Just to make it painfully clear: I'm not asking if most line troops would have M4's with rails.
I'm just asking if they wouldn't be more common than they are represented in the rulebook.
Currently, there are pretty much zero weapons with rails in the game. (I think the only one depicted with rails is the M82/AG90)
Special Forces would have them, for sure, but would also some of the more "prepared" frontline troops have had them during the outbreak?
Like I said, just looking at pictures from 2001, most had them.
And that's just 4 years after the war breaks out in the game.
As others have posted here, OB, only SOF forces had picky rails at all in the 90's. After 9/11 and the windfall of cash the Federal budget devoted to getting the military up to speed, THAT'S when you're gonna see the M4's and the other whizz-bang stuff get issued to anything other than Rangers, Special Forces, and SEALs.
To use another example, there were flying prototypes of UAV drones available 1995... Hell, Tom Clancy had drones in two books in that time frame before he died... but those were
strictly CIA /DIA assets and were only rumored at the divisional level.
And to get all that money for the military, Pres. Bush had to **eviscerate** the Federal budget for anything that didn't have direct military /intelligence applications. A lot of roads didn't get fixed, a lot education programs simply didn't happen, a lot of pay raises didn't happen outside of the DoD
und so weiter. Stating the obvious here, 9/11 was a seminal event in world history... a Pearl Harbor /VJ Day moment... and the military's development timeline was 'fast-forwarded' to the extent that 20 years of planned growth happened in about 7 years. At the price of what almost became another Second Great Depression.
This is why you shouldn't look to Y2K for your military standards and equipment. As the game timeline is written, the capabilities of the US military would be more in line with Desert Storm and a bit after, rather than the GWOT. In a movie sense, look more towards 'Jarhead' and less towards 'Generation Kill' or 'Hurt Locker'.