Another post! Due to some ridiculously bad weather out here in Hawai’i, I had to shuffle some articles around. This one was supposed to be released later in the year, but I am glad I had it on tap! Check out the shop to support the blog! Everything is cheaper than it once was, which is wild considering the state of the world. Inflation’s a bitch, but not at Norseman Creative! Treat yo self!
Sometime in the past couple of years, I got this idea in my head that I should pay homage to the best branch of the U.S. Military by procuring and/or building samples of the small arms used by the Air Force. I already had an M9, so I moved on to the GUU-5, and the next service weapon build I decided to tackle was the M4 Carbine.
Adopted by the Army in 1994, the M4 carbine is a shortened version of the tried and true M16 rifle that began service as the standard infantry rifle for the U.S. military in the 1960s. The carbine first saw wide-spread adoption during deployments to Kosovo in 1999. The M4 replaced the M16 rifle as the U.S. Army’s standard in the mid-2000’s and has undergone almost 100 different official (and God only knows how many unofficial) modifications since introduction. The Air Force started adopting the M4 carbine shortly after the Army, but for the vast majority of Airmen, the M16 stuck around well into the mid-2010s.
I am actually convinced that the way the Air Force procures most of their small arms is to wait for the Army to be done playing with them, then adopt them in small batches as the Army surpluses them to Air Force armories. I might be wrong, but it would explain why the Air Force seems to lag a generation or two behind the Army in our small arms and how beat up the rifles are for a branch of service primarily staffed by desk jockeys. A notable exception is the M17 and M18 pistols, but this is a Beretta Neighborhood. SIG Pistols should move along and avert their eyes.
Without going into too much agonizing detail about a rifle that has been agonized over in magazines, books, and YouTube videos, the M4 went through a series of upgrades referred to as Special Operations Peculiar Modification (SOPMOD) Block I and Block II. The intent of the SOPMOD program was to provide increased capabilities to U.S. Special Operations troops, and those capabilities trickled down to the regular Army over time. Which meant the Air Force basically adopted the Block I upgrade as the Army transitioned to the Block II upgrade, while maintaining three-round burst M4s as opposed to the full-auto M4A1s the Army chose.
When I joined the Air Force in the summer of 2010, the M16A2 was the standard issued rifle, and that’s what I qualified on during Basic Cadet Training at USAFA. The M16A2 slapped into my hands was old, it probably entered military service in the 1980s, and the front sight post wouldn’t stay still. For the vast majority of blank and live-firing exercises I experienced in my early Air Force years, I used an M16.
My first ever experience with an M4 was at a “historic weapons” shoot at Fort Carson. In addition to shooting an M4, the cadets in attendance had the opportunity to fire different weapons from throughout the U.S. military’s history. The historic weapons shoot had it all from Revolutionary War muskets and Kentucky long rifles, to World War I era bolt action rifles, to an M1 Garand (that exploded right in front of me at the end of the shoot) and an M1 Carbine from World War II. The M4 at the historic weapons shoot was actually a semi-automatic AR-15, an “M-Forgery” if you will.
I didn’t put my grubby hands on a real M4 until years later, during the rapid train-up for my first deployment. Keep in mind, as an Air Force Desk Pilot I used money as my primary weapon system, so walking around the Middle East with an assault rifle wasn’t really my job. Even still, the Air Force had me run through a basic qualification course, just in case things went totally to shit. Frankly, the vast majority of my time using the M4 is virtually in video games like Call of Duty and Battlefield.
While playing Battlefield, I do like to run the M4 as it was issued to me. Battlefield 4’s portrayal of the M4 carbine was more faithful to my reality than the newest iteration in Battlefield 6. I re-installed Battlefield 4 to grab a couple screen shots, and was greeted with my preferred M4 loadout right away. Rather than playing video games using weapons that max out stats, I think it is fun to set the virtual rifles up in much the same way you would have seen in the average G.I. Joe’s hands fighting in the GWOT.
After building the GUU-5 basically piecemeal across several months, I decided to cut to the chase and buy fewer parts for my M4 Build. First, I procured a brand-spanking-new Colt 6920, 16-inch carbine upper receiver. These aren’t hard to come by, and I got mine from Brownells for just over five-hundred doubloons. The most…particular… type of gun “cloner” will probably have an issue with my choice of 16-inch barrel vs the actual 14.5-inch of a true military M4. I currently live in Hawai’i, and anything under 16-inches comes with a lot of scrutiny, and I really don’t like the way the rifle looks with a compliant, extended flash hider on the muzzle. And that’s what this really all about, the aesthetics.
Next on the parts list was tracking down a Knight’s Armament Company (KAC) Rail Attachment System (RAS) picatinny railed fore-end. There are tons of lookalike options on the market that are both newer and cheaper. The RAS, however, is an iconic part of the SOPMOD Block I upgrade. I had to get a real one. The RAS Rail is only available as surplus, and they can be quite difficult to track down. Luckily for me, I found a website that is a treasure trove of surplus parts and was able to procure a RAS with minimal strife.
Every time I shot an M4 in the Air Force, it had an Aimpoint M68 Close Combat Optic (CCO), which is the military designation for the Aimpoint Comp M2, M3, and M4. New, a Comp M4 goes for almost a grand. So I settled for an Aimpoint PRO at first. Later on, I was able to get a surplus Comp M4 along with KAC rail covers and a “broomstick” fore grip. I threw a folding rear sight that isn’t exactly correct, but the Air Force issued folding rear sight is not great and this one is close enough to fit the vibe. Again, this is all about vibes.
I actually ended up building out the upper receiver for my M4 right after finishing building the GUU-5 upper. At the time, however, I only had a single AR lower receiver in Hawai’i to use, so I brought one full rifle and two halves of a rifle to the local range to test out. That’s one of the nice parts of the AR platform, you can swap upper receivers by popping two pins and slapping a new one on.
Part of the impetus for finishing both the GUU-5 and the M4 was an instructional program I was trying to start for my cadets at Det 175. My intent was to give them a passing familiarization of military small arms they are going to encounter during their Air Force careers, so I brought two spare lower receivers back home from Minnesota to register in Hawai’i, one for the GUU-5 and one for the M4. A couple more basic parts later, and I was ready to rock and roll with both rifles.
Shortly after I finished building my M4, I was able to use it to teach safe rifle handling to several interested cadets, although I wasn’t able to secure an opportunity for live-fire due to the constraints that confronted us in Hawai’i. If any of those cadets are still interested, they can reach out via @norsemancreative on Instagram and I would be happy to meet them at Koko Head to put a few rounds down range.
I did, however, use my M4 in a rifle match on a particularly rainy day at Koko Head Shooting Complex. The match was particularly fun, and I finished middle of the pack, which I think is pretty good considering the competition-specific rifle builds I was up against.
Here’s a clip from one of the stages, one I was happy with minus a frustrating malfunction right at the start. This stage was my highest scoring stage of the day, and I believe I scored better than most due to the middle portion which required competitors to shoot while moving. In Hawai’i, most ranges only allow you to shoot while standing completely still. Even though I haven’t practiced shooting on the move for several years I used to practice doing so a lot. Many of the other competitors looked awkward trying to avoid the penalty for stopping to shoot, and that played to my advantage.
The full match video can be found here on the Norseman Creative YouTube channel, along with a bunch of other match footage and other adventures. The full video shows a few malfunctions that I had to clear. Since I was on the clock, I didn’t bother to stop and see if the malfunction was the fault of the gun, magazine, or ammunition, but my suspicion is the aluminum magazines I used were at fault.
With my M4 completed, I still have a few more small arms to procure for what I am starting to consider my “reference library” of USAF firearms. Stay tuned for whatever comes next!
Thanks for reading!