Posted on 09/20/2016 3:37:57 PM PDT by Blood of Tyrants
When it comes to ARs, it all goes back to Colt. Sure, Eugene Stoner at ArmaLite developed the 7.62mm AR-10 that would evolve to become the AR-15 in 5.56mm, but it was Colt who purchased the rights to the latter design and not only captured government contracts for it as the M16 family of firearms, but also brought it to the civilian market at first as the AR-15 SP1 and then as the “Sporter” family of AR-15 rifles.
Now, you should realize that while the AR is a well-accepted and extremely popular firearm today, it was extremely controversial in those early days. With a reputation for a perceived lack of reliability and power (compared against the more traditionally designed M14), the 5.56mm AR had heaps of criticism put upon it. And it was during this time that Colt was the only game in town for those who wanted a civilian-legal AR rifle, and it was not the huge market that it is today.
(Excerpt) Read more at gunsamerica.com ...
The M-203's upper is 5.56 automatic fire.
At least it was when I was in the Army.
When you say the 40mm grenades are highly regulated, you mean for law enforcement or military only?
You want to take that 40mm grenade launcher deer hunting? :-)
________________________________________
The 2nd amendment isn’t just about hunting you know? :^)
Yeah, I guess: I mean if you can accept seeing some of the men dead around you with worthless, jammed-up rifles lying next to them. Damn M-16 was total piece of crap when we first got them.
Luckily, somebody back home made a ton of money.
You can buy flares, but I am unsure about smoke and tear gas grenades. Explosive grenades are all but impossible to get and each one must be registered as a destructive device with the ATF.
Point taken.
In Vietnam I wasn't Infantry but we would have the M-79 40mm grenade launcher for perimeter guard duty.
IIRC, we had HE, flare, WP (white phosphorous) and double-ought buckshot rounds at our disposal.
A fun weapon to fire.
I was a 12 bravo, we had a couple of 203’s per squad. I only fired one once. It had a pretty good kick. Peace time army.
Hand cranked Gatlin guns are unregulated.
Dude...Don’t waste money or time building a 5.45 in a Vietnam era unreliable over-complicated rifle.
I’ve got ten 5.45’s in AK’s (all different barrel lengths) and they have not once failed to function reliably.
Why try to mix the perfect cartridge with the most worthless “fighting” rifle ever invented?
Once again, Colt is late to the party. Don’t own a Colt and probably never will.
Dude, did you miss my reference tot he Bulgy in ATI furniture???
My dad said it was criminal all the dead marines he found with that damn rod down the barrel of their m-16 to clear jams.
He also said the Vietnamese actually structured their human wave attacks so that they didn’t risk anyone with a gun until the Americans were on their 5th or 6th magazine because that’s when the 16s would start to jam up.
I asked my Ranger Dad about M-16 reliability problems.
He enjoyed Indochina tropical vacations in `66-67 & `71-72.
“As long as you kept it clean it was reliable.” And he shot the hell out of it.
Yeah Colt had some problems at first with the Armalite and that’s all you hear about now.
A problem was an ammo maker using left over ball powder for .30 caliber in 5.56 cartridges. The M-16’s action is smaller, lighter and cycles faster than the old M-1 and M-14 action slamming back and forth.
And the Army and Marines didn’t like the M-16, everything about it from the sights to the `Buck Rogers’ look. Colt didn’t provide cleaning kits. All they had for cleaning for quite a while were .30 caliber kits.
Colt started chroming the barrels, added a forward assist, a thicker barrel and some other improvements and it was fine.
I’ve got three AKs and bought a CORE M4-orgery when the prices came down. Staked key, all that good stuff, milspec circa 1963, but not that expensive prancing pony.
Nothing wrong with the AK at all but owning both now, IMHO anyone saying they would take their AK-47 or 74-orgeries over the AR-15 is just fooling himself.
God bless Eugene Stoner.
Well, I find the ballistics of the 74 round to be better than the 556 ... the shredding starts earlier.
All we got at the time was know-it-alls in the chain of command and above telling us that it was our fault for not cleaning them well enough or using the wrong lubricants. We did clean them well - we were Marines - but the idiot things would tear the rear halves from the fired cartridges, then ram a new cartridge into that partially-filled chamber to make a fused mess that only a cleaning rod could clear after a lot of pounding. Not a huge issue at a rifle range, but a death sentence for a young man in a firefight.
Only long after the war did we hear that it was really the wrong propellant in the ammunition. A lot of those names on the Wall in Washington DC are there because of an improperly-tested weapon and the callousness of our leaders.
Besides the cap and ball ammo, the government also required that the weapon shoot at distances that exceeded the design. Ultimately, they increased the rifling and in concert with the powder change, that increased the cyclic rate, bore pressures, and powder residue. These bean counters and politicians killed more of our guys than any VC. The weapon that was fielded was completely different and the reliabity that sold it to the testers was gone.
There's a good link about the gunpowder debacle at The Gun Zone.
Cap and ball ammo? Odd choice for a 20th-century military rifle.
The problems are even more extensive than the examples you provided: too many separate teams involved with the specifications for equipment design (even multiple commands, services and agencies) for instance why would the Air Force and the army have to combine their requirements? Completely different missions.
Another problem is that civilians control the design and testing process. Wonderful, talented folks but no real idea about the environment and operational situation servicemen will have to face. Hence, the AR-15/M-16 works like a charm in their tests but fails miserably when our lives depended on it.
Here were issues we faced:
1. Because of the filthy-burning ammo, the M-16 tore case heads off and then double-fed.
2.There is no physical access to the chamber on the M-16, so only a field-strip and an assembled cleaning rod could clear the weapon.
3. The safeties stuck in the "Off" position on some weapons and could only be moved by using the butt of the bayonet or other objects (badly made detent).
4. The initial design of the sights was primitive and not intuitive (using a bullet tip to adjust them? Winding a front sight post up to move the strike of the bullet down?), causing many or most rounds to go somewhere other than intended. Saved a lot of VC.
5.The 55-grain round was not particularly effective on human beings. I saw people shot, dust flying off them, sometimes more than once and not go down. I didn't see the "catastrophic" effects they advertised.
6. The weapon was fragile: the stock shattered if you hit somebody with it. I actually saw a Marine shatter his stock, hitting a VC over the head with it.
I was lucky and smart: I turned in my M-16 to our armorer after I saw what was happening and retrieved my old M-14 and kept it for the remainder of my time in Vietnam. When I was finally wounded, my Lieutenant came up to me and said "Rick, I'm sorry you're hurt but can I have your rifle?".
Combat is not the place to test new stuff, particularly a very bad environment like Vietnam. I would love to have had the R&D types and the weapons manufacturers and the sales folks out with us for a week.
I’ve been thinking about building a 6.5 Grendel AR just for the heck of it.
What I REALLY want to build is an SBR (10.5” barrel) suppressed.
Have to take care of a few bills first.
Thank God you made it. Your experience is far too common. I worked weapon development for years, and it was a nasty political farce that is still wasting billions and getting our guys killed. The word is getting out a lot faster though, and troops pay attention to real-world reports.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.