How many good men were lost in Vietnam before the gas ports in the early M-16s were re-engineered so that the durned blamed things didn’t need to be kept almost showroom clean?
It was the powder that was changed to do away with the problem in the M16.
That is simply not true. The gun was designed around a 5.56 made with extruded powder. This burns hotter but there isn’t as much fouling. The military then started production of ammo with ball powder against the objection of the designers. Then the military deployed the rifle without cleaning kits of any kind. The situation this put our soldiers in was a damn shame...but it wasn’t a design flaw of the rifle.