Colt's Manufacturing of West Hartford, Connecticut this week got the nod from the U.S. Army to supply carbines and suppressors to be sent to Israel. 
 
The $26,675,000 firm-fixed-price contract, announced Wednesday by the Pentagon, is listed as being for Colt "M4A1 carbines, suppressors, and flash suppressors." At the same time, Fiscal Year 2024 Foreign Military Sales funds in the same amount were obligated, earmarked for Israel.
 
While Israel has a robust small arms manufacturing capability via the large new Israel Weapon Industries facility in  Kiryat Gat, some 20 miles south of Tel Aviv – and the company has long supplied the X95 Tavor and TAR-21 rifle systems to the Israeli Defense Forces – the IDF has also used American-made M4 and older M16A1/A2 models for generations. 
 
Some 27,000 M4s, previously ordered last fall after the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas terrorists, were reportedly blocked in December over Biden administration concerns that the guns would be transferred to Israeli settlers in the West Bank. Itamar Ben Gvir, a Knesset member who serves as the country's Minister of National Security, had before that announced plans to arm volunteer civilian security teams. 
 
The contract announcement lists that the work will be performed at Colt's West Hartford plant over the summer, with an estimated completion date of Aug. 31, 2024. The U.S. Army Contracting Command in Newark, New Jersey, is the contracting activity. 
 
Meanwhile, reports from Israeli media in late March surfaced that the IDF was seeking tenders for the production of 20,000 "made-in-Israel M-4 rifles" to include domestic assembly of guns with at least 51 percent of parts made in Israel. Of note, IWI-USA had planned to produce ARs – the Zion series – in its Pennsylvania plant as far back as 2020. 
 
Banner image: M4A1 carbines in a rack. (Photo: U.S. Army)