M14 compared to M16

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HorseSoldier

Myth. The M14 was canned because it was obsolete and a flawed concept from the start. I find it amusing that anyone who was not a fan of its mediocre performance has "personal agendas" but, apparently, the corrupt/incompetent bureaucrats who forced it and the 7.62x51 round on the US military and NATO were somehow aboveboard in their underhanded disservice to the American servicemen they were supposed to be providing the best equipment to.
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Actually just a little reading and research will show that it was in fact personal agendas. In fact if anything can be said about the m16 as it was first deployed it is that it got a whole lot of American service men killed and again it was because of personal agendas. Granted, today the m16 is a much improved weapon over what it was originally but the bottom line is it is still a .223 which is a varmint round or a marginal deer cartridge at best and certainly not the optimal cartridge for killing people.

Type this into a Google search ”McNamara m14 vs m16” and you will find a plethora of information on this subject and anywhere that the hits are relevant at all they will bare out this “personal agenda” business.

Here is one I found to be very informative.

http://anarchangel.blogspot.com/2007/02/whos-at-fault-for-m16.html

But there are a lot more out there and then if you pick out the names mentioned in one of these pieces and revise the search criteria the list of relevant hits just gets longer.

HorseSoldier

Actually, if you look at boards like this one you'll find a bunch of servicemen (myself included) who think the M14 is 99% hype, and who will point out the reality that in the desert it simply has not done its job very well at all in the eyes of many end users. You'll also note that the reality is that both the Army and Marines are ditching it in favor of other platforms because its real world performance is nowhere near what fans on the internet claim.
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You know it’s interesting because I have looked on a lot of boards and in fact that is what prompted my statement in the first place. In fact it is common to see like one post such as yours and oddly enough it seems that post always seems to make a claim such as the one you’re making and usually in a tone much like yours. And with out fail it is like this lone post among all these others who either very much like the M14 or very much wish they could get their hands on one.
 
I don't think people are bashing the M14 here as much as they are saying that it is not a good weapon in terms of being used by our troops as a whole and/or more specifically as a select fire weapon. Specifically based on the caliber.

The weapon chosen by the military has to be a compromise of something... When they had the M14, they mainly compromised rapid fire capabilities and the amount of ammo a person could carry. Now that they have the M16, they have lost the long distance capabilities and a little bit of shot for shot power.

However, it seems that they have a weapon that fits what they need for the majority of our troops right now.

As much as someone may prefer the M14 over the M16 as a military rifle, it doesn't fit the military quite as well, obviously...
 
:cool::cool:Hey wait a minute. You real name wouldn’t be McNamara would it or did you ever work for a guy named McNamara?

Hmmmm?

:cool::cool:
 
I guess your not up to speed on the new USMC M39EMR (Enhanced Marksman Rifle)
It's a modernized M14 in a SAGE stock. They love it!
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Who exactly is they? The STA, BN Recon and MSOC units I see around this base have been replacing their DMRs with Mk12s and supplementing their M40A3s with Mk11s
 
The weapon chosen by the military has to be a compromise of something... When they had the M14, they mainly compromised rapid fire capabilities and the amount of ammo a person could carry. Now that they have the M16, they have lost the long distance capabilities and a little bit of shot for shot power.

However, it seems that they have a weapon that fits what they need for the majority of our troops right now.
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Actually I do agree with this. No weapon is perfect for every situation. However I do think that the 7.62 x 51 is a much more lethal cartridge and designers should be able to design a platform that makes this a viable cartridge for a light weight full auto weapon.

Several years ago I saw a full auto something or other that could be fired one handed and controlled quite easily. It was because of the way the barrel / receiver was canted into the stock. The recoil drove the weapon straight back into your hand and didn’t cause it to rise. And of course these days we have a lot more and better technology so it really should be possible to come up with a better platform for the 7.62 x 51
 
Except even the burst capability is almost never used.
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It actually used quite a bit in combat. State side training not so much so, the problem is that training doctrine doesn't match well with combat reality. Case in point we took a great training program with the EMP and ruined it with the CMP. That is part of the problem with allowing fighting doctrine to be written by the rifle range mafia. Most of them are exceptional shots, but not from combat arms MOSs, much less combat veterans.
 
Who exactly is they? The STA, BN Recon and MSOC units I see around this base have been replacing their DMRs with Mk12s and supplementing their M40A3s with Mk11s
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Oh c'mon, these guys read it in Guns and Ammo so it must be true! :)
 
the corrupt/incompetent bureaucrats who forced it and the 7.62x51 round on the US military and NATO were somehow aboveboard in their underhanded disservice to the American servicemen they were supposed to be providing the best equipment to.
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Their frame of reference was still WW2 and Korea. They were from the old school and indoctrinated into the old style of battle. They were weined on the M1 Grand and the Browning BAR (military version). To them, the M-14 was a godsend.
 
Ok, I am going into this cold no google checking so bear with me.
First, if I remember correctly the major flaw with manufacturing the M-14 was that it was being manufactured on the same equipment used to manufacture the M-1 and that in itself somehow hindered the manufacture of the weapon.
"The M-16 holds the record for longest life as a standard issue rifle", umm I think that title actually goes to the Mosin Nagant rifle.
 
In the end it's politics. There is no end all be all rifle that can wear two hats at the same time. There's always a trade off or two. But for the sake of logistics it's nice to have common rounds for the riflemen and SAW gunners.

Why was the M1 Garand built using the 30-06 and not the .276 that Mr. Garand based his design on? Politics.

Why did the US Army decide it had to follow the Wermacht's Stg44 concept (a 400 meter fire-fight design) yet use a slightly shortened round designed to match the venerable 30-06 Springfield in a lighter weapon, forsaking the T48 over the T44 and Gene Stoner's late to the party AR10? Politics.

What chambering did Dieudonne Saive originally intend for the FAL? 7.92x33, yet it too fell victim to... politics.

When Eugene Stoner designed the original AR rifle it was in the 7.62x51 format yet it ended up a scaled down version and was accepted due to LeMay and McNamara's political muscle.

To my way of thinking (and I've got no dog in the fight) this debate is apples to oranges for a couple of reasons. Caliber or cartridge design being one, intended use being another, operating system being the third, each a political animal or victim.

If Garand had been allowed to go with the .276, if it (the .276) had later been scaled down for the StG copy concept post war, maybe a tad bit closer to the 33mm in lieu of the 51mm size, if Saive and Stoner had used that round to develop their famous FAL/AR platform... we'd still find something fun for heated debate for hours on end.

A 7mm Kurz. Pretty close to a 6.8 Spc isn't it? 7mm Kurz/6.8 Spc. Interesting concept. Naaaah. Needs more punch downrange. The politics of logistics (and inertia), not to mention cost of new weapons R&D/procurement would never let it see the light of day.

What I want to know is this, Is direct (gas) impingement really better than piston impingement? If not, should the piston system be totally enclosed or have a portion of it as an exposed op rod? And what SHOULD the perfect select fire military weapon be (op system), what should it weigh and what catridge should it utilize? Clearly it's not the M14 or the M16, each having it's drawbacks and strengths, no one can agree on a consensus. Politics. ;)
 
I'd like to have at least one every U.S. Mxx rifle ever issed.
M1 Garand & Carbine
M14 & M16
Nothing else goes with 1911's or US Flags quite the way they do.
I've shot, handled & spent time with all of them. I love them all. My only complaint is not owning them all & the M14's ars so danged expensive.
USFlagGP.jpg

WNTFW
 
Why was the M1 Garand built using the 30-06 and not the .276 that Mr. Garand based his design on? Politics.
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Because the US Military had stock piles of the .06 left over from WW1 all over the world, and was still being produced years later. Some of it is still around today!........:eek:
 
Some of it is still around today!........
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Pre-WWII 30-06 ammo? All the stuff I am aware of is post WWII. They should have simply kept the bolt guns in reserve service and for training until the ammo ran out. Then just sell them to civilians.

It was a penny wise/pound foolish situation.
 
"The M-16 holds the record for longest life as a standard issue rifle", umm I think that title actually goes to the Mosin Nagant rifle.
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Think the OP meant American rifle. If not, I think the Brown Bess musket and some other long guns from the same era have the MN beat as a combat long gun :)
 
Pre-WWII 30-06 ammo? All the stuff I am aware of is post WWII.
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All four current rifle ammo DODICs for M2 30-06 are exclusively dedicated to support the CMP. With CMP out of USGI 30-06 ammo, I'd venture to guess whatever stockpiles of 30-06 we have in various ASPs around the country are getting pretty lean.

(Belted MG ammo, DODIC A218, is apparently still in the system, with only "excess" being given to CMP. I suspect that anything left in stock is pretty limited and for familiarization training for SF and other SOF forces who may occasionally run into a working M1919 MG in the 3rd World).
 
Ok, I am going into this cold no google checking so bear with me.
First, if I remember correctly the major flaw with manufacturing the M-14 was that it was being manufactured on the same equipment used to manufacture the M-1 and that in itself somehow hindered the manufacture of the weapon.
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That was one of the selling points to the M14 that it would be able to be made on the same equipment as the M1, however it turned out to be totally wrong and required a whole new bunch of machinary to make.

I also believe the 14 bashers don't know anything about how accurate and reliable a modernized M14 can be.

Modern technology and good old American ingenuity properly applied to the 50 year old platform yields awesome results.
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With the same reason of thinking any rifle that you spend weeks fine tuning could be capable of such performance. Throw enough money and you can do this with many rifles. The problem with the M14 is it is hard to keep it running at that performance for long and many of the troops issued the M14 are the regular old surplus out of stock. It is a stopgap method, due to being in stock rather than some super weapon. A match grade M1a is going to shoot better than your average M14 by far.

The BAR replacement as someone mentioned was going to be the M15. Pretty much an M14 with a heavy barrel to add some weight and a bipod, but it never saw any service.
 
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