I just returned home from completing the Squad Designated Marksman course at Camp Robinson, AR and saw an interesting failure.
This happened on the other firing line, I was working in the pits at the time. The other soldier reports that he didn't notice anything wrong with his rifle (M16A4) at the time, didn't realize it until we got back to barracks at the end of the day and was cleaning weapons. I am figuring it gave way on the very last round he fired that day.
As you can see, the other lug opposite of the extractor is badly cracked as well and probably only a round or two away from failure. The next day he found the broke off lug laying at the 600 yard firing point where he finished the day at. We were starting at the 100 yard line and working back 100 yards at a time getting our windage and elevation for irons at the time.
We started the course with 28 students, 22 graduated and I was only one of four who finished the course without a single failing grade on any of the shooting or written evaluations, or the practice evaluations. I think the least number of rounds we fired any given day was around 212 and the total round expenditure was somewhere around 45K for the whole course not counting the 7.62 thru the M14s.
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