Probably has something to do with their contracts, and the magazines they authorize are the primary source of action problems in M-4 and M-16 rifles. The ones we got in the 1980s would cause jams if you loaded more than 28 rounds and fired more than three round bursts on full auto. Instead of fixing the magazine issues they came out with the M-16A2, which had a burst controller that was even more problematic.

This is one instance where they need to get the contract process out of the way and let private industry fix this issue. The AR is a proven design. There's no reason for all these magazine issues fifty years after its introduction.

I think it is primarily a control and uniformity issue. You might be able to make a case that soldiers will spend additional time trying to recover or maintain possession of their special magazines and change their combat habits and spend more time and situational focus by trying to keep their special magazines than they would with standard magazines. If I were a unit commander I would allow the special magazines. If the soldier has more confidence with them, good.

The bureaucrats will always want control.

My US Army experience with M-16s in the mid-70s left me disliking that design. Regardless of any improvements to that rifle design, whenever somebody shows me their new AR-15, all tricked out even, I just roll my eyes and and tell them they shoulda bought a Ruger Mini-14.

WC

which is why the marines i know, buy their own mags and take them with them when they get deployed.

The accuracy of the Mini-14 was realistically portrayed in the hit show the A-Team.

On top of that the mini-14 and mini-30 have bolt and firing pin problems. The mini-30 is really bad on breaking the FP if you use military grade ammo with a harder primer. You only get about 500 rounds before you have to get a new pin and guess what... no after market pins worth a penny so you have to ship it back to ruger who will reset your gun to stock and keep all your nice after market parts.

grumble grumble grumble!

It does boggle the mind how the military, after all this time, still can't come up with a standard-issue magazine that doesn't have so many problems. I remember the ones I had back in '03-'07 all felt like flimsy sheet metal. But then, we are dealing with the Army here.

Little wonder why the 75th Ranger Regiment and the Marines like the PMAGs so much.

Oh, and you gotta love Army logic like this:



Knowing how soldiers always find ways around regulations, I don't we'll be seeing PMAGs disappearing from the battlefield any time soon.

Yeah..I can hear the muttering out in the field now: "F-it..what are they gonna do..send me to Afghanistan..??"

I think OG has it spot on.. Those guys should use what they feel comfortable with, and what makes them more effective. Confidence in your weapon is probably very much like confidence in many things and is very important to performance.

Army reverses and clarifies statement: "You can use PMAGs, it's not what we meant!"

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2012/...7570&rank=1

the marines i know said Eff that, they'll take their magazines that they paid for, that work better, and leave their issued junk elsewhere.

one of them spent most of his time using an AK, as he picked it up off a dead insurgent and he didnt have to worry about ammo for a while, he said there were partially used AK magazines all over the place in most of the bad parts of the country.

The AR-15 was originally intended to be a replacement for the M1 Carbine and not a frontline combat rifle. The weapon was also designed around lightly built 20 round magazines that were supposed to be used once and thrown away, which of course never happened. Magazine issues increased when the 30 round version was introduced. That it took until 2007 with the introduction of the PMAG for a decent AR mag to become available is criminal.

Easy. Make Emags the official magazine. That is exactly what the British just did.



To be fair the original AR-10 was meant to be a frontline rifle. From what I understand the AR-15 is just a scaled down version of it.

Scaling down an existing design can create a lot of issues, it would have been better to start with a totally clean sheet for the application.

The 5.56 round should have been developed more also instead of taking a off the shelf varmint round and magnumizing it. More case taper probably would have helped reliabilty somewhat.

Yep. I never understood why so many intermediate cartridges with ballistics that were extremely similar to the new flavors of 6.8 SPC or 6.5 Grendel (except 30 years ago) were never adopted by the U.S. I guess it was just because they were foreign standards.

Yea, there was quite a few options they could have chosen but didn't.

Personally I think they should have gone with a 6.5mm and a moderately shortened 30-06 case...or just gone with the Brit round (.280??)

Gotta love Army logic.

When I was deployed I got issued a rag tag collection of magazines from quite a few manufacters. Half where new from Brownells of all freaken places. When did they get into the defense contract biz? But having Joe show up with whatever the unproven fad mag is (it changes every few minutes it seems) can have all sorts of badness happen. If PMAGS are truelly so wonderful they should have a NSN number for units to order them. Indivdual soldiers should NEVER have to buy gear out of there own pockets........EVER. Also didn't Pmags jam up the few scars in 5.56 the Army bought for some unknown stupid reason? Has anyone tested them is M249? Not that you would ever want to use a magazine with that thing.........but find out the hard way it does not work is not worth my life.

Oh and my brownell STANG magazines worked fine BTW. But I did get lucky and got a brand spanking new m4 when I deployed. Brand spanken ugly when I gave it back.

Oh and 5.56 works fine out of 18 to 20 inch barrel out to 300 or so meters. Shorter barrel and longer ranges......ya it kind of sucks. But thousands upon thousands of dead people can't be wrong.

They actually do have one.



The M-249 and SCAR questions are interesting. I know that Magpul developed the E-Mags specifically because the PMags were not good in some foreign weapons, and they were designed to be fully STANAG compatible.

The cartridge and rifle works but the whole system could have been developed better from day one, of course that would have gone against the intent of utilizing an off-the-shelf 5.56 assault rifle only as an interim measure while the SPIW project was readied. If the 5.56 system were too good it might have threatened the holy wonder rifle.

Having used an M-16A4, I have to say I hate it. That POS kept me from earning Expert (and rain and fog that blocked the 300 and 250 targets).

It didn't matter what I did, that gun jammed constantly. Double feeds and misfeeds. My 11Bravo DS couldn't get the gun to not misfeed or jam. I only was able to shoot 240 rounds apart from Zeroing and literally had at least one issue every 2 magazines (20 rounds in each to minimize jamming, cough*Bullsh!t*cough).

Now let me compare this to my AK-74, I've shot over 3000 rounds through my AK and have had ZERO misfeeds. This isn't to mention that I've never had a misfeed on my AK-47 either.

You know your rifle was mis-designed if you needed a forward assist, notice the AK doesn't need one? I fear the day I have to carry that rifle into Afghanistan, maybe the M4 is better...

Training unit weapons are always beat to sh!t things. Can't compare it to a weapon you personally owned.

I carried one for many years and liked it.

There is a reason most Special Ops units all over the world use it. There is a reason why most competitors in 3 gun and other competition events use it.

Perfect - no.
D@mn good - yes.

AKs have them. Its called the charging handle. Push forward on it, same thing. Guns like the AR/SA80 have a separated BCG and CH so there has to be a dedicated FA.

You must have gotten a bad rifle. My AK (personally owned) was similar. A jam, typically double feed every magazine or so. My AR has been completely reliable, save for the magazines not dropping free. Though the magazine issue is because they were modified to hold 10 rounds and whoever did it didn't do that good of a job.



This. Egyptians build AKs for most middle eastern countries. Guess what their paratroopers and special units use? M4s and M16s. Israeli special forces preferred the AK to the FAL/Galil, yet preferred the M16 over the AK. Many armed forces that use AKs seem to have a preference for the AR/M16/M4.

Elite forces and SWAT units are running tuned or at least well inspected examples I'd imagine. Regular force people don't seem as unanimously confident in the system from what I can tell. They're great shooters i've give them that, just need to work on that robustness and feeding and extraction part, LOL.

I found that troops tend to see the faults in their own equipment and only the virtues of their opponents. I would also add that US troops come from a culture that breeds unrealistic expectations. Americans like to b!tch about things. I also found that the people who complained about M16s were not the line guys, but the rear guys who didn't really ever become one with their weapon. They wanted to display how hotsh!t they were by showing how they knew the weapons faults. Made them look in the know. Maybe the Special Ops and such didn't get better weapons, but we're just better with weapons.

Insert famous line from Rudyard Kipling here.

I've carried and trained with a lot of weapons and have worked with a couple. The only battle rifle I put on the same shelf was the M14. And they were apples and oranges. For some things the M14 , and for others the M16.

That being said, I am a dinosaur and have no field experience with the new stuff. And if I haven't carried one for weeks under various conditions, I can't give a valid comparison.

The weak sister of the M16 is the 556 round. The new rounds are an improvement, but I will always feel that 556 is just too small.

As a demonstration I used to drive a 1x4 piece of wood into the ground and challenge someone to shoot it down with a 30 round magazine. I allowed them to shoot as close as a foot away. Try it; it will surprise you.

I know I'm support, but hope to move over to Combat Arms, maybe when I get out of OCS. I know I didn't fire that many shots, but man, it was problem after problem with that rifle. I shoot enough to be at least comfortable with a rifle. In 240 rounds (plus zeroing) I figured out how much pressure to put on my magazine to get the first round to feed (too little pressure and the bolt rode over the round), but limit initial double feeds when I sent the carrier forward.

I'm sure my DS would have been pissed knowing how many times I locked and loaded the rifle waiting on the range. I also don't like the safety position, I know that the Americans have a different philosophy to the safety than the Soviets did, but it's hard to switch it as a lefty. I wish it was ambidextrous.



That's the point, I've never had to push that forward on an AK, but I had to tap it a number of times on that M16. My rifle was never zeroed properly, due to shortage of ammo and cross lane shooting, but I managed to adjust fire for the >200 meter targets that I consistently hit 34-35's, but just couldn't manage a 36.

I was lucky on the first time to the range in that the Lt. spotted me and told me my rounds were 6 inches low at 250 and 300. I had the firing order memorized and knew I was lining up the shots well so I was pretty comfortable that the rifle was zeroed a bit low. I adjusted and then consistently was hitting targets, but it was always an issue that caused me to miss a target or two fixing. I just became frustrated that everytime I shot there was a problem, be it double feed, stuck round that cause on the locking chamber (Star Chamber), or it just didn't grab the round and the bolt closed empty.

Well, bed time. I have to be up at Ostupidthirty for a run 3 hours later.

The M16 has its faults but it's still the best production infantry rifle in the world, bar none. It DOES need a bigger, more powerful cartridge. Hell, keep the M16 as a 21st century analog to the M1 carbine and issue the grunts AR10s. (Get rid of the piss-weak SAW, too.)

My M16 during basic training (summer 1986) was stamped "COLT'S AR15" or something like that. It was OLD. From the very beginning I had trouble with the takedown pin walking out, because the detent & spring kept disappearing. I went through BRM week having to hold the upper closed on the lower because I lost the takedown pin on a road march. I was a fairly decent shot but just barely qualified, which I blame on my junky rifle. It never jammed once, though. In fact, I can count the number of weapon- or mag-related jams I had in over 12 years on 1 hand. Basically, they fired when I pulled the trigger, as long as I kept them reasonably clean and lubed. I was in the "more is better" camp when it came to lube, but not quite to the point of dumping in a whole bottle like the .50 guys did. But 1 good squirt on the BCG from a 1qt CLP bottle was enough to keep 'em going all day on the range with no problems. During Desert Storm we kept them as clean as possible, even if it meant pulling out the BCG and hosing everything down with the quick-drying contact cleaner our maint tech from Red River Depot provided by the pallet then giving a squirt of CLP. That's the way things worked - whenever the vehicle stopped for more than a minute or 2 the driver got out and checked it out (road wheel sight glasses, excessive rocks, roots, and tree limbs in the track, commo wire in the track, leaves & crap on the radiator, etc), so taking a minute or 2 to go over your rifle didn't seem unwarranted. It's only your life and those of your crew that depends on your rifle and vehicle working properly, nothing worth making any special effort for. I would have been giving an AK a going-over in the same situation.

556 too small, but 762 is a too too big. Somewhere in between would be Goldilocks.

Timothy, you know my comment was not personal at you, but was just a generality based on my experience.

An Arsenal AK like Tim's is basically milspec except for lacking select fire, a WASR or the like, not so much.

Anyways it's true, even Vietnamese special forces are said to make use of ARs.

However its worth noting that, despite being the choice of their elite forces, all those mostly AK equipped militaries as well as others that use different rifles, don't seem to be in a rush to replace their standard issue rifles with ARs, even ones that are at the point of buying a whole new rifle type.

Tempest in a teapot, but typically it's easier to just slag away at the Army than get ahold of the facts.

1. The Army wants its soldiers to only use approved products when it comes to weapons and surviveability equipment.

2. Some Soldiers have been buying and using stuff off the rack, which may be of dubious quality - or of no better quality than issue materials and simply be a waste of money (at best) or cost them their lives (at worst).

3. PMAGs weren't ever in the mix, as they're approved for Army use.



4. Anybody want to explain to some kid's mother that their son died because he thought it would be cool to order some tacticool crap out of the back of a magazine or from the internet and it wound up being horribly made? Who's at fault? The manufacturer that sold substandard crap to some kid in theatre or the squad leader that let him run around with civilian stuff jammed into his weapon?

5. I dragged my poor M16A2 through the desert for an awful long time in dreadful conditions and NEVER ONCE HAD A STOPPAGE. I used issue mags, issue rounds, and an issue rifle. It's called inspection and maintenance, people - and it's far more reliable than fancy plastic magazines.

They do. Read the linked articles.

Said it better that I did. That tacticoooooool crap is pretty awesome........ Dumb kid buys hundereds of dollars of that crap, gets deployed, figures out that all that expensive crap is well crap, next thing you know a unit with 30 tacticoool kids turns into just the freaken basics and they try a get rid of as much as they can of extra questable gear. Issue........or NOt. Then rotate out and laugh at the next mall ninjas that did the same thing.


On the Pmag thing.........well they now have NSN number so someone important must have tested that crap out of them in all standard issue weapons. Alot of times in combat sistuation YOU REALLY DON'T want to be the guy with untested or proven gear.


[/quote]

The cartridge and rifle works but the whole system could have been developed better from day one, of course that would have gone against the intent of utilizing an off-the-shelf 5.56 assault rifle only as an interim measure while the SPIW project was readied. If the 5.56 system were too good it might have threatened the holy wonder rifle.[/quote]

#1 reason I say FN can keep there SCAR. M4/M16 may have a few remaining stupid points.......but they are known. You spend 20 minutes a day cleaning that POS it works and works well. You don't......IT WILL FAIL. Its funny. The number of super high speed special ed forces I saw carrying the latest super weapons.....0. I read in gun porn mags and on the internet that every spec op guy is carrying a scar or hk416 or whatever.... I am sure some are somewhere. But you want to take unproven stuff for a field test? Ya the m16 was super great wonder weapon in early 60's....until they put into mass production, changed propellant type for ammo, and sent it to SE Asia. Dead US soldiers with cleaning rods stuck down the bore trying to make it work. Ya give me some unproven wonder junk please.

That's some pretty good input.

And that Rudyard Kipling line I referred to comes from his The Young British Soldier

"When 'arf of your bullets fly wide in the ditch,
Don't call your Martini a cross-eyed old #%&*$#;
She's human as you are - you treat her as sich,
An' she'll fight for the young British soldier."

You're right, though the 7.62x51's strongest selling point is that it's been proven for over 50 years to be a long-distance-man-dropper-and-cover-into-concealment-turner.

I remember a former landlord telling me about his days humping a BAR up & down the mountains in Korea, and he said he usually had anywhere from 20-30 mags for it. A soldier will generally carry something heavy if he trusts it and it works. Obviously something LIGHTER that he trusts and that works would be better.

It's not just the weight. It's a controlability issue. Full auto with a full size rifle cartridge is overwhelming. An intermediate with larger caliber is more in line with my thinking. Some of these new 6.8 styles seem right. Even they may a bit much for controlability; as I said I haven't got recent experience.

I remember reading somewhere that the BAR weighs about 22 lbs?

Oh, I wouldn't issue a full-auto AR10, they'd be semiauto or maybe - MAYBE - 2-round burst.

I'm thinking 17-18, but that's just a guess from my poor memory. Either way, the difference is small when you consider the weight of 20-30 2lb mags. Still sounds better than being the guy who carried the mortar baseplate, though LOL

AK-47, pretty much an unlimited supply of Ammo and replacement parts in Afghanistan/Iran/Overthere.

Bar 18.6 pounds unloaded. 20 or 30 magazines? On one guy? 30-06? UGH really?
What the big thing people like to forget about the new 6mm rounds for AR platform is that it needs to be able to pierce modern body armor. In which case, it is a step backwards. 5.56 AP at close range exceeds what 7.62 X 51mm can do beleave it or not. Modern ceramic (heavy ass) plates are rated to stop 7.62 mm nato and 7.62 x 54mmm AP rounds. They will not do it for long but a a round or two is better than your life. Of course I would not put that to the test. I am pretty sure at in your face range it is going to go thru. The advantages of fast moving flat shooting rounds out way the disadvantages. The 6 mm type heavier ammo should end up with less armor piecing abilty with a marked increase in bullet drop as range increases. The last can be trained largely away to an extent. The US military and the NATO allies would never go this way. Two interesting programs that are under way involve (yet again) caseless and semi caseless ammo. This time it might actually work out. Last I checked into it they had gotten 5.56mm ballistics into a round somethining like 30% smaller and lighter. the programs as I understand it had no specs for what performance was wanted so they just where trying to replicate the 5.56. BUT if you can get a round the size and weigth of 5.56 but with the power or something between 5.56 and 7.62.......now you have a winner. New weapon able to better to defeat ceramic body armor, more range, no additional weigth. That would get any military to upgrade there weapons.....funds providing. If you can get it to work....... And not when your in the middle of wars.... But I bet uncle sam will be using exactly the same stuff for at least another decade if not longer.... They bought alot of hardware the past 10 years. Tax payer has to get there moneys worth and all.....

Bigger is almost always better when it comes to defeating armor or cover, as long as the projectile is designed accordingly. The Russians have gone so far as to develop a new family of dedicated 12.7 CQB rifle and sniper rounds that will defeat any body armor and even vehicle armor. I bet if you were to update the 7.62 rounds they'd outperform their 5.56 counterparts easily.

I think its only a matter of time before all those materials advances we keep hearing about leads to where full coverage body armor of at least Level 4 protection becomes practical and widely avaiable, at that point many small arms systems are going to need a rethink.

Of course we're leaving out the huge elephant in the room - NATO standarization, which started the whole M16/Baretta ball rolling in the first place. It was a sound idea that no longer fits into real world situations and threats; we should de-emphasize supply harmonization across NATO and just work with our traditional heavy-lifting combat partners (UK, Australia, France). Our other NATO partners just don't have the political will or military muscle to warrant slavish concern over inter-operability.

If I were allowed to carry anything with me into battle back when I was a forward observer it would have been an M1 Carbine, an M1911A1, and the precious WWII binoculars they took from me in theatre for those horribly huge and heavy Steiners.

The thing about body armor is that while bullets may not penetrate they hurt like hell and can crack a rib. Lots of guys walking around with various items that were under armor with dents and broken bits off of them as souveniers. Keep putting rounds on guys and they'll give up the fight.

Similarly, our current threat forces aren't big on body armor; it's not until the last 18 months that they started serious marksmanship training (though in a hit and miss fashion).

On the whole ammo topic and NAto. I am starting to the think the British had the right idea with there .280 caliber they where trying to get NATO to adopt back in the 50's. But it was alot easiler to retool from 30-06 to 7.62 x51 than a completly new round. The Britich where srcrewed on that whatever way you cut it, coming from .303, a rimmed round. Weapons could be easily converted from 30-06 to 7.62 nato. Short sided ordanace people.... since 10 years later the love affair with 5.56 began.

Nice one! I like that.

As for me, when I was deployed in Iraq, I was always confident my M16 would go bang if I needed it to, because I made sure I kept it clean and ready to fire. Just because we were in the desert didn't suddenly mean the gun went bad.

If you haven't read Rudyard Kiplings stuff you are really missing some excellent thoughts. The soldiers poet.

Ancient rappers and Stoner's rifles are no match for a Kalashnikov on your side kid!

Enjoyable discussion guys.

I read that in WW2 the most feared weapons were the ones that made the most noise, while the most dangerous (or effective depending on POV) was the plain old rifle.

From 'The Sharp End Of War - The Fighting Man in WW2' by John Ellis. Also mentions it took something like 15 personnel to support 1 front line combat soldier. A good solid book about UK and US troops.

After seeing this...



I consider Picasso the soldier's painter. I love the flower growing from the dead soldiers hand.

Kipling is great, I love, "Gods of the Copybook Heading". It is a great poem and so fitting to this time period.



Yup, it is a Bulgarian AK. I don't buy crappy rifles, except one, but that was long time ago.




No, I know it wasn't, I see it all the time. I see soldiers during each introduction to the new instructor telling them that they wanted to do 11Bravo, but decided on this job because it shipped faster/slower/whatever. I actually signed up 11X-Ray and they took it from me due to a broken foot. I don't even bring it up, unless the NCOs ask why I joined and picked 92Whiskey. Otherwise, I feel like I'm trying to one up the others.

What I noticed is that these guys are the first ones to talk about rifles and how this is high speed and that isn't. I've noticed that the 92Foxtrot E-6s talk about weapons a heck of a lot more than the ex-Infantry, ex-13Bravo and ex-EOD do. So I fully got you on that aspect.

I kinda do have to admit it sucks saying, "I signed up 11Bravo and broke my foot, so they sent me to meet Pauly Shore."

When accuracy matters the AK can put a round within meters of your target.

I would not knock the modern Russian ak. 5.45 ak's have been known to shoot well under 2 1/2 inch groups. Personally my civie tastic saiga .223 with crap steel cased ammo........3 inch or under all day long. With good US made stuff cold barrel.......under 1 1/2 inch groups (all 100 yards). When it warms up after 10 shots or so turns into a bit over 2 inch groups.

Never confuse rifles from who knows where manufactured from rejected parts or rebuild from old parts............or even had their temper of their steel destroyed by retards and blow torches with the real deal ak.

Nothing more than I love to do is hit the range, set next to tacticool guy with 3000 rifles and optics and out shoot them with a simple inexpensive rifle. Ok, granted if I where using there rifle I would out shoot this one........BUT I know how to use a freaken weapon.

Yup, I'd put my AK-74 up against a M16A4 or even and M4 and would compete with accuracy.




My brother went to a long range shooting class as a guest of a gun smith, because the gunsmith wanted giggle when my brother took his RPK and hit at 600 meters with iron sites. All the tacticool guys were calling shens till he started shooting. Wish I could shoot as well as my brother, but 400 meters is about my max with iron sites.

The 74 and RPK are very good and anyone who says they aren't accurate hasn't shot them.