Individual Carbine

This competition was for the Army only—the United States Marine Corps and other branches chose to stay with current weapons in service.

The proposal was passed before the Joint Requirements Oversight Council in August 2010, and the Army was to solicit submissions from the small arms industry by the end of that year.

If a new carbine was selected, the Army would see 500,000 purchased for infantry brigade combat teams (IBCT), and the existing and improved M4s given to support troops to replace their M16s.

This was because the winner is required to turn over technical data rights to the Army, who would distribute the blueprints to two other companies that would each produce one-third of the weapons purchased, and Colt did not want to reveal its trade secrets.

Stag Arms then bid for the contract to produce one-third of the winning weapon order quantity, while Knight's Armament submitted components for the upgraded M4A1.

[13] The phase II contenders were the FN FNAC, the Heckler & Koch HK416A5, a modified variant of the Remington ACR, the Adcor Defense BEAR Elite, the Beretta ARX-160, and the Colt Enhanced M4.

[12] On March 19, 2013, the Defense Department released a testimony as part of their efforts to improve spending efficiency and reduce overall waste.

[17] The PEO Soldier press conference was postponed to an unknown date because senior leaders had not made any decisions on the competition or other equipment programs.

[18] On June 6, 2013, the House Armed Services Committee passed an amendment to the 2014 budget that would prevent the Army from cancelling the IC program before user evaluations.

If passed into law, it would not take effect until October 1, 2013, which gave the Army four months to decide the fate of the program without violating a congressional directive.

PEO Soldier reported that no competitor demonstrated a significant improvement in weapon reliability to justify buying a new carbine.

Gabriele de Plano, vice president of military marketing and sales for Beretta, said he knew nothing of what the Army was planning just weeks before cancellation.

Brigadier General Paul A. Ostrowski, head of PEO Soldier, said the Army simply did not find the capability it was after with the rifles submitted.

Mark Westrom, owner of ArmaLite which designed the original M16 rifle, said the competition was "destined to fail" because the requirements did not represent a significant advance in fighting ability.

The Army admitted each entrant offered marginal improvements over the M4 Carbine, but that none would substantially increase a soldier's battlefield capability.

Even so, the Army insists they made industry aware of the ammo change, giving them time to adjust their designs and arranging for each vendor to fire 10,000 M855A1s at a private range.

ArmaLite did not participate in the competition because Westrom determined their designs weren't a revolutionary improvement over the M4 weapon system, and because the published Army requirements "set the bar so low" that the outcome that no one would win a contract was "predetermined.

"[21] On June 17, 2013, Senator Tom Coburn sent a letter to Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh expressing his disappointment in the decision to cancel the program without giving soldiers an opportunity to field test the weapons to determine if they were improvements over the current M4.

Coburn wanted to know where money from the cancelled program would go and why near-term small arms strategies did not include an assessment of a medium-caliber round for increased battlefield capability.

[22] On July 17, 2013, Adcor Defense announced it would not protest the Army's decision to terminate the program, and would focus on delivering BEAR rifles to commercial customers.

Adcor Chairman and CEO Jimmy Stavrakis said though they were "disappointed that the Army chose to discontinue a competition that could have provided soldiers with significant improvements in accuracy and reliability," they accepted the decision.

The report reads, "The Army Deputy Chief of Staff … inappropriately approved and validated the requirements document used to support the establishment of the individual carbine program.