Firearm experts - is/was the M16 a piece of crap?

Factual Questions
1

Comparative to other assault rifles, that is. The M16 rifle has a reputation of being an overcomplicated jam-prone liability to its user, especially when compared to its hardy, more inaccurate Soviet counterpart, the AK-47. Reading the wiki article seems to confirm this popular conception, a Vietnam vet recounting that "We left with 72 men in our platoon and came back with 19, Believe it or not, you know what killed most of us? Our own rifle. Practically every one of our dead was found with his [M16] torn down next to him where he had been trying to fix it.

  • Marine Corps Rifleman, Vietnam.[30]" (from the wiki on the M16).

However, is this reputation deserved, or have its faults been exaggerated in popular culture?

2

I belong to a number of no-BS gun forums. The consensus is that the modern day M4 is accurate, reliable, battle-proven, and has good ergonomics. While the AK may be reliable and battle-proven, it is not accurate.

3

Agreeing with Crafter_Man. The M16 variants have evolved quite a bit since they were introduced in Vietnam. One of the major problems early on was the type of gunpowder being used. Also, early recipients of the M16 were not issued cleaning kits (since the gun was allegedly maintenance-free… I’m astounded that Army and Marine brass actually bought that, given the near maniacal maintenance routines infantrymen have pounded into their heads from the beginning).

A major advantage of the M16 family (and the reason it was selected to replace the M14) is weight. Synthetic stock and lower caliber ammo mean that a boot can carry more ammo and/or be more agile during combat; he can also walk longer on patrols.

The .223 cal (5.56mm) round also has a hydroshock property, causing it to tumble through the target once it hits flesh. As one might imagine, this is useful in making things get dead.

The lighter caliber bullet also promotes better marksmanship. A 7.62mm NATO round produces a healthy amount of kick, and on full-auto the barrel of the M14 (which fires that round) has a tendency to climb. There’s a reason that (almost) everyone’s first rifle is a .22 (ahhh, the ubiquitous Ruger 10/22…). The shooter learns not to be afraid of the recoil and the loud explosion going off next to his/her face, and thus mitigates some of the impact of “flinching.”

Can’t wait to head north and shoot guns for Christmas…

4

Thanks for the replies fellas - this is why I phrased the q as “is/was”, what with all the variants of the M16 since its inception (most of which I’m unfamiliar with - I didn’t know that the M4 was 80% M16, for instance) and the improvements that come with time.

5

Was the M-14 actually fired on full-auto with any regularity?

6

From what I’ve heard, no. Same as the FN-FAL; the 20 round mag just didn’t last that long and the muzzle climb from a 7.62x51 NATO round fired on full auto was basically a waste of ammo for anything except suppression purposes.

Australian troops in Vietnam were known to mod their L1A1 SLRs to full-auto for precisely that reason (spray 'n pray) but there was an “as-issued” (on an extremely limited scale) full-auto SLR (the L1A2) that had a heavy barrel to try and counteract the muzzle climb and barrel heating.

The Vietnam vets I’ve spoken to who fired full-auto SLRs said the recoil was too much (the guns were nicknamed “The Bitch” because of it) to be effective or comfortable to fire.

7

Some earlier threads that may be of interest:

8

The M-16 has a bad reputation, which it doesn’t necessarily deserve.

The M-16 replaced the M-14. The M-16 fired a smaller round, and also was lighter due to the use of a plastic stock (compared to the M-14’s wooden stock). The use of a lighter round was somewhat controversial. The lighter round won’t penetrate obstacles as well as a heavier round, but the lighter round and plastic stock meant that the soldier could carry much more ammunition. Armies care very much about logistics. The less resources you have to devote to carrying ammunition around, the more resources you have to throw into combat. For the same number of soldiers and ammunition trucks and so on, soldiers equipped with M-16s will be able to fight longer than soldiers equipped with M-14s or the enemy’s favorite AK-47.

Soldiers don’t care about logistics though (until they run out of ammo, then they care). To the soldiers, the M-16 was a cheap plastic piece of crap that didn’t have the same stopping power as the M-14 they were used to. They used to make fun of the M-16’s plastic stock, saying that it was the first combat rifle made by Mattel.

Worse, the M-16 is a fairly high precision rifle. This makes it accurate, but it also makes it vulnerable to jamming if you don’t take care of it. The AK-47, by contrast, is intentionally a much less precise weapon. The AK-47 was intentionally made of cheaper parts that required much less tolerance to manufacture. As a result, the AK-47 can be produced on less high tech equipment (so it is cheaper to make), and the AK-47, because of its loose tolerances, can tolerate a lot more dirt and gunk in it before the weapon will jam. Despite the M-16’s high tolerances, as GiantRat said it was issued to troops without cleaning kits. Soldiers were told the weapon was so reliable that it didn’t need cleaning. They quickly found out otherwise, as the weapon very often jammed in combat.

On top of all of this, there were some actual manufacturing and design problems with the early M-16s, just as you get with any new weapon.

So, it’s really not surprising that the M-16 quickly got a reputation for being completely worthless.

Over the years, they’ve made a lot of improvements. The early problems were fixed. Soldiers were issued training kits and taught to keep their weapons clean. They made some improvements to the round, so it has a bit more stopping power.

Compared to the AK-47, the M-16 costs more to produce, so you can make more AK-47s than M-16s for the same amount of money (the M-16 loses there.).

The M-16’s round, despite improvements that have been made to it, still cannot penetrate as well as the round from an AK-47. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the AK-47 wins this one, though, because the M-16’s round is still lighter, which means soldiers can carry more rounds for the same weight, and fewer ammo trucks and such are required to supply them. So this one is still controversial as to which one is better.

The M-16’s design is much better than the design of the AK-47 with respect to recoil. The M-16’s recoil pushes the rifle straight back, where the AK-47 tends to rise. When firing on automatic, the M-16 is much easier to keep on target. The AK-47 will tend to creep up as you shoot.

The M-16 is much more prone to jamming than the AK-47 (though the AK-47’s resistance to jamming and tolerance for dirt and crap is often very much over-exaggerated). However, the M-16 is also much more accurate. The AK-47’s sloppy tolerances mean that the entire weapon shakes and moves as it shoots. If you are in Iraq and there’s a bunch of insurgents hiding in a building, the AK-47 might be able to punch through the wall and kill them when the M-16 under the same conditions might not be able to. On the other hand, if you’ve got an insurgent a block away shooting at you from a rooftop, the AK-47 isn’t very likely to hit him, where the M-16 is much more likely to be ale to pick him off. So, the higher precision of the M-16 is again controversial, and you can argue either way whether the M-16 or the AK-47 is more accurate. For close up fighting, soldiers often prefer the heavy punch of the AK-47. At longer ranges, the AK-47 is reduced basically to spray and pray type fighting, which wastes a lot of ammunition (which again, soldiers can’t carry as much of it for the AK-47) and isn’t as likely to take out the enemy.

For what it is designed to do, the M-16 is a very good weapon. Whether it is better or worse than the AK-47 is a matter of opinion, and depends on how you weigh the various factors of what an M-16 is better at vs. what an AK-47 is better at.

9

Thanks for the detailed reply engineer_comp_geek, sounds like it was pretty poor when it was first introduced, and the reputation stuck. Thanks for the links Elendil’s Heir, tried searching for “M16 rifle” but got about a million irrelevant results.

10

Random comments on 14 and 16…

Being in one of the last platoons issued the M-14 in boot camp and infantry training, I’ve run quite a few rounds through it. W/regard to using it in fully automatic mode, it was next to useless without a tripod (which I never used). That said, it’s a great rifle, very accurate even with standard iron sights. However, it was a bit long and heavy for close-in use in Vietnam.

While the early M-16s had problems, much could be traced back to the powder first used. It was very dirty. Making matters worse, the Army/Marine Corps issued only one cleaning kit for every four rifles. This because troops were told cleaning was not required as often. If anything the opposite was true due to its close machining tolerances. Between the dirty powder and the conditions in Vietnam, this was a major screw-up that cost a lot of lives.

11

There is also a bunch of weight savings due to the M16 using aluminum alloy for the upper and lower receiver and lack of a steel operating cylinder, piston and spring.

It is worth noting that the AK-47 was not an initial success either…manufacturing problems meant that the operational life of the SKS was greatly extended, and that oh so cheap to make sheet metal receiver didn’t work at first either, so many early AKs had milled receivers which killed the price advantage. Like the M16, the bugs were eventually worked out. The big difference in reputation is probably because the AK’s failings were recognized before they were issued to actively fighting troops in large numbers, while the M16 was poured into Viet Nam a little before it was ready for prime time.

Still, even though much better that the early ones, the current M4s are a fairly closely fitted mechanism with a pipe that by design feeds hot dirty gas from the barrel right back into the heart of the whole works. And I say this as an owner of two ARs and no AKs (though I do have an SKS).

12

While this is true, it highlights a good point; that for most battlefield use of rifles, accuracy (within certain bounds) is a secondary criteria. Low weight, high reliability, and easy serviceability are more important to the average soldier, whose average marksmanship ability is not spectacular. In this case, the AK-47 gets decent marks on the first, and high on the second two, while the AR-15/M16 rifle (nitpack: there is no dash in the official DoD nomenclature) is great on the first, but sucktastical on the second two.

In addition to the poor selection of propellant in the original 5.56x45mm round, the twist rate in the original rifles was 1:14, which is too low for long range accuracy. The direct impingement system was intended to simplify the manufacturing and servicing of the M16, but instead led to substantial contamination issues, and isn’t used in any other modern assault or battle rifle. The short or long stroke gas piston mechanism used in the AK-47, FN-FAL, Steyr AUG, SIG SG-550, and H&K G36 predominate assault and battle rifle actions, although other robust mechanisms like roller locking (H&K G3) are occasionally seen.

The adoption of the M16 was one of then Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s attempts to homogenize weapon systems across the services, some of which were highly successful and others (like the F-111) were not. The M16 suffered from being deployed before it was really ready or thoroughly field tested. Later variants of the M16 (A1, A2, A3) led to significant enhancements that matured the system. The M4 Carbine, which is the direct successor to the M16, is highly reliable and of better accuracy than required for typical battlefield operations. The weapon acquitted itself well in both Desert Storm operations where many other weapons seized up due to external contamination. However, given a choice, I would still go with a short stroke piston, and in fact many companies (including H&K and Sig Sauer) now manufacture replacement upper receivers that substitute gas piston operation for the direct impingement.

Stranger

13

An M16 in Vietnam, back in the day: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/US_Infantry_M16_Vietnam.jpg

M4s in Afghanistan today: http://cryptome.org/info/afpak-archive/afpak-fun-05k-28.jpg

14

A lot of people made up their minds to hate the AR-15 design and its cartridge, partly because it displaced the M-14 which they liked, and are determined never to change their minds.
After half a century the military has pretty well got the design working as well as it ever will.

15

This is a false dichotomy created by people who always want to see the world as a series of equal tradeoffs. So they stress how accurate the m16 is because the AK-47 clearly beats it in reliability.

But what qualifies as “not accurate” to you? I know you’re far more familiar with guns than the average person, but the layman impression is that the AK47 would have a hard time hitting anyone at 50 yards, when in reality any AKM or AK74 made from a decent factory will shoot 3-6 minutes of angle, which roughly correlates with the rounds falling into a 3-6 inch circle at 100 yards. This is not what people picture when referring to the supposed wild inaccuracy of the AK rifles.

Additionally, they often compare them to modified high end ar-15 “race guns” which are designed for target shooting, and not the run of the mill battle ready m16 or m4. Typically, they shoot in the 2-5moa range. So the difference between the accurate m16 and wildly inaccurate AK is about an inch or two of circle diameter at 100 yards.

This rarely gets mentioned too, but as someone who’s shot an AKM, AK74, M16, and M4 on full auto, the AKs are far more controllable with much more predictable recoil. The impulse is much higher on an AKM than an m16, but it’s a steady up-and-right impulse compared to the m16s all over the place impulse. The AK-74, on the other hand, pretty much destroys the M4 in everything.

Hydrostatic shock is something of a myth. The lethality of the 5.56 came from a deliberately weak point on the round which caused it to shatter if it hit flesh at >2700 FPS. All the shrapnel would spread around and be hard to dig out. This made the M4s (with shorter barrels and lower muzzle velocity) even less effective. It was also only good within 100-150 yards (IIRC) because after that the round isn’t going fast enough to shatter.

In any case, the change to use SS-109 rounds and the accompanying faster rifling twist have overstabalized the round so you see limited tumbling and fragmentation. The armor piercing is superior, but the terminal ballistics are quite a step down - new 5.56 isn’t very lethal.

16

Some data on the base rounds:
M16, M16A1 optimally fire the M193 ball round, plain tip [just jacket], 1:12 twist to the rifling (probably a typo from Stranger). You’ll still find Air Force units with the M16A1 rifles and rounds. Occasionally, the later rifles (M16A2, A3, A4) will fire the earlier round if the range backstop is deteriorated and rounds are leaking through :eek:. Lack of the steel penetrator and increased wobbling from mismatch between twist and bullet center of gravity limits penetration.

M16A2, A3, A4 - M4, M249 Squad Automatic Weapon SAW optimally fire the M855 ball round, green tip/ 1:7 twist to rifling, round has a steel tip under the jacket for improved penetration. Change in bullet center of gravity and tighter twist to rifling improved accuracy out to distance.

Newest general purpose round is the M855A1 which has a lead free bullet (tin and bismuth), no tip color (the steel penetrator tip is exposed), has improved lower flash propellant and cleaner burning primer. Again, more accuracy out to longer range.

Other rounds for the M16A2 and up:
5.56mm AP (armor piercing) M995, has a penetrating core, not just tip.
5.56mm RRLP (reduced ricochet, limited penetration) frangible round MK255-0.
5.56mm special ball LR MK262-0, long range, highly accurate with an “open-tip”. This refers to the method of drawing the jacket over the core. It is not a “hollow point” round - it does not expand on penetration.

You’ve got tracer rounds, both ordinary and dim trace; plastic rounds; marking rounds (paint ball), grenade launching rounds, match rounds with moly coating.

M14s are an excellent rifle, not so much for an automatic base-of-fire as pointed out. Many have been re-issued with a scope and bipod so the squad has a long range quasi-sniper for the greater distances in Afghanistan.

17

Interesting footnote w/regard to the M-16 is that the Army strongly resisted its development as it wasn’t designed internally.

18

When the M-16 first came out soliders quickly learned that if you put a rubber over the barrel it stops gunk from getting in their making the weapon less misfire and jamming prone.

19

I have a nice library of books on the Vietnam war. I remember one (which I can’t locate now) speaking of a captured NVA document that discussed what American war material they wanted for their cause. The statement went something like “except for that little black rifle, it’s of no use to us.” The M-16 certainly had a few teething pains.

20

I know this is OT, but now that you’ve brought it up… I fully understand hydrostatic shock is a myth for *handgun *rounds. But I have always been under the impression that it is a real phenomenon for *rifle *rounds due the (very high) velocity of the bullet.

As for your comments on an AK’s accuracy, I was trying to keep my post short-n-sweet, perhaps wrongly. At any rate, we could argue for days and days about the merits and short comings of various rifle platforms. :wink: