shine to it. They don't need that. Miltec does seem to be the trick though.
There doesn't seem to be a really good solution to the problem of motor-marching on sand trails, though, does there? Clean the heck out of your weapon, lube it with whatever you want, and 10 minutes down the trail it's full of sand. 1 grain is all it takes to jam up the m16; the m60 doesn't do much better (I'm showing my age as a GW1 vet). Vehicle-mounted weapons do even worse, as they have much more open construction than rifles, and are usually mounted where air, and therefore also airborne sand, can get at them from all directions. People criticized PFC Lynch's unit for all their weapons malfunctions, but I think even the most squared-away infantry unit would have had the same problems at the end of a couple hundred miles on the road. Are you going to stop twice an hour to brush sand out of your weapons?
Officers (myself included) and NCOs would yell and scream if you tried to roll with covers on your vehicle-mounted weapons, but with 20-20 hindsight, I see that we might have been wrong. The couple of seconds of reaction time you lose by ripping off a cover is a lot better than having a weapon permanently out of the fight because of builtup road dust.
Maybe part of the solution, rather than the perfect lube, is designing some kind of easy-off dust cover for weapons, similar to the tear-away plastic jungle bags the Army used to have (as seen on Saving Private Ryan). The issued vinyl covers for 50 cals are not very easy to take off or shoot through, but perhaps a variant with a very large area at the breech end could allow the weapon to cycle normally with the cover on. Make the top out of clear vinyl, and you could even use the sights! The bottom could be a big Velcro-attached flap to allow relatively rapid access to clear stoppages, change ammo cans, etc. As for personal weapons, I have seen soldiers make some pretty nifty expedients using the old desert-camo ruck cover - maybe that's a starting point . . . .
JM
Commenting by HaloScan
