Sangamon
County Rifle Association
Right Reason on Second Amendment Rights
Springfield, Illinois
Right Reason on Second Amendment Rights
Springfield, Illinois
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Sangamon
County Rifle Association
Right Reason on Second Amendment Rights Springfield, Illinois |
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 The Colt HBAR (Heavy BARrel) Match
And the AR-15 Family of Weapons Phil Davis Technical Presentation, SCRA Meeting December 3, 2007 January 2008 GunNews Davis began by talking about the history of the M16/AR15 family of weapons, originally designed by Eugene Stoner. He developed the Armelite Company. He developed the AR10 rifle as he compared it to the US M14 during the trials in 1957 for a .308 caliber battle rifle. It was not accepted for that and he kept refining the design during the late 50's and early 60's. In 1960 a Air Force General named Curtis LeMay wanted a light weight rifle for his security forces for the Strategic Air Command (SAC) to use for their primary battle rifle. Armelite sold the rights to the AR15 rifle to Colt Firearms. Curtis LeMay was to give a demonstration of the first AR15's and was very impressed with their lightness, rapidity of fire, and ability to fire quick successions of shots. He ordered several thousand of them for his own security forces in the Strategic Air Command. This was in 1960, three years after the US army had adopted the M14, the first US governmental order for the AR15 later to be known as the M16, was placed. It was the original style that one would think of as an SP1. This has a similar lower receiver. Modern M16's have a fencing around here or a raised area around your magazine catch that protects it from accidentally discharging and kicking a magazine out. The SP1 did not have this lump here or the forward assist. They were just smooth sided and it had a different sight system than this. In 1962 and 1963 the Army decided that it wanted to take in the same rifle but because of jamming issues and other things, they required a forward assist. If you look at the side of the bolt on any AR15 you'll see a series of serration's right here. If this rifle were to come closed, see how that bolt is not all the way forward, you take that and press it and watch the bolt go home. That's what a forward assist is for. It was called the XM16 or XM16E1. In 1963, the US Army bought 85,000 XM16E1's for field trials. Most of them went to Vietnam with the first deployment of US Army troops in 1964. Originally these rifles did not have chrome plated bores or chambers. The M14 had chrome plated bores and chambers. The first M-16's and AR15's did not. In the testing they used one specific kind of ammunition which was called M192 ball. It had a specific kind of powder in it that was designed to work with this gas system. As soon as they deployed these rifles the first time they realized they didn't have the facilities to make that many rounds of 5.56 mm ammunition they changed the color. They also touted the rifle as being a self cleaning weapons system that you did not have to clean. No cleaning kits were sent to Southeast Asia with these weapons. You're in a tropical climate, you're shooting a propellant that was not designed for the weapon which caused excessive carbon especially in high humidity. No cleaning manuals and no cleaning equipment was sent over with the rifles. This is a recipe for disaster. Many people died because of M16 jams. One of Davis' teachers in high school received in 1964 an M16. During his first fire fight, he got through three magazines and halfway through the fourth, and the bolt jammed. He couldn't get it back and he couldn't get it forward. After the first trials came back they said these are the problems we've got. First of all your flash hider. It had a three pronged flash hider, looked cool, very efficient for dissipating a flash, also great for grabbing ahold of any kind of foliage in the area. Second thing that was wrong, they realized it's not a self cleaning system, it's not like your oven where you turn it on high heat and it will cook it out. You're got to clean the carbon out of this thing because if you don't it's going to jam up, especially with this new kind of ammunition. So they actually modified the gun so that it worked better with the ammunition rather than producing more of the ammunition it was designed for. They added the forward assist on all of them. They chrome plated the chamber and they chrome plated the bore. That took care of the corrosion problems. It stayed pretty much in that form which is known as the M16A1 from 1965 to 1984. Changes in the 1980's 1984 was the first major change in the M16 family of weapons. The most noticeable change was they went from the triangular hand guard to the rounded hand guard. They went from the type of rear sight where it required you to use the tip of a bullet point to adjust your windage to one with an adjustable knob on the windage and a built in bullet drop compensation on the battle sight from 300 to 800 meters. Once you zeroed this rifle at 300 meters, a little secret about the M16A2, you have to sight it in 1 3/8 inch low at 25 meters and you have your battle zero for 300 meters. Once you do that you just turn the wheel and its already got a basic bullet drop compensation built into it from 300 all the way up to 800 meters. The rifling twist on the original M16 was 1 turn and 12 inches. That was designed for the original .55 grain bullet. During the late 70's the Belgians came out with a squad automatic weapon that they called the Minimi. We adopted that roughly as the M249 squad automatic weapon. It was designed with a faster twist of rifling and it shot a longer bullet, a .62 grain bullet, steel penetrating core. When the M16-82 rifle was adopted they decreased the rate of twist from 1 and 12 to 1 turn of 7 inches to stabilize to the longer, heavier bullet getting much better accuracy at longer distance. The European designation for that ammo is SS109. The American designation is M855. True M855 ammunition can be noted if you can ever find it at a gun show. It has a medium green tip on it. You know know how tracers are tipped with orange or red. If you see 223 ammunition that is tipped in green, that is true SS109 or M855 ball. It has a steel penetrater core in it. Very accurate. It has a heavier profile barrel. The original M16 barrel was very light. An M16 was six pounds and 4 ounces or so with a fully loaded 30 round magazine in it and they upped it a little when they came out with the M16A1. They are at least 8 pounds with the sights, the heavier barrel and the new hand guard system. They also lengthened the stock by 5/8 of an inch. They found that the original M-16 was a little bit short. This rifle instead of having three positions for firing of safe, single round, semi automatic and full auto, the M16A2 had safe, semi auto, and three round bursts. They found out that in Vietnam and other cases under high stress a person will panic and just hold the trigger down. Brrrr, brrrr ! In a stressful situation, brrrr, thirty rounds you're dead because you realize my gun's empty. Standard battle load for a US soldier is six magazines. How long does it take to go through those on fully automatic, not very long. That was called the M16A2. There was a M16A3 issued to the United States Navy only. It was a the same rifle but the US Navy said we don't want any of that three round burst stuff, we want the plain old M16A1 full auto packaging. Since the year 2001 a new generation of M16's has come in. There's the full length rifle version which is now called the M16A4. The M16A4 has the carry handle here. It is removable and it has a Picatinny or Weaver style rail underneath that facilitates the mounting of optics. The hand guard has four Picatinny rails around it for the mounting of optic systems, night vision, lights, forward hand grips, etc. The M4 carbine is the most prevalent right now. That's basically the M16 rifle series of history. Even though the original M16 that went to Vietnam in 1964 was an incredibly light rifle compared to the M14 (which the M14 is still one of Davis' favorites, he longs for another one one of these days and says he will own another one), for special operations forces, for airborne units and stuff like that, they came up with the XM177 which we know as a CAR 15. The original XM177 only had a 10 1/2 inch barrel and it had a 5 1/2 inch flash hider on it. It was basically a hollow tube flash hider. It was a very short, lightweight gun. It was an excellent gun for clearing rooms, If you were clearing out a room with a M16, the XM177 or Car 15 would be excellent because it was a nice compact device. It also has a collapsible stock which allows it to be much shorter. From that point on they also came up with an M-231 firing port weapon, The Bradley M3 and M4 armored fighting vehicles have these little casements with little holes in them that you can stick the muzzle of a weapon out and shoot. It's a Car 15 with no butt stock, just the buffer tube sticking out the back and no front sight. You just stick it out there and you can use it like a co-ax machine gun out of the side of a Bradley armored fighting vehicle. That's also in the M16 family of weapons. It's used to save internal, save magazines, etc. The most recent carbine in use is the carbine M4. The M4 in its military designation has a removable carry handle, to facilitate objects mounting. It's got a six position stock, a 14 and 1/2 inch barrel, a turndown that's right ahead of the fore stock so that you can actually mount it an M203 grenade launcher underneath it. It's a one and seven twist barrel. They redid the feed rails inside the upper receiver to make it more reliable. It's an excellent little carbine. You lose a little bit of your velocity because of the shorter barrel and to some extent your accuracy but then again it's a carbine that's designed for close combat less than 150 meters. It's not designed as a sniper rifle just like the M1 Carbine was not meant to replace the M1 Garand. The M4 carbine was not designed to replace the M14 or something that shoots 500, 600 or 800 yards. The M16A4 and the M4 Carbine are the ones being issued to our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan today. The system of the M16 is unusual because most people are used to a weapon that has a recoil spring that is actuated in front of the bolt like the M1Garand, the M14, the SKS, the AK47, either in front of or directly in line with the bolt mechanism where when the operating handle comes back your spring is being compressed up here somewhere. The AR15 or M16 is a little different. Here's your recoil spring right here. The fist time you ever fire an AR15 if you are not used to it, it's going to get your attention because it makes this Boom, Zing, Zing sound right next to your ear. Davis said he thought his weapon was flying apart the first time he shot an M16. Boom, Zing, Zing, what in the heck is that?? Davis put powdered graphite on the spring and it cut down the sliding sound quite a bit. The one Davis showed us had a buffer in it. It's very easy to field strip your weapon (Ouch, Davis just pinched the snot out of his hand), you just grab ahold of the operating rod, pull the bolt carrier out, no tools at all are required. Davis can punch out and take the firing pin out in about 10 seconds. It just slips right back in there and you push it forward, lock it, swing it back up, press the button and there it is. You clean the chamber. To clean the gas tube you use what basically looks like a gigantic pipe fuzzy cleaner. If you look at the top of the weapon you can see a silver tube inside the hand guard. There's a very tiny hole right here in the gas block and it literally taps the gas directly out of the bore, shoots it down this tube and it doesn't touch anything until it hits this little piece right here. The gas tube fits around the top of this little extension and explodes it straight back. With the ball powder that it was designed for it burned very cleanly even under Arctic or very humid conditions. However, with the stick powder that they went to instead, if you notice the locking lugs here, for it to lock properly it has to go forward and that little thing right there has to roll out. That rides inside of a recess inside of your receiver. With all that gas right here, it filled that recess up with fouling. When your rifle went forward, your bolt wouldn't close all the way and when your bolt doesn't close all the way, your hammer hits the firing pin and if you look, the firing pin does not protrude from the bolt. No bang, click. Also it it doesn't go all the way in without a forward assist actually on those little narrows right there, there's nothing to hit. On an M1Garand, an M1Carbine, an M1-14, if you have a jam, you use the secondary method for opening your weapon. You put it on the ground, put on the safety, put your boot heel on the op rod and kick the snot out of it. If you've got one that's almost in you take that sucker and pop on the firing pin and she goes closed. You can't do that with this if it doesn't have a forward assist. You have to keep your weapon clean. You can see how with all your gas being vented right here, right over the locking surfaces, right in the raceways of your receiver, how if you had an improper powder charge that caused lots of carbon, how that could cause a major problem, especially if you're told you don't have to clean your weapon. If you're not being told to clean your weapon and you're not being forced to clean your weapon, then you're not going to clean your weapon. Now they're telling you, "You must clean these things meticulously." Davis has owned a lot of the AR15's, various different types. If you keep them clean they work! If you let them get dirty, you've got a really nice paper weight. HBAR accuracy  The M16 rifle series is an incredibly accurate
weapons. Davis
says the one he showed us is the most accurate one he has ever
had. He had never fired it on paper before this
evening. He
owned the gun for over a month and hadn't shot it yet. He was
going through withdrawal! Davis said it is a 1 in 7 twist and
he
was shooting it at 50 yards and he wasn't on a real bench
rest.
He just had a sandbag that he wrapped the sling around his arm and set
it on a sandbag. He had just put a new scope on it
and he
started out with a 30 round magazine at 50 meters. His first round was
here and he just started walking it up. This little circle in
the
X-ray are the last 12 rounds and that was with cheap Wolf 55 grain, the
cheapest ammo he could find. They are capable of incredible
accuracy.There are two types of Wolf ammunition, that made before 1996 and that made after 1996 for 5.56 mm 223. You want to look at it and if it looks like it's lacquered, don't put it in AR-15, put in in your mini 14, it will eat anything. If it looks like it might be kind of powder coated or a polymer finish, that's fine. It stuff shoots good because it doesn't get tacky when it gets hot. Davis did a test in one of his less favorite AR-15's that he had awhile back. He shot about 300 rounds about as fast as he could go and then left a round sitting in the chamber so see if it would either cook off or if it would stick and it didn't. So the polymer coated stuff good to go in an AR15. Older stuff, Brown Bear brand, is still lacquer coated, don't stick it in a AR15. If you're going to buy Russian ammo to shoot in a AR15, M16 type rifle, newer Wolf or Silver Bear. Silver Bear ammunition is a steel case that has been zinc plated, very easy on your chamber, it's not going to leave any residue whatsoever. Davis has shot thousands of rounds of Silver Bear in an AR15 and never built up excessive carbon any more than if he was shooting brass Federal factory ammunition. The amount of accessories that are available for the AR15, M16 line of weapons is phenomenal. You can get conversion kits and shoot .22 long rifle, 9 mm, .40 Smith & Wesson, .45 ACP, 300 Whisper, 500 Bail wolf, .458 Socom, .50 BMG, 762 x 39, 17 Remington, 6 mm TC, 7 mm TC, and all you have to do is change the upper receiver. You push two pins, pull it off, drop the new one in and push the pins in. People here in Illinois who want to own a .50 caliber but they don't want to have a .50 caliber registered to them. Very simple, buy an AR15, call one of five different companies that makes a bolt action conversion for your AR15, it comes in the mail. No FFL. Push two pins, drop it on, put a shell this big in there and go Boom! Always wear hearing protection or you'll be trying to answer the doorbell for the next week! You can get hand-guards and you can get optics system. Davis teases friends of his who've got lightweight CAR 15's. They've got a nice 6 1/2 to 7 pound rifle that they hang 18 pounds worth of crap on. They've got lights, lasers, night vision, scopes, hand-guards, 4 or 5 extra magazines hanging on, a shotgun stuck on the bottom of the barrel, and a flare launcher. Davis looks at it and says, "There's an AR15 in there somewhere isn't there?" Phil Davis Index Return to SCRA Home Page |