Originally Posted by HaplessOperator
(Post 97518)
Oh, I know they took a while to distribute; I was just making the point we had the designs locked in and type-classified even earlier than you supposed; had we gone directly to unit replacement, there were - at the time - four major forging houses in addition to two primary military workshops that could have handled conversion and distro. If oil prices had spiked, and we'd seen a resurgence in spending, and the Soviet Union had never collapsed, it's a solid bet we'd have seen A4s and M4A1s in everyone's hands vice M16A2s. I've often extolled the point that after GW1, and under the working concept that the bear we're hunting is still out there, it's a solid bet our forces would have looked a lot more like 2001-2004 than the early to mid 80s aesthetic everyone seems so latched onto, there being a clear and present reason to neither quit while you're ahead nor risk falling behind. The makers of 1e and 2.2 did what they could, but hindsight being what it is, there's a lot of stuff I read having served after 9/11 and getting hands-on with a bunch of Russian hardware that seems more than a little laughable.
ON TO PARTS AND ACCESSORIES, THE REAL MEAT.
Magazine wells cut for faster reloads don't really impact the structural integrity of the weapon, and the beveled flares actually increase the overall strength of the lower receiver in that portion of the gun, while making it easier to slam a magazine home in a compromised shooting position.
As for the charging handles, yeah, there's some crap out there, but there was always crap out there for basically every other firearm that had decent market saturation and aftermarket. A good ambi is solid as all hell, and it's not hard to find T-handles (like most parts these days) that are significantly better than what's issued, especially if you want to be able to run your full manual of arms conveniently from the weak side.
The slings? The old two-points were kind of crap for anything except flat range shooting, and were basically as minimal as you could get in form and function, just enough to carry the rifle without much trouble. You can make a nice loop sling with them, but that's not really a sell for combat usage. A good three point, though, does everything the two-point does for retention, plus being able to blast the rifle off of you if it's trying to drown your ass in a ditched helo or vehicle rollover into water, and having your rifle bungeeing to your workspace and hanging by itself at a ready position for easy manipulation or ready to grab after sliding it out of the way for a sidearm transition is pretty solid. Worked out for me alright fighting through Karmah and Zaidon, anyway, and I can tell you dead-ass that an old two-point would have legit been substandard and in some cases life-threatening; does the same job, just doesn't have the same limitations, and does things that a two-point simply can't.
For the muzzle devices... not really sure how one can break other than being screwed on incorrectly to the muzzle threads and having a bullet strike on the way out or just being horrifically timed; they're generally made from the same material the receiver; the original AR-15 and M16 flash hiders were aluminum; I prefer steel, myself. Properly timed and fitted, there's not really much to break, and it's certainly not a load-bearing part.
I've got a few ARs at home that I'd have taken in a heartbeat over what they handed me, and that are better timed for the M855 round; green tips don't even bottom the buffer out, so you get a nice, smooth, punchless recoil pattern with each shot, and gassing it up to eat anything is a breeze with the adjustable gas block.
Like I said, I'll not debate you one bit that there's crap out there, but the military's transition to sourcing civilian designs instead of leaving it to the Ordnance Department or Natick meant one thing: civilian sports and tactical industry was destined to leave the military in the dustbin with small arms design, and the coup was accomplished fairly bloodlessly several decades ago. Only real requirement is to spend wisely, and avoid crap manufacturers. Do that, and you can fairly trivially build a rifle that smokes a brand new rifle from your company's armory for about 3/5 to 3/4 of the price.
As for the zip ties, they wanted us to, but we gave up on it pretty quick in onesies and twosies here and there once we got in country, and then to greater and lesser degrees in larger numbers, and no one seemed to mind. It's mostly a concern for training, far as I ever saw, and once you've got a PEQ-2 or a PEQ-16, a Surefire M3, TA31 or a red dot and magnifier all mounted, your rifle starts becoming covered in Paracord pretty quick. I did zip-ties for a while, and then said hell with it and went with blue Loctite for knobs and mounting plates. Any impact serious enough to rip a secured accessory off its mount is going to destroy the accessory, anyway, or for the electronics, physically rip the body of the device's body open when it goes with the mounting plate.We had a few combat losses of equipment, but it was stuff like vehicle rollovers crushing a rifle that fell out, or an M249 being ejected and sent flying and landing like a javelin or smacking into a rock and jacking the receiver, or stuff catching frag.
Now, with all the puffing and trifling out of the way, glad to meet ya! And yeah, happy to see folks besides the admins running around. I gather you're a slightly older salt. Be cool to swap some stories some time; I'll talk at the drop of a boonie cover, and hold forth on the tools of the trade all day.
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