Ya, JTAC see a butt load of action. I worked with SF pretty regular and they all had either an AF JTAC or TACP assigned to them. Who ever says AF guys don't see combat were smokin dope... Some of us do and did. That's a tough gig.

I never had issues with my M-4, M-16A2, GUU, or GAU over the years. My last tour, we did some pretty heavy training while in Iraq and shot a serious amount of rounds to stay sharp and test the equipment. We did have M-4's fail. Every time it was the operator's shitty mx. It didn't matter what M4 we gave them, it failed during training. "Some people you just can't reach."

One of the things we changed that helped (aside from babysitting the retards) was getting rid of the CLP and using Tetra gun oil and 30 wt motor oil as lube. Then we had to reprogram some of the brighter NCO's about leaving them dry. You have to use lube even in dusty conditions, you have to clean more too. Once we got that straight (and babysitting the retards) guns ran smooth. I put over 2000 rounds through my M4 in one training session in about an hour. It was crazy hot, but still ran like it was new. Ditch the CLP and go to something that works, clean it like your life depends on it, and the M4 will run like a raped ape.

You want something that runs as reliably as an AK, be prepared to sacrific the accuracy. Much of the reliability comes with much looser tolerances. That costs.

The question, "do our troops have the best gun money can buy" is a loaded question. Of course they don't... At face value, one gun, there are much better out there IMO. In the MASS quantities that we use in the military? That's a crap load of guns and ammo... M4's pretty cost effective. The difference between Direct impingment and say a 416 upper or 556 upper piston driven gun might show an improvement in reliability, but you do lose a bit of accuracy. You still have to clean and lube as much as an M4 or have issues. Not really the best solution.

I doubt you will see the military go away from the M4 for quite some time, and it will take a leap in technology to move to the change. Caseless ammo that's reliable would be the one that comes to mind, but we are far from that yet.