Poll - Favorite Assault Rifle

[Raellus]

Ah, the classic AR v. AK debate continues!

Originally Posted by HaplessOperator

The AR-15 runs better in mud than an AK.

I'm curious as to your sources for this claim. Everything I've read or seen on this particular subject says the exact opposite.

The AK-47 series is legendary for its robustness and ability to operate reliably even when filthy. I once saw a video of South African special forces recovering an AK that had been buried for years in a guerilla cache in Mozambique. They literally dumped a can of motor oil over it (not even close to a proper cleaning), and then immediately fired off a 30-round magazine on full auto with no problems. I've never seen an M-16 do that.

The early M-16 had a deadly reputation of jamming under adverse conditions. In Vietnam, hundreds of US soldiers and Marines were KIA when their first-gen G.I. M-16s jammed during firefights. To be fair, this was corrected in subsequent versions but, AFAIK the AK still operates more reliably under adverse conditions (mud, sand, water, etc.) than the AR-15.

Originally Posted by HaplessOperator

If I were a trifling man, I could also mention that I've never been able to ignore that all these countries with indig service rifles (especially bullpups) tend to have their special operations forces almost universally using some flavor of AR-15 as well.

True, but these days, those AR "flavors" are more-often-than not look-alikes rifles like the HK416, which uses a different, more reliable operating system. It looks like an AR-15 but, ironically, its innards are more similar to those of the AK.

For the business end of things, an AR-15 is - within most common shootout distances - slinging a round that is going to cause considerably more tissue damage than a 7.62x39.

The 5.56mm round performs really well in ballistics tests, but it falls short of 7.62x39mm when it comes to penetrating anything tougher than soft tissue. I've also read multiple battlefield reports of the 5.56mm round lacking "stopping power", and of human targets of fighting through multiple 5.56mm round hits.

That all said, what I've read/seen on the subject definitely confirms that the ergonomics, operating controls, recoil, accuracy, mod-ability, and ammo weight of the AR-15 is superior to the AK and its variants.

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[HaplessOperator]

Originally Posted by Raellus

Ah, the classic AR v. AK debate continues!



I'm curious as to your sources for this claim. Everything I've read or seen on this particular subject says the exact opposite.

The AK-47 series is legendary for its robustness and ability to operate reliably even when filthy. I once saw a video of South African special forces recovering an AK that had been buried for years in a guerilla cache in Mozambique. They literally dumped a can of motor oil over it (not even close to a proper cleaning), and then immediately fired off a 30-round magazine on full auto with no problems. I've never seen an M-16 do that.

The early M-16 had a deadly reputation of jamming under adverse conditions. In Vietnam, hundreds of US soldiers and Marines were KIA when their first-gen G.I. M-16s jammed during firefights. To be fair, this was corrected in subsequent versions but, AFAIK the AK still operates more reliably under adverse conditions (mud, sand, water, etc.) than the AR-15.



True, but these days, those AR "flavors" are more-often-than not look-alikes rifles like the HK416, which uses a different, more reliable operating system. It looks like an AR-15 but, ironically, its innards are more similar to those of the AK.



The 5.56mm round performs really well in ballistics tests, but it falls short of 7.62x39mm when it comes to penetrating anything tougher than soft tissue. I've also read multiple battlefield reports of the 5.56mm round lacking "stopping power", and of human targets of fighting through multiple 5.56mm round hits.

That all said, what I've read/seen on the subject definitely confirms that the ergonomics, operating controls, recoil, accuracy, mod-ability, and ammo weight of the AR-15 is superior to the AK and its variants.

-

Mostly from running both platforms in mud comps and on the job for the past 20 years. There's modern mud tests that bear this out, though. Outside of "legendary" claims and lingering fuddlore regarding the original production model's faults in Vietnam, essentially anything that shuts an AR-15 down is going to shut down an AK as well. About the only thing they do better - assuming both weapons are well-lubricated - is run better in deep freeze conditions, and if your AR isn't running in Bridgeport at 12,000 feet, well, you're using the wrong lubricant.

If you're not running the thing dripping, put plainly, you're doing it wrong. CLP is cheap, and there's not a thing in the world will seize on if you've got the operating system essentially swimming. Ran the thing through the Dynamic Assault Course and a couple dozen critical incident courses over the years, and through most competition, and whether shooting compromised or flat range, she runnin', as long as you keep the thing wet.

As far as the actual mechanics of it, the popular claim that an AK runs better because of "loose tolerances" is bunk. That's why the thing ingests so much environmental contamination, and why you can get so much large particulate in the chamber and even down into your magazine, even if the weapon is loaded. If your safety isn't on, the side of your weapon is open and able to ingest. Like, not just moisture, or water with particulate in it, but talking chunks, and straight into your operating system. The bolt also doesn't self-clear the way an AR does, blowing gas though the starboard side of the bolt carrier group; you're generating a high pressure environment that exits through the path of least resistance with every shot, and you can literally see it blowing mud out of the ejection port during the firing cycle. Whole thing stays more or less closed off, as well, whether the ejection port cover is open or not (better to keep it closed after charging a round anyway).

Your anecdote about dumping a can of motor oil into and onto a weapon isn't surprising at all. Motor oil, as it turns out, and as you may imagine, is an utterly fantastic lubricant, and as I've attempted to make clear, if a weapon is well-lubed, it'll generally fire, no matter the make or model, so long as it's not got a gross physical stoppage already in play that requires clearing to allow cycling the operating system.

As to the early M16 part, I couldn't really tell you other than agree with the reports, but we're not really talking about early M16s with jacked up operating and maintenance instructions, poor barrel finishing, and engineered failures.

As to the variant operating system, it's more reliable than the in-line internal gas piston of traditional ARs in certain circumstances, but it's not an across-the-board thing, and there are trade-offs with it, as there are with any design choice in a firearm; there ain't no such thing as a free lunch in any engineering field, and internal gas piston vs. an offset short stroke is no different. Also, for what it's worth, the system you're referring to shares little with an AK, as it's derived directly from G36's system in function, which itself is derived from the AR-18; the Germans basically re-skinned a Stoner design for their own operating system, and later put it back into an AR-15 form factor. There's a fairly straightforward lineage to this. As to the 416 mention, prior to their rolling that out, most of the ARs in use by the special operations forces mentioned were simply product improved Colt designs from licensed manufacturers, and still used the in-line internal gas piston.

For terminal performance, yeah, 7.62x39 knocks through a lot of light cover better, but you get better AP performance through body armor (especially more modern designs, as 7.62x39 designers failed to keep up with Western ceramics) with the tungsten core munitions at the higher velocities that the 5.56 cartridge generates, even out of M4-length barrels, compared to the AK. If you're sitting there trading rounds with someone through cover, though, few hundred yards away, where this sort of thing is usually taking place, you're doing yourself a disservice by sitting there and not making use of the rest of the weapons in your squad to fix, flank, and tenderly caress that hostile element that's engaging you. For what it's worth, though, you can wallbang just fine with 5.56 though most residential structures. If you're trying to sit there and wallow out a block wall, you're not going to achieve that with either rifle, unless you've got a firing squad. And generally speaking, if you're behind cover that I can't penetrate with my rifle, but COULD penetrate with a 7.62 round, I'm going to set your corpse on fire with a copper jet from an HEDP round or slamming a LAW into you, cuz it's no skin off my ass, and I brought three, because only an idiot fights fair.

There's no perfect weapon, again, and with any of them, you're working in other areas to counter shortcomings. ARs simply don't require a multitude of sacrifices.

As to the humans fighting through multiple 5.56 round hits, there's nothing surprising about that. You see similar with many other cartridges, all the way up to .300 WinMag. Ugly truth of it is that any hit not in the ten ring is gonna be a long an ugly death if you're looking at torso hits. If you don't blow the heart and lungs out, it's gonna take an uncomfortable amount of time for your target to die, period. Sometimes you see someone go down quickly from the traumatic psychological shock of the event, but it's unpredictable and absolutely cannot be counted on, even if you slammed a 7.62x51mm round into their chest. You can blow someone's heart and both lungs out with a hit, and worst case scenario, they've still got about 8 seconds on their feet they can kill you with. That's why you fire until your target is hamburger, no matter what system you're running. If you don't get a good spinal, or blow out the heart and lungs, or get lucky and tag someone in the domepiece, you're going to have to shoot them more. There's a reason it's a good idea to get a machine gun into a house, and it's not just cuz of fire superiority. 9mm, 5.56, 7.62, doesn't matter. If you can shoot your target half a dozen times and destroy every functional organ they have, they're going to bleed out and go down from hypovolemic shock that much quicker, and you've got more of a chance of clipping the strings with a good spinal hit with every shot that nails them, or blowing out the pelvis, or getting a similarly good structural hit that physically prevents the human body from working the way it's supposed to.

Stopping power in and of itself is a literally non-existent concept born largely out of fuddlore and the operators of a weapon not understanding the actual principles of what's taking place when they smoke someone, and weighing their perceptions of a fictional understanding of how gunfire kills people against an uncompromising reality of what happens when a bullet hits an organism that is wired from the ground up to stay alive until the brain shuts down from lack of oxygen and that is fully capable of killing you even after lethal injury unless you completely disassemble it or clip the strings.

Also, sorry for the whole post quote. I haven't used forum markup for years and am utterly terrible at it, and was unsure of how badly I'd bork the formatting if I tried getting clever or fancy.

PS: I should add that none of this is a straight repudiation of the AK platform as a whole. But the takeaway should be that there's nothing particularly legendary about it other than how widely available it was and how much better it was than most systems in use by the countries and non-governmental forces that adopted them in its early days of widespread popularity; the landscape didn't offer a lot of breadth in choice back then, and its competitor hadn't sorted out teething issues. The "reliability" of an AK is literally nothing more than you can achieve out of essentially any rifle platform in existence. We just don't see many other countries' designs in constant use through decades of conflict, because most countries don't spend decades at war or directly supplying conflict forces the way the US and USSR did. Like, no one's going to have an enduring memory of the L85 other than UK servicemembers. Everyone's seen an AK, and after Vietnam, just about anyone except folks who run both platforms regularly and in a variety of operating conditions is typically exposed to a great deal more myth than reality.

[Raellus]

I appreciate your thorough response, HaplessOperator. You've got me questioning a lot of what I thought I knew about the AK vis-a-vis the AR-15.

Originally Posted by HaplessOperator

As far as the actual mechanics of it, the popular claim that an AK runs better because of "loose tolerances" is bunk. That's why the thing ingests so much environmental contamination, and why you can get so much large particulate in the chamber and even down into your magazine, even if the weapon is loaded. If your safety isn't on, the side of your weapon is open and able to ingest. Like, not just moisture, or water with particulate in it, but talking chunks, and straight into your operating system. The bolt also doesn't self-clear the way an AR does, blowing gas though the starboard side of the bolt carrier group; you're generating a high pressure environment that exits through the path of least resistance with every shot, and you can literally see it blowing mud out of the ejection port during the firing cycle. Whole thing stays more or less closed off, as well, whether the ejection port cover is open or not (better to keep it closed after charging a round anyway).

Isn't that a feature as much as a bug? I've read that the AK's loose tolerances contribute to reduced accuracy compared to the AR, but that they allow the AK to continue to operate in pretty much any environment with very little routine maintenance.

Lest anyone think that I'm an AR hater, I am not. Although I tend to be cynical and rather suspicious of the US military-industrial complex, there must be legitimate reasons that the AR platform is still going strong. It's the only assault rifle that I've ever operated and I haven't experienced any performance issues with it. I must say, though, cleaning it is a bit of a chore. Again, I don't know from experience but I've read that the AK has fewer working parts and is easier to disassemble/reassemble than the AR.

In the T2kU, I think I'd still take the AK-74 over the M-16A2. I'm not quite fully convinced that the AR family is as robust or likely to function in adverse conditions as the Kalashnikov, and in Poland, at least, ammunition for the latter would be easier to come by.

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[HaplessOperator]

Originally Posted by Raellus

Isn't that a feature as much as a bug? I've read that the AK's loose tolerances contribute to reduced accuracy compared to the AR, but that they allow the AK to continue to operate in pretty much any environment with very little routine maintenance.

It might be useful to talk about meanings here, and to clarify what tolerances mean for a gun, as well as clarify my own language, since I was mirroring yours; it's going to remain obfuscated unless I do. So, tolerances in a gun - as with any manufacturing - are simply deviations from spec. It often gets used colloquially (especially in discussions on AK reliability) to mean the overhead in design. That is, in the case of designing a cylinder exactly 1 inch wide, when you need it to be a minimum of .95 inches for optimum function, you're generally talking about clearance. The tolerance for that part may be so many hundredths or thousandths of an inch plus or minus that diameter.

In a gun, if your manufacturing methodology has loose tolerances from the designed standard, that means - literally - nothing other than you're going to have parts that don't fit, due to both stacking tolerances and variance in one edge being off beyond a functionally acceptable tolerance at the same time the part mating to it is off as well. In Soviet AKs, this was fairly common, due to inconsistent manufacturing quality and essentially non-existent QC, though the platform can generally survive this due to a sufficient overhead in design specifications. For example, both the front and rear sight bases in Soviet-era AKs are often off-spec to a significant degree, as are the gas block, and - oftentimes - the front and rear trunnions themselves. When parts like the trunnions and gas blocks are out of tolerance, it doesn't contribute to reliability or resilience against environmental contamination; it merely means that it's going to be things like blowing more or less gas than designed, or the parts beating the absolute hell out of each other since the fitment isn't as designed.

This is no more easy on the AK than it is any other design. This isn't an indictment of your intelligence or knowledge, but you can see how this in and of itself wouldn't explain making something reliable, just wear out quicker, or serve as an indication of cheap (not efficient) manufacture. The lion's share of AK reliability is myth; it's no more reliable or less reliable than most other service rifles we've collectively made as humans after World War 2, and most of the characteristics ascribed to AKs apply more or less equally to other platforms. AKs deal with cold weather pretty well as designed, but that's about the only particularly notable thing about them, and it's a capability that can be rather efficiently engineered into existing designs, as the Canadians have done with several platforms over the years. That said, best way to keep your gun ice-free in ultra-low temperatures is to keep it sealed and well-lubricated with a temp-appropriate petroleum distillate, and an AK is far from sealed, and an AK full of ice is going to fail to cycle just as surely as any other gun full of ice is. THAT said... most weather almanacs I've seen for the time don't suggest that this would be a concern, anyway. Switzerland, in 4th Edition, on the other hand...

Something to mention in favor of the AK is how sharply tapered the cartridge it fires is; that's why the magazines look the way they do. It takes an awful lot wrong to cause a malfunction in cartridge extraction in an AK. Also, the internal open space in the receiver DOES allow for the buildup of gross particulate in some of the interior spaces without serious obstruction to the action, but once you get anything in the path of travel for the bolt, guide rod, or in the chamber, it fails just as easily as any other weapon, for the same reasons that any other weapon would fail: the operation is being physically obstructed. This is probably where a lot of the perception of its resilience to mud probably comes from; most weapons solve this problem by simply not letting the mud in in the first place, or by having nowhere for the mud to actually infiltrate.

On accuracy... it's mostly down to the 7.62 Soviet cartridge, and more specifically, the QC and batch quality of Russian ammo. 7.62x39 has a dog crap ballistic coefficient, but manufactured properly, it's fine. The trouble is that the same philosophy that applied to Soviet rifles was applied to their ammunition, and at the time, it was inconsistent as all hell, along with inconsistent barrel mounting and poor crowning at a number of their factories, which essentially causes the bullet to be thrown off by a minute degree as it leaves the barrel. This, combined with inconsistent ammunition quality, propellant loading, and the subsequent variability in velocity and trajectory. All of these things combine to give you a far more variable beaten zone at any given distance on any particular target at any particular angle of fire.

Originally Posted by Raellus

Lest anyone think that I'm an AR hater, I am not. Although I tend to be cynical and rather suspicious of the US military-industrial complex, there must be legitimate reasons that the AR platform is still going strong. It's the only assault rifle that I've ever operated and I haven't experienced any performance issues with it. I must say, though, cleaning it is a bit of a chore. Again, I don't know from experience but I've read that the AK has fewer working parts and is easier to disassemble/reassemble than the AR.

There's no assumption of hate/dislike. People can enjoy whatever guns they want. For the longevity of the platform, it's largely due to how iterated-upon it is, the depth of the market, and the simple fact that there's literally nothing out there that would be worth the cost of replacing it; there's plenty of guns that do this thing or that better than a rack-grade M16, but there's practically nothing out there that does so for the same cost, and reducing build quality of most platforms to match an AR in cost would turn the platform in question into a trash fire; meanwhile, the ceiling on ARs is essentially sky-high - spend HK416 money on an AR-15, and you've got an AR-15 that will run circles around a 416, or a SCAR, or... you get the idea.

As to the moving parts bit, they're more or less identical. An AR-15 has eight parts that move when the operating system cycles, the same as an AK. Assembly or disassembly is something I've genuinely never considered, as it's kind of neither here nor there. You disassemble a Glock with your finger and thumb by pulling down two tabs, giving the slide some play, and squeezing the trigger; this doesn't mean that it's more or less suitable than a Beretta 92's pressing a button and rotating a tab, or a Sig P226, etc., merely that it's disassembled in a different manner. The AK's method of disassembly (and its construction) mean that it's got kind of a garbage sight radius and that it's more or less impossible to mount optics to it in a typical manner without a side mounting fixture.

Originally Posted by Raellus

In the T2kU, I think I'd still take the AK-74 over the M-16A2. I'm not quite fully convinced that the AR family is as robust or likely to function in adverse conditions as the Kalashnikov, and in Poland, at least, ammunition for the latter would be easier to come by.

Here, we're in full agreement, after a fashion. I kept a couple AKs in my truck as insurance against an absolute worst case. Ammunition and supply of other sorts was never short, and I could literally walk into the ASP and walk out with entire pallets, and was often encouraged to do so simply to make room for the next shipment coming in, and we were rolling like Scrooge McDuck in 40mm, LAWs, AT4s, and ordnance of all descriptions, but by the end of my first deployment, I had run completely out of ammunition exactly once, and had resolved to take several measures to ensure such a thing would never impact me again, no matter what the failure point.

Bonus info: the best AKs were never made in Russia, or Poland for that matter. Bulgaria, Romania, and the German DDR were rocking what were basically Cadillacs in comparison to the Polish and Russian pieces, and once the iteration of the platform began by countries outside of RSFSR, the AMD series and like "upgrades" more or less left the original platform (both AKM and AK-74) in the dust.

AKs, like the T-series tanks, have a mythology around them that is wildly overblown compared to the actual hardware sitting in front of you. I could tell you some truly hilarious stories about the so-called "monkey models" I got to shoot hell out of, but that's probably a story for another thread, along with the elaboration of what being a monkey model actually means in a practical sense when you're considering smacking the things with HEAT rounds.

And please, call me Hapless. All my friends do.

[Red Diamond]

The M4 SOPMOD came out around 1997 and was in frontline units by 1998 so as far as assault rifles available during the T2k era it just barely squeaks buy. The M4 SOPMOD allows for all of the accoutrements that we take for granted now but were groundbreaking in the 90s and before the gun porn rifle modifications got too crazy.

[HaplessOperator]

Originally Posted by Red Diamond

The M4 SOPMOD came out around 1997 and was in frontline units by 1998 so as far as assault rifles available during the T2k era it just barely squeaks buy. The M4 SOPMOD allows for all of the accoutrements that we take for granted now but were groundbreaking in the 90s and before the gun porn rifle modifications got too crazy.

It was actually first rolled out with Block 1 in '95 (!), just a year before the M16A4 was type classified (and which they'd been kicking around with as the M16A2E4 since about the same time the SeaBees started kicking the M16A2E3 around), and '97/'98 gave us the M16A4 rollout, and in vastly greater numbers, with all the same rail space (and more) with flat top and longer KAC quad-rail Picatinnys as the M4 SOPMOD. None of this is to disagree or nitpick, but only to emphasize that the RIS and RAS systems were around much earlier than most folks imagine. The kicker is that the rollout could have gone MUCH quicker; the forging house at Colt was only dedicating a tiny amount of capacity to this upgrade, and KAC was doing the RIS and RAS work essentially at a back office, with Crane working in essentially the same capacity toward these integrations for the SOCOM side of the house.

Also, how did they go crazy? Practically everything we do to a rifle for the past 20+ years is more or less what anyone halfway serious about shooting would have done to their rifles back in the 70s, 80s or 90s, except you don't have to hunt down a legendary mythical gunsmith that everyone in the country knows the name of to get it done; you just drop the parts in yourself after having them delivered to your door.

All that happened was that you now have better quality glass on top without drilling on your gun or mounting an interface, can mount a light without needing a clamp that holds a giant Maglite, and you don't have to zip-tie your handguards together while having parts zip-tied to your handguards, and we don't have to mess with the D-ring assembly anymore, cuz D-rings suck rancid, overripe dog turds.

[Red Diamond]

Originally Posted by HaplessOperator

It was actually first rolled out with Block 1 in '95 (!), just a year before the M16A4 was type classified (and which they'd been kicking around with as the M16A2E4 since about the same time the SeaBees started kicking the M16A2E3 around), and '97/'98 gave us the M16A4 rollout, and in vastly greater numbers, with all the same rail space (and more) with flat top and longer KAC quad-rail Picatinnys as the M4 SOPMOD. None of this is to disagree or nitpick, but only to emphasize that the RIS and RAS systems were around much earlier than most folks imagine. The kicker is that the rollout could have gone MUCH quicker; the forging house at Colt was only dedicating a tiny amount of capacity to this upgrade, and KAC was doing the RIS and RAS work essentially at a back office, with Crane working in essentially the same capacity toward these integrations for the SOCOM side of the house.

Also, how did they go crazy? Practically everything we do to a rifle for the past 20+ years is more or less what anyone halfway serious about shooting would have done to their rifles back in the 70s, 80s or 90s, except you don't have to hunt down a legendary mythical gunsmith that everyone in the country knows the name of to get it done; you just drop the parts in yourself after having them delivered to your door.

All that happened was that you now have better quality glass on top without drilling on your gun or mounting an interface, can mount a light without needing a clamp that holds a giant Maglite, and you don't have to zip-tie your handguards together while having parts zip-tied to your handguards, and we don't have to mess with the D-ring assembly anymore, cuz D-rings suck rancid, overripe dog turds.

I didn't see M16A4 nor SOPMOD get in the hands of the rank and file until 97- 98. I know they existed, but I didn't see them when working with Marines nor Army so speaking of the T2K context, I think they just got under the wire for inclusion.

As for gun porn I'm referring to cut out magazine wells, monogramed charging handles and upper receivers (Zombie Response Team, etc.) over engineered charging handles, slings, vanity flash suppressors, etc. Many products are made for the range and are not durable. Theres a lot of garbage out there that I'm sure you've seen. And I don't know this, but don't Soldiers and Marines still zip tie their add-ons to their rifles still as back up? I can't imagine the military changing that much but it's been a minute for me.

BTW, I'm glad someone is active on here! Good to hear from you.

[kato13]

I typed a response and it didn't post!

As far as I know this has not been an issue, but browsers and platforms keep changing small elements which might have an effect.

One thought, if you are taking a long time to craft a post, you might want to "Preview Post" every once in a while to refresh your cookies.

If you see this more than once please send me a PM with your Platform, OS, Browser. If someone else has seen this please PM me and I will create a thread to try to track this down.

[HaplessOperator]

Originally Posted by Red Diamond

I didn't see M16A4 nor SOPMOD get in the hands of the rank and file until 97- 98. I know they existed, but I didn't see them when working with Marines nor Army so speaking of the T2K context, I think they just got under the wire for inclusion.

As for gun porn I'm referring to cut out magazine wells, monogramed charging handles and upper receivers (Zombie Response Team, etc.) over engineered charging handles, slings, vanity flash suppressors, etc. Many products are made for the range and are not durable. Theres a lot of garbage out there that I'm sure you've seen. And I don't know this, but don't Soldiers and Marines still zip tie their add-ons to their rifles still as back up? I can't imagine the military changing that much but it's been a minute for me.

BTW, I'm glad someone is active on here! Good to hear from you.

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.

[HaplessOperator]

Originally Posted by kato13

As far as I know this has not been an issue, but browsers and platforms keep changing small elements which might have an effect.

One thought, if you are taking a long time to craft a post, you might want to "Preview Post" every once in a while to refresh your cookies.

If you see this more than once please send me a PM with your Platform, OS, Browser. If someone else has seen this please PM me and I will create a thread to try to track this down.

I had that happen to me once a day or so ago, but I'm pretty sure it was exactly what you suggested, because a "token timed out." It directed me to reload the page, and I (rather cleverly, hah!) copy-pasted the novel I was typing before doing so.

[kato13]

A token timeout is cookie related.

I have doubled the cookie session timeout to 4 hours. We will see if that resolves the issue.

[Red Diamond]

Originally Posted by HaplessOperator

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.

1. I'll say the M16A4 is superior to the M4. I was never issued nor shot one so, to the original question, I choose the M4 SOPMOD since I know it in great detail. As you said, I'm an "old salt" so as an official curmudgeon I don't like SOME of the fancy fangled stuff out there - most of it I love but still don't know how long it will last in a post nuke Poland after 3-5 years. But we'll never know unless something breaks out in our lifetime- which it could!!!

2. You have some great insights and opinions on how the world unfolds in an alternate reality. I really enjoy hearing other's take. It's what makes this game fun. And it makes me keep coming back to this forum- even if there's only a few of us! hahaha.

And you said it, there's great information on here! I am amazed at the level of detail some folks have put in here.

Look forward to hearing from you soon

[HaplessOperator]

Originally Posted by Panther Al

On another thread, I put it like this when comparing the various "Intermediate Rifle Cartridges" that people are talking up lately:

The 5.56 (AKA .223) was designed to snipe varmits. Dogs, cats, prairie dogs, stuff of that ilk by varmint shooters.

No. It wasn't.

I know this is an ultra-old comment, but this is going up for anyone that comes along so they're not being fed BS; practically this entire forum thread is full of fuddlore and misinformation, along with a side of having a fatally flawed understanding of ballistics.

The .223 Remington round was developed from the ground up to meet CONARC (forerunner to FORSCOM) requirements for a new land service weapon in 1957, with the primary requirements being the ability to penetrate both a steel plate 1/8 an inch thick and a steel helmet at 500, while remaining supersonic to the same distance, and with the same MOA out of the test barrel as the M2 cartridge, with the project being managed by Remington, Sierra, and Fairchild.

This round was later adapted by FN to generate higher chamber pressures and standardized as the 5.56x45mm round used by NATO. It was never designed as a varmint round, but its extremely flat trajectory and high velocity make it an exceptional choice for it, in addition to its fantastic ballistic performance against two-legged varmints.

[.45cultist]

Originally Posted by HaplessOperator

No. It wasn't.

I know this is an ultra-old comment, but this is going up for anyone that comes along so they're not being fed BS; practically this entire forum thread is full of fuddlore and misinformation, along with a side of having a fatally flawed understanding of ballistics.

The .223 Remington round was developed from the ground up to meet CONARC (forerunner to FORSCOM) requirements for a new land service weapon in 1957, with the primary requirements being the ability to penetrate both a steel plate 1/8 an inch thick and a steel helmet at 500, while remaining supersonic to the same distance, and with the same MOA out of the test barrel as the M2 cartridge, with the project being managed by Remington, Sierra, and Fairchild.

This round was later adapted by FN to generate higher chamber pressures and standardized as the 5.56x45mm round used by NATO. It was never designed as a varmint round, but its extremely flat trajectory and high velocity make it an exceptional choice for it, in addition to its fantastic ballistic performance against two-legged varmints.

He's right. Remington made the .223 for the Army's specs at Stoner's request.