50 years of complaints about the reliability of the M16

I agree Booby, except for one thing. The Army did away with bayonets a few years back.

 

Sad but true. They've dropped traditional fixed bayonet training and switched to using the bayonet in hand-to-hand knife fighting drills. I don't see how not continuing the fixed bayonet training can take up that much more time in Basic Training and Infantry School, but they didn't ask me. Well, I guess there's always an e-tool to swing or BFRs to launch in a pinch.

You're up awful early today. What gives?

 

I have to be at work at 04:30 like always. Used to be 04:00, I like the extra 30 minutes.

 

The 19% rate was for stoppage during an engagement with the enemy.

The 47 and 50 % rates are for stoppages during deployment, including training and not limited to enemy engagements.

I'm not sure of what test your are referring to. The "dust test" between the piston guns and the M4 didn't include an M16, unless I'm missing something.

 

NO. It specifically states that they were not stoppages. In fact it does so several times. No where does it say they were stoppages.

 

So, 53% of soldiers didn't have a stoppage when emptying an entire magazine from an M4, while the other 47% didn't have a stoppage either, in descending order of how often they didn't have a stoppage?

I suggest you take a step back and read the paragraph above figure 6 again.

 

????
That section isn't dealing with stoppages. 53% didn't have a case of a magazine "failure" which left rounds in the magazine and the rifle acting like the magazine was empty. The others had one or more cases where the rifle acted like the magazine was empty but there were still rounds in it.

I suggest you are the one that needs to revist that section.

 

This is known as a "stoppage." The cause of the stoppages in this study are are not detailed. Some of them are no doubt due to magazine failure, others would be failure to extract, failure to eject (stovepipe), double feeds, etc.

Whenever your rifle fails to cycle a fresh round into the chamber, it is a stoppage.

 

Since LWD has already addressed your other points, and not wanting to beat a dead horse for fear of having PETA members show up at my house and having to sic my dogs on them, I'll answer your last point.

The M16 was included in the "dust test". I already posted that data. Here it is again.

 

Link? In fact, the dust test only examined four rifles and the M16 was not one of them.

So, you also say that when a rifle fails to go "bang" while shooting through a magazine, it isn't a stoppage?

I'm very confused by this assertion. I think you know better than that.

 

Failure to feed issue while it may be considered a "stoppage" does not necessarily reflect a problem with the weapon.
Failures to feed are most often attributed to: Magazines, Ammunition and Operator error.

As far as the criteria set forth that the malfunction / stoppage inhibited the soldier's ability to participate further in the engagement; it also does not take into account that the engagement was over so quickley, that the oppurtunity had passed to engage.

One of the alarming things that I saw in the report was that WD-40 was used as a cleaning / lubricating solvent. WD-40 is a strict "No-NO" around any type of weapon due to it's penetrating ability. This oil can, and will, penetrate primer seals and contaminate primers causing them to not fire. This would be more of an operator, or even leadership, induced malfunction.

Magazine pouches mounted on MOLLE / LBE are subjected to abuse and their contents are often not handled with the regard they should be. Magazines and ammunition will often become dirty and damaged just through daily life. Having magazine pouches readily accessable on the MOLLE/ LBE will often take a lot of abuse just through the daily life of a grunt. This abuse can result in dirt and damage to both magazines and ammunition leading to malfunctions. The best rifle in the world will have a hard time feeding dirty ammunition out of a busted magazine.

 

True enough. The report doesn't ask for details about stoppages, just how often they occurred.

I know they had problems with mags. Locally, we raised money to send our National Guard guys Magpuls when they got deployed and I know spouses groups and others also raised money for Magpuls around the country. Magazines are the weak point in any self-loader.

Still, all of the problems aren't magazine related. And one has to assume that a stoppage in mid-magazine isn't operator error, though it could still be the magazine.

I just don't see venting carbon and heat into the receiver as a good idea. We all know how quickly that crud builds up.

.

 

WE just don't know that. That is why I said that "Stoppage that prevented emtying a magazine" (or whatever the verbiage used in the paper) was too arbitrary.

It's not good, but, all things considered I don't think it is any more responsible for stoppages than anything else occuring with any of piston the rifles.

 

Not to nitpick...But that was from a USMC assessment test conducted in 2002, by the Marine Corps Systems Command

http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/the-usas-m4-carbine-controversy-03289/
It's in the "Nobody Loves Me but My Mother – and She Could Be Jivin’ Too…" part.

Sooo, Wikipedia screws the pooch yet again.
David Crane's "True Grit" article does not mention the M-16/M-16A4 at all
http://defensereview.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/Combat_Tactics_TRUE_GRIT_by_David_Crane_Fall_2008.pdf

 

There's nothing inherently wrong with the reliability of the rifles direct impingement gas system (in my opinion), as long as you keep it meticulously clean. It's just not always possible to do so because of the environment - and let's not forget basic "soldier-proofing."

I have no doubt that most rifles will run through thousands of rounds without a stoppage, as long as you stop and clean it frequently.

The dust tests that came later illustrate the difference between direct impingement and piston driven systems. It isn't just the carbon being blown into the action, there's also an enormous amount of heat that can bond carbon, grit and various lubricating agents. It's a mess and it's unnecessary.

 

I think there are varying degrees of "Meticulously clean".

 

That would mean that every time you ran out of ammo in a magazine and pulled the trigger anyway it would be a stoppage. If the bolt locks open like the magazine is empty I wouldn't call it a stoppage. I'm not sure I'd even realize there were rounds left in the magazine if in the middle of a fire fight.

 

Empty rifles don't have stoppages. A stoppage is an unintentional failure of the rifle.

Call it what you like, but that's a stoppage.

You tap the bottom of the mag (to make sure it's fully locked in place), pull back and release the charging handle and shoot. If that cleared it, it's a class 1 stoppage. If that doesn't, you have a class 2 or 3 stoppage.

 

Well first you say it's a failure of the rifle. But these weren't they were failures of the magazine.
Again it's not logically different from emptying the magazine as far as the rifle is concerned and you simply change magazines to fix the problem.

You may call it a stoppage but it's worth noteing that the military didn't call it such and indeed made a point of differentiating it from a stoppage. So your defintion is far from universal.

 

Failure to empty a magazine could be the fault of any number of things because any stoppage would fail to empty the magazine. The study did not ask why the stoppage occurred, it just asks how often. Some of those stoppages would be faulty mags, but other causes would be dirty weapons, broken parts, worn springs, etc.

The phraseology is just (I think) to separate out instances where the soldier fires a single shot - to check zero perhaps, vs actual training where one or more magazines would be fired.

See the link below - USMC training. Scroll down to page 14 and 15, stoppages.

http://www.lejeune.marines.mil/Portals/27/Documents/WTBN/MTU/Preparatory%20Classes/CMC-06%20Fault%20Check%20Procedures%20for%20Rifle%20Weapons%20Handling.doc