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Despite its early failures the M16 proved to be a revolutionary design and stands as the longest continuously serving rifle in US military history. [60] It has been adopted by many US allies and the 5.56×45 mm NATO cartridge has become not only the NATO standard but "the standard assault-rifle cartridge in much of the world."
The M16 was issued to troops without cleaning kits or instructions on how to clean the rifle. The M16 and 5.56×45mm cartridge was tested and approved with the use of a DuPont IMR8208M stick powder, which was switched to Olin Mathieson WC846 ball powder which produced much more fouling, which quickly jammed the action of the M16 (unless the gun ...
[1] [2] Russell was being escorted back to his unit at Camp Stryker when he took an unsecured M16 rifle from his escort and drove back to the clinic. [1] [2] At 1:41 PM local time, Military Police at Camp Liberty received a report that shots had been fired at the Camp Liberty clinic. Witnesses at the scene saw Russell using an M16A2 rifle.
Conversely, his actions in mandating a premature across-the-board adoption of the untested M16 rifle proved catastrophic when the weapons began to fail in combat, though later congressional investigations revealed the causes of these failures as negligence and borderline sabotage on behalf of the Army ordnance corps' officers.
The American M16 rifle and XM177 carbine, which both replaced the M14, were lighter and considered more accurate than the AK-47 but in Vietnam was prone to "failure to extract", in which the spent cartridge case remained stuck in the chamber after a round was fired, preventing the next round from feeding and jamming the gun.
Here’s Nick, pausing in a lull. He spots somebody darting around the corner of an adobe wall, firing assault rifle shots at him and his Marines. Nick raises his M-4 carbine. He sees the shooter is a child, maybe 13. With only a split second to decide, he squeezes the trigger and ends the boy’s life. The body hits the ground. Now what?
Failure to feed (FTF) is when a firearm fails to feed the next round into the firing chamber. Failure to feed is common when the shooter does not hold the firearm firmly (known as limp wristing), when the slide is not fully cycled by the preceding round, or due to problems with the magazine. It can also be caused by worn recoil springs, buffer ...
“The moral power of an army is so great that it can motivate men to get up out of a trench and step into enemy machine-gun fire.” Dr. Jonathan Shay, in his book Achilles in Vietnam The entire military is “a moral construct,” said retired VA psychiatrist and author Jonathan Shay .