From XM16E1 To M16A1

[Uncas47]

I served with an M14, I long ago stopped yearning for it. As close to an issue M4 as I can get is where I live. Procurement is fraught with bias and ineptitude, and greed, always has been, always will be. I'm grateful we've made it as far as we have. Thank you Lysander for your hard look at all the documentation.

[lysander]

Oh, that is pretty damning. Thats a stoppage every 3 mags. From my understanding, minus temps were pretty hard on the early generations of the gun. I’d be (and have been) pretty confident in cold weather with the current gun, though, barring the trigger finger mittens.

I’m surprised the M14 did that well, considering burying in snow was involved. That gun is inviting of ingress.

Many of the malfunctions were clothing related. There were a lot of failure to fire, and failure of the trigger to reset, theses were caused by the excess material of the arctic mitten to bunch up behind the trigger and keep it from working, or bunch up under the trigger and keep it from resetting, bulky clothing pushing the bolt catch, stuff like that.

Shooting in full arctic clothing and web gear on top of it is different from shooting in a tee-shirt and shorts. That's why they do the tests in the first place.

What were some of the recommended changes?

- Locking lugs difficult to clean, provide a tool to clean them.
- Magazines fit too tight in magazine well, increase clearances.
- Magazines difficult to insert, provide a flared opening.
- No directions for windage and elevation, provide an arrow for left and up.
- Hammer pin continually walked out of its hole, improve hammer retaining spring.
- Firing can be seen at night, improve flash hider.

There were some other ones, namely that penetration and wind bucking would be improved if the caliber was .25.

Oh, and the mittens aren't trigger finger mittens. Trigger finger mittens are technically "Cold Weather Mittens". Arctic Mittens are these:



No provision for a trigger finger.

[lysander]

I’m surprised the M14 did that well, considering burying in snow was involved. That gun is inviting of ingress.

Depending on what contaminates you are dealing with, easy ingress = easy egress.

With light icing the ice has to span free spaces, so it is thinner and easier to break. If the tolerances are too close, small amounts of water can freeze large surfaces together

[Uncas47]

So all this arctic testing may have been relevant to the Red Hoard pouring over the pole, we now turn around and go for SE Asia.
While I'm no authority on the subject, naah, I'm no authority on the subject.

[Uncas47]

While i do have Kin on the Wall, I can't lay it at the feet of procurement. Shit just happens.