Jim Sullivan short interview discussing the origin of the M16 and a mention of deliberate negligence

Jim Sullivan on teh M16

I apologize folks I'm not sure how to include the clip.

But it was interesting to hear someone finally explain the issues with the M16 and the reasons they were so faulty. He also mentions that they are still not perfect.

What do you folks think?

The story I remember hearing from a Vietnam era vet was that you would shoot a VC three times with the M-16, the bullets would go straight through him, and then he would shoot back with his AK-47 and kill you with one bullet.

The m16s we got in vietnam were faulty pieces of #.. thats why alot of us dumped them in favor of m14s or aks taken from charlie .. mostly it was regular units got stuck with that piece of # .. with s.o.g we were allowed whatever we wanted in regard to weapons.

Get one grain of sand in the bolt and you're screwed. Did you know Mattel made the handgrip? Piece of dog #. I'd rather have had the M1 grand back. 5.56 would usually bounce around inside your target . That is if it didn't misfire or jam up. Apply SPORTS hahahahaha WTF.

a reply to: LOSTinAMERICA


ROFL...

The mattel rumor....

Oh and it's GARAND not GRAND....

And FWIW a round that "bounces around inside your target" is actually the preferred and ONLY sure method to do enough damage without plain proper bullet placement to drop a target in a single shot!

Oh and BTW that particular gem of "common knowledge" (which if you learn nothing else from my posts please pick up the FACT that in the firearms world, and most other technical fields with a large percentage of hobbyists who are NOT trained or educated in the field, "common knowledge" is almost ALWAYS outright CRAP! That's right folks... chances are if EVERYONE knows it or that's how the person arguing with you prefaces what they are about to say... it's nearly always WRONG!) applies to the .22 Long rifle in that for years people have called it the ideal assassin's weapon because it has enough energy to penetrate a skull, but doesn't exit out the back because it lacks the energy to break through the back side of the person's skull. Instead "common knowledge" says that it bounces around repeatedly and randomly destroying massive amounts of the brain also inhabitng the now single side perforated skull!

So... for those keeping score.... the first 3 things you mentioned were all BS, and even funnier, thing 3 if true would actually make it one of the more effective rounds on earth of ANY CALIBER for near instant one shot stops! But, it doesn't even apply to the round in question! Oh and in case you're wondering... yep even if we were talking about .22 LR it would still be .... WRONG!!

The reality is the AK isn't a one shot stop gun either.... neither is the Fal, M1a/M14, or the G3

In case you're wondering why I mentoned these three rifles together it's because they all chamber 7.62x51 NATO, Oh and BTW the 7.62 NATO round is NOT a full power rifle rifle round! It's directly based off the m2 loading of the .30 '06 round which was a Reduced power and bullet weight loading of the .30 '06 designed specifically to be fired out of the garand rifle which would suffer catastrophic damage if one were to fire the actual FULL POWER m1 loading of .30 '06 as the 1919 browning 1918 BAR and 1903 Springfield rifle were designed to and could safely fire thousands of rounds of! Interestingly the US did have a rifle and lmg combination that could successfully, safely, and without undue wear or outright catastrophic failure fire the m1 loading of .30 '06... That rifle/lmg was the Johnson Rifle/LMG! Interestingly in the last head to head shootout between the johnson rifle and the garand before the US entered world war 2 the Johnson Rifle was found to be every bit as good of a rifle as the Garand, scoring was so close between the two that for any practical purpose they were equally good..... This in itself is impressive.... It's even more impressive once you find out that this last head to head shootout featured a set of Johnson demo guns that had several thousand rounds through the NEWEST parts on the gun, and some parts had seen much more wear than this! Especially when you consider that not only were the multiple garands factory new with basically unlimited spares, technical staffing, and babying to keep them in PEAK condition throughout the competition, but in addition Johnson had virtually no spares less guns all of which had thousands of rounds through their barrels with which to shoot the same courses with, AND suffered CONSTANT and repeated sabotage before and during the competition!

(Oh unlike your "common knowledge" a little group known as congress held hearings on this debacle and I'm only relating the stuff even congress was forced to agree actually occurred, not any anecdotes or unsubstantiated allegations.)

Wanna know something else cool?

Take a look at that Mattel gun....

Guess which of those two rifles it is based on? hint: NOT THE GARAND!!

Oh and you know the modularity craze that's so hot right now? Yeah we could have had a gun that had all that stuff in 1938 if it weren't for some really stupid empire building inside the ordnance department.... Also unlike the garand, which it and the follow on m14/m1a are frankly a nightmare to produce on any large scale, the Johnson weapons were very much designed with mass production in mind! They could be produced cheaper, faster, with less specialized machinery, and by much less highly trained and in short supply workers!

Even funnier... the AR 10/15 basically stripped out every good feature the original gun had! (Many of which, but not nearly all are just barely starting to reappear in the johnson rifle/lmg great grandchildren)

Matter of fact the FCG Jim Sullivan takes credit for "inventing" is in many ways nothing more than a modernized johnson LMG FCG (which in 1941 was open bolt for full automatic and closed bolt for semi automatic fiire)

Also it had quick change barrels, and interestingly in later versions direct impingement assistance to it's short recoil operating method....

Oh ... and btw ... 7.62x51 NATO m80 rounds are horribly sucktastic especially for their weight and total recoil impulse! Guess what though? You can take comfort in knowing every last "bad thing" people like you tout about the inferiority of 5.56 is also WRONG.... and hilariously enough the sucktastic performance 5.56 can exhibit is tied to the EXACT SAME ACTUAL CAUSES as the totally laughable performance of 7.62x51 nato!

hey and even funnier than that... ask yourself how exactly the russians designed a belt fed machine gun half a century ago that, while firing a much more powerful and generally suitable round, ALSO weighs less than even the more than $25,000 per gun (no that doesn't include optics accessories foregrips or anything else... JUST THE GUN) to acquire a single M240L!!! (just to put that in perspective ...you can buy several of the extremely rare and valuable semiautomatc PKM belt feds plus a couple thousand rounds of ammunition enough links and belt boxes to hold every round and a decent set of accessories INCLUDING optics.... and not get ANYWHERE CLOSE to paying $25,000!!)

Food for thought

a reply to: roguetechie

They did make the handgrip. Look it up.

I'll read your wall of text while setting up my claymores.

I was a dragon gunner. Now they have better stuff. Time to let the young bucks take over. Hey Rambo, go win the #in war for us.


PS: You firing at people close quarters? I think you're wrong on the 5.56.

You can work out all the ballistics you want. The M16 was and is a piece of #. Drop it once and see. They tell you the rounds tear people up and that's true. If you get it to fire. Weapon jams get your ass killed son. I don't want to clean the mother #er every 30 rounds. Give me the AK47 that can stand up being dropped in the mud any day. You keep the AR15 to. File the sear down like all these rednecks do around here.

Hell I'lll even take a #ty Daewoo over a dog # AR15.

a reply to: LOSTinAMERICA

Propaganda for the M16:




It is obvious to most of us how biased that piece is.

5.56 is good in the m249.

a reply to: jrod

It needed to be broken down fast because the piece of # always needed cleaning. Let me fire on that target. I know there's a buffer spring in butt. I bet I can get good results with that AK also. I'll take the AK any day of the week. The first M16's had barrels warping. # the dumb #.

a reply to: jrod

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!

Good GREIF!

The gentleman who was presiding over matters in that video, reminds me of Sheldon from Just Cause 2, such is his jingoism! What is the point of running a test, an experiment for all intents and purposes, and then ignoring the obvious results?

My goodness!

well despite peoples disagreements about what was wrong with the M16, you can agree that at least there was definitely a glaring issue with the. M16

a reply to: LOSTinAMERICA
an
LOL oh so 5.56 is somehow magically better in the m249?

Too bad the absolute WORST gun in that competition won then RIGHT? That comment alone tells ANYONE who has even a passing knowledge of firearms and how they work EXACTLY HOW MUCH YOU KNOW...

Not to mention the AR doesn't need to be broke down every 30 rounds, has 200 meters more in effective range, and has vastly superior handling characteristics.... Is it perfect? HARDLY!! Do I think it's even really adequate? Not particularly... but compared to the other answers readily available right now... It's pretty damn decent!

Oh and btw your Daewoo crack was even more hilarious since it's an AK 47 built using the M16 TDP ... ROFL Yup that's right genius... the woo is a long stroke piston 5.56 rifle that's All AR in looks and chambering, but AK 47 on the insde!

As to the Mattel thing... all I can say to the people still using that as a slur...

Is in the late 50's and early 60's plastic was plastic... so if they had what would exactly have been the problem with engaging the Mattel production line to make the furniture exactly? I mean other than, you know, paying commodity rates to manufacture the furniture rather than the rates your average aviation industry shop which is who Fairchild would have probably went with.... (I mean other than there's actually evidence that many of the stocks were hand poured by fairchild armalite division employees....)

As for your comments about walls of texts and your been there done that BS....

Yeah why would people want to listen to someone whose actually in engineering as a career, with extensive firearms experience (both using them and BUILDING THEM) .... Or some guy that can't actually get their facts right and has no interest in actually learning anythng about the subject?

a reply to: MConnalley
There WERE a few glaring issues with the weapon AS ISSUED! Key distinction here, AS ISSUED, while I could write you a dissertation that would be accepted gladly in any masters program on the subject I'll instead cover the high points.
1. Two separate groups of entrenched interests HATED the gun from the jump, and the issues almost completely resulted from this institutional resistance and outright sabotage.
1a. NIH syndrome and the big bore mafia: NIH is the acronym for Not Invented Here. In the case of the AR15 it wasn't developed through normal channels which threatened many bureaucrats financially. Also these same bureaucrats were pushing a program known as the SPIW program which WAS THE FUTURE (funny thing that xm29 was the future too and was a 100% reboot picking up EXACTLY where spiw left off. Even funnier thing, still doesn't work!)
1b. The big bore mafia: These were the same people responsible for the garand enbloc clip, and who fought the previous reduction from .40+ diameter rifle rounds to the .30 caliber rounds of ww1/2. Also responsible for things like magazine cutoffs.

These two groups managed to sabotage the powder the gun was designed to work with, get several areas that were supposed to be chromed left without the VITAL chroming, and I believe were also responsible for the always untrue rumors that the gun didn't need cleaning. Mind you this is just the short list. However it covers all the high points.

Now fast forward to today. Yes there are in fact a litany of modifications that could take the AR from a solidly good system to a world beater. What's even cooler is almost all of these improvements already exist and have proven themselves on the AR platform, just never with all of them integrated into a single product improved package. There's a couple of things on the list that are proven in other systems but haven't yet been proven in the AR family as well, but should carry over handily....

In case you're wondering why I'd leave it at that without describing in my usual pedantic detail it's because I fully intend to be the one to roll out this product improved version personally. Be happy in the knowledge that this forum has been my home on the internet for years now so the ATS weaponry forum surfers will be some of the first to see the various development spirals as they're ready to be made public. So keep checking back in the next 6-36 months for news as it develops. I've finally acquired what I needed to really make a run at projects of this size and complexity, but it's going to be several months before my initial tooling is fully operational. In addition I'll be releasing several products in the interim to fund my development cycle. (tool designs and kits to put together these tools, as well as other products mostly targeted at home builders of guns and any other high precision stuff)

I figure I can do my part to help others interested in my hobby by making all the tools, jigs, and anything else I wind up developing to others so they don't have to spend the time and money I have buying the tools and software I need to design and build the tools I need to make projects like this possible. Especially if it allows me to avoid having to seek outside funding, which always have strings attached!!

The AK47/AK74 rifle is greater than the M16/AR10/AR15 rifles in every category except extremely long range accuracy.

Everywhere else the AK platform is greater than the M16/AR platform.

How can one depend on an AR rifle when it requires more attention and maintenance than a high school attention-seeking drama queen of the worst case?

a reply to: DenyTreason if that were true you'd have a valid point. However it's totally untrue, and laughably so at that.


Bear in mind the above statement is coming from the owner, user, and manufacturer of upgrade components for milled and stamped AK'S, AR''S both piston and DI including fairly exotic variations and offshoots, vz52's and vz58's, SKS's, and mas49/56's in my current stable! If you want to include all the stuff I've built shot and tinkered with over the years you can throw in a variety of HK Roller Delayed Blowback rifles, metric and inch FAL's, Galil's in several calibers, Bushmaster M17's, Bushmaster Armpistol's, FN F2000 BAR's including FN-D P90's, Steyr AUG's and the MSAR clones, RPK's, and PSL's! That by the way leaves out pistols, bolt actions, lever actions, pump actions, shotguns of all varieties, and belt fed semiautomatic versions of common Warsaw and NATO pact MG's....

In other words feel free to disagree, I CAN'T FORCE YOU TO BE RIGHT LOL!

As to people blithely pushing off the AR's long range performance... A 7.62x39 AKM is outranged by an 18-20" barrel AR15 or M16 by 200 meters (for the uncivilized that's right around 110 yards per 100 meters! Or 220 yards / 660 feet!). That might mean nothing to recreational shooters, but in combat that's 200 meters of hoping to god no one qualified expert during rifle qual!

Now once you get to the AK74 with 7N6 or newer ammunition, they have vastly superior bullet design over bullets you can run in the AR15 magazine well. Further, if the AR isn't DRASTICALLY UPGRADED before the A545 and AK12 rifles start being exported by the millions we will be in serious trouble. Especially if they export the new optics and tactics they've developed specifically to counter western gear weapons and tactics! Personally I'm simultaneously with my AR upgrade designing a suite of AK upgrades as well that should give home builders the ability to have a very AK 12 look, and all the benefits of the AK107/108 series with none of the complexity. I'm also looking at the feasibility of some sort of a545 look alike kit for the homebuilder. So it's not like I'm just biased to one or the other rifle. What I am biased heavily against is stupid, reactionary, and false information spreading posts that purport to have a basis in reality.

a reply to: roguetechie

You have no clue what you are talking about...hehe


Good read...

a reply to: Xtrozero
I knew someone wouldn't be able to resist lol...
Thanks for the compliment though. Firearms have always been my passion, and driving the technology forward is something I feel strongly about.