Not sure where this came from but I doubt it is correct. I entered into service September 1986 and when I reported to my unit in Germany in January 1987 we already had them. Every unit I saw over there had them. At that time there were probably around 100,000 U.S Army personnel at any one time in the country.

Quote Originally Posted by SgtT11B View Post
Yes it could be, the late 80s A2 AR15s from Colt had the brass deflector. The USMC adopted the M16A2 in late 85 early 86. The US Army didn't procure a large amount of them until late 1988 or 1989. I have a real early AR15A2 R6500 with slab side lower and no brass deflector and A1 rear sights...thats because the USMC was getting the newer uppers. However, there were some variants of the R6500 that did have the brass deflector. Those were released in 1986/87.

There were a lot of weird configurations as the Govt. contract were kicking in and Colt used up what they had.

Dave