Weapons Lube Issued in Iraq May Be Causing Fatalities

Haven't seen this yet. Truly frustrating, and nearly criminal, IMO.

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/news/investigators/wabc_investigators_111803gunlube.html

(New York-WABC, November 18, 2003) — In a four-month investigation that reaches from the sands of Iraq to the halls of the Pentagon, we found that weapons given to tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers may not work in the desert. All because of a defective product.

snip

Eyewitness News obtained a copy of a general's "lessons learned" report which details weapons performance in Iraq. The report says soldiers repeatedly stated that "CLP was not a good choice for weapon's maintenance", claiming it "attracted sand to the weapon."

snip

Even that "lessons learned" report put out by the Pentagon states that soldiers considered "Militec to be a much better solution for lubricating weapons" than the military's CLP.


snip

For nearly seven months, the military blocked soldier's orders for the rival Militec. Only in October, in the middle of our investigation, did the Army again begin to fill orders for Militec.

:mad:

Nevermind.

for firearms applications. IMHO, NEITHER are suitable for a desert environment. What a desert environment calls for is a DRY lubricant. Either that, or just isue AKs to the troops.

sign me "no fan of the Armalite series."

...shake it once and fire it w/o it jamming or blowing up in your face, give me more than that. One of my favoriate training days in the Army was the day we got to play with Soviet equipment. Also fires a lager round. The M-16, and our new piece of crap squad machine gun, only fires a .22 cal slug. The AK series, for the most part, fires a 7.62 mm slug. Talk about yet another improvement that would improve teh survivability of our troops. A machine gun that fires a .22 cal slug? WHAT THE FUCK? We used to have a machine that fired a 7.62 mm round. But it was too good a weapon, and apparently soeone wasn't getting any more kickback from it.

have gone back to a 7.62 GPMG, the FN-MAG 58. The M-60 was a piece of crap. I'm glad it's gone.

Silicon based dry lube works great on rifles and magazines. Oil based stuff will accumulate dirt and sand to cause malfunctions. Did Halliburton sell the cleaning materials to the military?

While in Afghanistan, my team never used CLP. All we ever used was graphite powder. Worked great didn't become a dust/sand magnet and didn't harm the weapons.....Used it every day over there.

CLP is an excellent "cleaner" it works very well to remove the grit and carbon from your weapon. It a crap for a lubricant. The M-16 rilfe is a less than great weapon, but it is adequate as a mass produced weapon. It is milled to too tight a set of specs and the tolerances are too narrow. Just a little grit is all it takes to jam them, and CLP definately attracts grit.

Give me an AK-47 anyday. Say what you will about them but the Soviets knew how to build a "field capable" rifle. Why do you think everyone else in the world uses them.

that you could probably dig up 1/2 dozen versions with a cursory forum search

I entered the word "lube" into the search engine and gave it a one month, all-forums parameter. Got nothing on this story. I was rather surprised, and I'm also surprised at the lack of response.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=118&topic_id=21887

Hmmm..I coulda sworn....my mistake

you searched for "lube"..... :evilgrin:


Sorry, Beevis moment....

It's the commercial version of CLP - aka Banana Oil.

The CLP the Army issues comes straight from Break-Free in black bottles with gold lettering, just like the Break-Free everyone leaves on the shelf at the local gun emporium.

Now, this is the stuff you want to use: http://www.drislide.com. It is a molybdenum disulphide lube in an evaporating carrier. Put this on your weapon, or anything else (I like it on car door locks) and you are left with this nice black film of slickness and no oil to collect crud.

:kick: