Question about m-16 development

C

chris in va

New member
Just curious.

The Russians had their intermediate cartridge for years before the AR came out. The US had the massive 30-06, shrunk it a bit to 308 then...55gr bullet? Why didn't they use the same AR platform but go with something like a 90gr?

I understand they were trying to save weight and reduce recoil, but seems like the pendulum went full swing in the opposite direction, a little too far.

I started reloading the first rounds for the AR I just put on layaway, and really can't believe just how small these bullets are.
 
I haven't read anything specific over the years, but it would appear to be a balance of price, performance and technical constraints. 55gr was considered by the military to be the lightest (ie cheapest) bullet that was still sufficient to cause mortal wounds (although that is subject to heavy debate depending on who you talk to).

Military ammo also cannot have hollow points of any kind, which adds to your cartridge overall length. The size of the magazine defines the maximum OAL, in essence limiting bullet weight to ~70-75gr and below.
 
There weren't a whole lot of heavy 22 cal bullet options in the 1960s. People forget that a lot of the heavy bullets came out as a result of civilian demand to get more performance out of a military caliber for competition instead of the military thinking "how can I get the most performance out of this round" in the first place.

In hindsight it is easy to say "should have gone 77 gr from the start" because of the performance advantage, but those 77 gr bullets just weren't available at the start.

Jimro
 
Chris, the answer to your question lies in a number of studies done during WWII and Korea. Based on these studies, the military reached the conclusion that putting more bullets in the air was a more effective means of achieving hits than increased training. Based on WWII studies, the military also had a ft/lbs figure at 600yds that they felt was necessary to produce a casualty.

Based on these ideas, the military developed several .22 centerfire cartridges and eventually Project SALVO, which was designed to increase hit potential by putting more projectiles in the air. The M16 was originally envisioned as a temporary rifle that would fill the gap until Project SALVO was developed.

The GunZone has an excellent history of the 5.56x45 cartridge which naturally includes a lot of history on the M16 rifle as well. It is worth looking at if you are interested in how the M16 came about and eventually replaced Project SALVO.
 
I understand they were trying to save weight and reduce recoil, but seems like the pendulum went full swing in the opposite direction, a little too far.
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There are always contending groups in the military, however, whenever ideologues like the Grandmaisons in France http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Grandmaison,+Louis or the American high velocity ideologues from the 50’s capture the front office, horrible things happen.

I highly recommend reading “The Gun” by C. J. Chivers, a former Marine and New York Times Correspondent.

http://www.amazon.com/Gun-C-J-Chivers/dp/B004Q7E0YA/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1305813256&sr=1-1

A footnotes summary is that having been rebuffed in his attempts to sell a 308 AR, Stoner quickly modified the 222 Remington cartridge and made a smaller rifle to sell to the Air Force as a replacement for the M1 Carbine. His choice of bullet was limited to what was available and easily modified. Stoner did not have a lot of money for development and studies so this was not a well thought out cartridge for a main line infantry rifle. However once the rifle was in the Air Force's hands, Pentagon supporters churned out “studies” advocating Stoner’s cartridge and rifle. (These supporters ended up retiring into private industry). The Project Salvo guys in Vietnam were churning out fantastic reports of decapitations, legs blown off, hands blown off, arms blown off, etc, all of which supported the Colt small bore high velocity cartridge. It was a massive fraud and when you read about it, you will want to throw the book across the room in disgust.

I was especially disgusted when I read that these same Project Salvo guys suppressed the bad news about all the jams, malfunctions, failures, M16's were having in Vietnam. They classified everything. It was only through letters home from GI's that the catastrophe that is the M16 ever got out in public.

The Army was perfectly happy with the 308 and the M14 but once the Military Industrial complex got rolling on the Colt AR15 and the .223 cartridge, all tactical considerations were over ridden.

And the 223 round still sucks.
 
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The M-16/223 round got off to a rocky start, but we would have filled more body bags over the last 50 years had we stayed with the 308 round. No round is perfect in every situation. Once the bugs were worked out of the rifle and better bullets developed the current platform is fine for most situations our soldiers are finding themselves in.
 
The Armalite rifles are not my favorite platform. I think we would have been better served in Vietnam with the M-14. However, I think the 5.56 round is "okay." A newer round like the 6.8spc would probably be ideal but the 5.56 is here to stay for awhile. The switching over to a new general issue rifle caliber is massive. The US currently wants to conform to standard NATO ammo choices and other countries aren't going to spend the money either.

Getting make to the subject of the actual RIFLE not the caliber, we should have gone with the FAL like alot of our allies.
 
However once the rifle was in the Air Force's hands, Pentagon supporters churned out “studies” advocating Stoner’s cartridge and rifle. (These supporters ended up retiring into private industry).
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C. J. Chivers is an excellent author; but studies advocating a .22 centerfire cartridge for infantry use predate the development of the AR10 by 3 years and the development of the M16 by 7 years. Project SALVO itself predates the development of the AR15 by several years.

Aberdeen started testing a 60gr .220 Swift in November 1950. And the first .22 centerfire rifle tested by the military isn't an AR15; but an FAL in ".22 NATO". The AR15 isn't developed until the CONARC request for a SCHV rifle in late 1957.

Again, the Gun Zone has a great timeline on all of this.
 


What's ironic is that the study that eventually turned out the 308 had, essentially, a 6.5-08 in the line-up and the FAL was the front runner before the US stomped it's jack-boots.

Can you imagine what the 260Rem FAL would have turned into with half of the engineering energy poured into the M16 for "improvements"?



-tINY

 
Bartholomew Roberts, excellent information as usual. Thank you for the links that help explain how our military ended up with a rifle that has been good enough to remain the standard longer than any other.

In fact it's very similar to the run the 1911 handgun had. If either of these designs had not been good enough how could they have had such long runs without being superseded. And the main reasons the 1911 was replaced was to conform to the NATO cartridge that was smaller and lighter, allowing more capacity and firepower - advantages the M16 offered over the rifles it replaced.
 
C. J. Chivers is an excellent author; but studies advocating a .22 centerfire cartridge for infantry use predate the development of the AR10 by 3 years and the development of the M16 by 7 years. Project SALVO itself predates the development of the AR15 by several years.

Aberdeen started testing a 60gr .220 Swift in November 1950. And the first .22 centerfire rifle tested by the military isn't an AR15; but an FAL in ".22 NATO". The AR15 isn't developed until the CONARC request for a SCHV rifle in late 1957.
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There are “studies” going on all the time. Ninety nine point nine percent of the time they lead to nothing. I have read summary of Air Force studies, and I am talking the expenditure of hundreds of thousands for these studies, where the study stated, quite literally, “we are studying the manufacture of laser space mirrors if and when laser space weapons ever become available.” There are on going studies for any idea you can possibly imagine, and lots more than you can ever imagine. The number of useless studies is beyond human comprehension.

What gets things going is money. Once real money is in the game you have advocacy. It is a self sustaining process, the more public money, the more advocacy is built on Capital Hill and within the Pentagon, and the more money comes into the program. Once the money starts flowing , ideologues who were once merely baying at the moon, have dollars to spend and contractors to use to protect their programs. Studies are produced whose conclusions are uniformly predictable: “spend more money on this program”.

It is very hard to kill a nonperforming major weapon program. Just look at the MEADS program today. Ten years behind schedule and the House markup has these words:

Section 232

The committee is concerned about authorizing significant funds for a program that the Department does not intend to procure, and whose record of performance, according to the February 14,2011 Department of Defense fact sheet, "might ordinarily make it a candidate for cancellation." Additionally, the coinmittee lacks confidence that the proof of concept would result in viable prototypes and demonstrated capabilities. The Chief of Staff of the Army testified before the committee in March 2011 that he is "not convinced" the MEADS proof of concept is viable.

http://www.ng.mil/ll/analysisdocs/FY2012/House Report 112-74.pdf

And yet they are going to fund the program $800 Million more dollars to 2013! :eek:

Why? Advocacy!

The money flow for Colt started once General LeMay bought AR15’s for the Air Force. Since then the Army has been wedded to Colt, it is possible with the end of the M4 contract there might be a divorce, but I don’t see any cracks in the relationship.
 
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I often wonder where we'd be if John Garand had been allowed to build his rifle in .276 Pedersen as he originally intended.
 
I often wonder where we'd be if John Garand had been allowed to build his rifle in .276 Pedersen as he originally intended.
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Scrambling for ammo after Pearl Harbor?

I wonder if going to an "intermediate" caliber earlier would have made a difference or not. Both the Soviets and the Chinese went with SCHV rounds after decades of fielding one of the best intermediate cartridges out there.
 
First, let me be more specific in my original reply:

A footnotes summary is that having been rebuffed in his attempts to sell a 308 AR, Stoner quickly modified the 222 Remington cartridge and made a smaller rifle to sell to the Air Force as a replacement for the M1 Carbine.

His choice of bullet was limited to what was available and easily modified.
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Not correct. In April 1952, Aberdeen grants the request of Gerald Gustafon (who along with William C. Davis did the 60gr .220 Swift study for Aberdeen) to study Small Caliber High Velocity cartridges for use in rifles and carbines.

In Novemeber 1952, Gustafson modifies an M2 Carbine to fire a .224 bullet based on the .222 Remington case shortened to 1.32" (.22 SCHV) firing a 41gr round at 3,000fps. In September 1953, he publishes the results of his findings which conclude that the .22 SCHV is superior to .30 Carbine and .45ACP and compares favorably with the .30-06 M1 out to 300m. He recommends further testing to the Infantry Board. By the time the report is issued, Project SALVO is already well underway and evaluating calibers from .18-27 in both simplex and duplex rounds.

April 1954: Davis and Gustafson submit a new report on the advanatages of SCHV cartridges. They propose a .22 cartridge based on a .224 caliber 68gr bullet in a necked down ".30 Light Rifle" (what would eventually become 7.62x51mm) case fired at 3,400fps. This report gets them approval for further research on this cartridge which is dubbed ".22 NATO"

In December 1955, just as Springfield Armory is nearing completion of the .22 NATO T48 (FAL) conversions, Davis and Gustafson publish more findings on .22 NATO and request additional funds. These funds are denied. A key feature of this latest report is the proposal of a new SCHV cartridge in between .22 SCHV and .22 NATO - this new cartridge would launch a 55gr bullet at 3,300fps (sound familiar?)

December 1956 - a copy of the "denied" funding request by Gustafson and Davis makes it to the desk of General Willard G. Wyman, Commanding General of the Continental Army Commnd. Wyman recommends that the Infantry Board submit a formal request for a SCHV rifle based on the cartridge in the denied funding request. Wyman also hints to Eugene Stoner that a scaled-down version of his AR10 rifle prototype might be a good match for the Infantry Board request.

Spring 1957 - The infantry board extends the original 300yd range to 500yd in order to address dissent amongst Army officials. As a result, all the various manufacturers are forced to revamp their .22 centerfire ammo designs to meet the new requirements. Stoner tweaks the .222 Remington round to meet the new requirements - more case capacity is needed to meet the velocity (3,300fps as it turns out) necessary for 500yds - leading to the ".222 Special"

May 1957 - Stoner demos a prototype of the AR15 for General Wyman. CONARC formally requests 10 AR15s for testing in .222 special (5 days after the adoption of the M14 is announced).

November-December - several SCHV rifle submissions are demonstrated by Winchester and Armalite. However, the revamped Winchester .22 still doesn't meet the penetration requirements. Winchester redesigns the case but retains the short OAL so that they don't have to redesign their rifle entry. The Armalite can fire either the .222 Special or the .224E2 Winchester - so the trials go forward with the .224E2 Winchester.

In July 1958 the Infantry Board releases a study concluding the AR15 and Winchester SCHV entries are a potential replacement for the M14, In September of the same year, CONARC judges both rifles superior to the M14. The AR15 is judged superior to both M14 and Winchester in terms of reliability, however the .222 Special and .224E2 Win cartridges are judged inferior to 7.62x51. In December of this year, artic testing of the SCHV rifles takes place.

1959 - .222 Special (Stoner's design) is renamed .223 Remington. The Powell Board approves of the SCHV concept and recommends the purchase of 750 AR-15s for extended trials; but recommends no further consideration be given to .223 Remington. In January, Colt enters into a licensing agreement for the AR10/AR15 with Fairchild/Armalite.

July 1960 - the infamous Curtis LeMay party with the watermelon.

Now keep in mind, this lengthy post is a very brief summary. I've eliminated hundreds of studies on .22 rifles and projectiles from this time period just to hit the points that are directly relevant.

1. Stoner did not make the rifle to sell to the Air Force to replace the M1 Carbine. Stoner scaled down the AR10 at the request of General Wyman for the SCHV rifle program.

2. Stoner didn't just pull the .222 Remington out of his rear. He used that caliber because the SCHV program specifically asked that he used something very similar to .222 Remington and it asked that because of much previous research on the subject.

Again, look at the very helpful Gun Zone 5.56x45 timeline. It goes into excruciating detail on the subject. There is a decade of research on .22 centerfires prior to the LeMay party and at that point, the AR15 was already being evaulated by the Continental Army Command as a serious replacement for the M14. LeMay was certainly instrumental in making the AR15 happen; but I think your short summary is so concise that is misstated the historical facts as well and not being very clear on why .223 Remington was ultimately chosen.
 
Everything I've read about the rifle and its final caliber choice has to do with the amount of ammo a grunt could pack when carrying the M16. The 55 grain round and now the 62 grain are lethal depending on shot placement, but that's been true with any small arm. A 7.62x51 has better ballistics and terminal performance than the 5.56x45, as well it should. You're looking at a 147 grain to 168 grain bullet. A squad just can't carry as much ammo for the larger round. My understanding is that they still have a designated squad members that carry the M14 for suppressing enemy fire at longer ranges while the remaining soldiers carry the 5.56. As an urban weapon the M16/M4 makes much more sense due to the shorter ranges encountered when engaging the enemy. Their rate of fire and compact size make for a better street to street, or house to house rifle.
 
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