Almost everyone has heard the M-16 denigrated as a "poodle shooter", the "Mattel-o-Matic" or the "Jam-o-Matic". The legend, of curse, is that the changes the Army Ordnance people made to Stoner's design was the main cause of the teething problems of the M-16.
But what a lot of people have forgotten is that the M-16 replaced a rifle which was even worse: the M-14. You can read a short post here on it, or a long post here. Both will explain why the Army and, eventually, the Marines, dumped the sniper-version of the M-14 for a bolt gun.
A book has been written about the centuries'-long record or incompetence of Army Ordnance. I don't remember if the writer got into the firing port rifle. The book didn't discuss machine guns, so there was nothing about the M85 or the other inanities which all seem to derive from an imbedded "not invented here" mindset.
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3 comments:
To be honest, the worst gun ever bought by the army was "not invented here", the Chauchat light machinegun.
As to the M16, I had heard of an early problem with ammunition? Something about being designed for Dupont IMR and then the Army fed it Winchester Ball with many stoppages.
Is that even true?
w3ski
The failures to extract that were the key problem were caused by excessive pressure and gas tube fouling due to using ball powder rather than the spec'd nitrocellulose. Direct impingement is not an ideal design, but it can be made to work given the right ammunition, the right hardware (chrome lined chamber/barrel) and the right cleaning regimen.
At this point, I don't have a problem with the rifle itself. The bugs are worked out, and some people are even building them with a gas piston. The real problem is the 5.56x45 round. Now, I'm not one of those clowns that thinks we need to go back to .308 battle rifles - the intermediate cartridge allows controllable full auto file and a basic load of close to 500 rounds for an eleven bravo.
But .22 rounds are varmint rounds. A man is much more whitetail deer than prarie dog, so you need to think about basing your intermediate cartridge on a proven deer round rather than a varmint round. Something that can drop a 180 pound mammal at four hundred meters. .270 Win or 7mm might be a pretty good place to start. And sure enough, 6.8 Remington SPC turns the poodle shooter into a real rifle, with range and penetration, while still retaining the benefits of an intermediate cartridge.
Sorry - you got me started...
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