http://www.warriortalk.com/showthread.php?t=54199
Reliability during 2 days of mud
I wasn't going to do a post on my experience this weekend because the topic has been addressed to a certain degree before, and because the experience arose from the Fighting Rifle class with Tactical Response in Camden, TN, but Randy made me do it, so here goes.
I took the fighting rifle class with TR (Yeager's group) to see what they were all about. The class was good quality. It is interesting to see how the concepts are taught by different groups. We started with handgun and transitions with a curious wink and nod by the instructors. Nuff on that.
Getting ready and on the drive over, I knew it had been raining for a week here in TN, and was going to continue to rain all weekend, and I was having second thoughts about going at all. I knew it was going to be disgusting mud and wet and discomfort, but, my mother in law was in town, so on balance...(no kidding)
I took my AK as I had the most practice ammo set aside for it. The class was composed of 22 people. About 2/3 running ARs, 1/3 AKs.
Following initial warm up drills in the morning the first day, the afternoon was moving and shooting from all positions, team and solo, and everyone was on the ground, up, down, with many mags not retained under stress, and mud everywhere. During the afternoon, the ARs began to fail sporadically and continued through the end of the day.
The next day was intense team drills, bounding in all directions, with round counts running up to 180 or so. The ARs failed all day. By the afternoon teams of people running ARs would both have FTFs after a few shots, and have to transition to handgun, then they would run out of ammo. Total round count day 2 was about 1000 to 1200 rounds.
The AR failures were really disturbing (particularly to the AR people). Everyone knew that had this little escapade been real world, a lot of people would have died, missions failed, end of story.
Apparent reasons for AR failure: Mud and dirt in mags, mud and dirt in gun, rain then sun then rain then sun seemed to make the usual carbon issues worse. Forward assist was required all the time, and running ARs ejected only a few feet. 1 AR that continued to work was thoroughly submerged and washed off (with mags) in a stream between each drill. The operator of another refused to allow any mag to touch the ground (he had a department issued gun that was not allowed to get dirty or scratched). There was one Robinson Arms XCR which ran just fine both days on Wolf, until the trigger spring broke.
There was one Lewis Machine push rod AR that had only one FTF which appeared to be ammo related (which was a real testament to Lewis Machine). None of the AKs had any failures. And none of the AK people cleaned anything - mud on mag, wipe off the big stuff with wet muddy glove, click, rack, bang bang bang bang. It was really quite amazing.
Lessons learned: Going into the field for a couple of days is different. It is so totally necessary to train under the bad weather conditions to see what works and doesn't because what can fail will fail. If you learn to operate in bad conditions, you have a HUGE advantage. Field load of ammo needs to be as much over 180 as can be carried without significant inhibition of movement. One 7 minute altercation with flanking attack or retreat under fire will take all 180 rounds. And last but not least, the AR has serious limitations in harsh environments; the operator really needs to work it out in advance (which is possible) or change to something more forgiving for field work. If it can rain, if it can be muddy, if I can fall in a ditch or cess pool on a sunny day, it will happen. The AK was not only forgiving, they were total pigs - if they could have smiled ugly, sharp edged grins while wallowing in their own filth, they would have. Reminds me of what a friend of mine used to say, back in the olden days: "Dude, she may not be much to look at, but she's got enthusiasm, and enthusiasm goes a long way."
Hope this info finds you well.
-Aaron in TN