M16 MTBF: Hard Data?

[JWH]

Listen, I'm not starting this to argue; I will shut up and learn. I've searched the Web for hard data on the Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) data of the M16 and can't find any. So, if you don't mind, I'm troubling you for the information.

This is related to the XM8 thread where we see there are two camps: (1) the modern M16 is great (2) no, it's reliability is as fundamentally flawed as ever. But who has actual test data so we can argue from the same page? You would think the U.S. military has bothered to test this and gather these statistics.

You would think they've already taken, let's say, 10 M4s and 10 M16s fresh from the factory in widely separated production lots, performed the standard prep work on them, and then taken them to the range with a couple semi-trailers full of ammo. They start shooting in semi- and full-auto and write down on a chart when each experiences its first failure. They average these results and come up with some MTBF data for their weapons.

As I understand it, this has real world ramifications. Let's say your MTBF is 1,000 rounds. Let's say you're in urban combat and you've fired your 999th round. (I know this is oversimplifying.) You burst into a room at one end, and your enemy bursts in a door at the other end. You shoulder your weapon and aim at him. He shoulders his weapon and aims at you. You've beaten him by a fraction of a second, but your weapon goes CLICK, and his goes BANG.

So, do we have independently-verifiable MTBF data for the M4/M16?

John

 

[Jeff White]

I would guess that the last time the government visited this issue was in the ACR (Advanced Combat Rifle) trials in the early '90s. I'll see what I can find.

Jeff

 

[Balog]

Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but you might want to check this out.

Part 1

Part 2

 

[355sigfan]

Your not going to find the AR15's unrelaible in sterile enviroments. When it starts to fail is in sandy and cold enviroments. Unless great care is taken in cleaning the weapons. To give you an example We issued DPMS M4's. I live in Bethel Alaska. its both cold and very extreemly sandy/dusty here. The sand is a fine river/glacial type silt that gets into everything. Its like gritty baby powder. I have found that magazines for double colume pistols will not operate if they are not cleaned out every couple of weeks.

Anyway during rifle training. I had stop halfway through the first day (250 rounds) to clean the rifles. The guns had to go prone a lot and the sand was working its way through the guns. The guns did not gradualy get bad either. They worked up to a point then they stopped. I am sorry but I want a weapon thats more tolerant and cop proof than that. I love the AR15/M16 family. But its field reliability is a weakness. If you neglect to use dry lube when it drops below 0 your screwed. It will run but it requires constant maintnence and cleaning.

Now if your talking a nice warm climate without sand it will fire all day.
Pat

 

[444]

Very interesting question.
I hope Jeff can come up with something.

I am not sure the results will mean much for the reasons 355sigfan noted. If you just took 20 rifles out to a rifle range and fired them until they quit, I think you would be there awhile. I am sure you would be in the many hundreds of rounds and wouldn't be surprised if it went into the thousands of rounds. Even when you did have a stoppage a few drops of oil on the bolt will give you more hundreds of rounds.

Of course you could try to come up with a test that introduced environmental problems which would be closer to real field use by a soldier but in introducing those tests, the results would be skewed to some extent unless you were very careful to treat every one of the 20 rifles the same.

Then of course in order for the test to mean anything, you would have to have something to compare it to. Unlike internet gun forums you would have to test other weapons systems in exactly the same conditions and see how they compare.

Of course you would also be interested to see if the weapon meets a certain minimum realistic criteria. For example, I would be surprised if many soldiers are firing 1000 rounds in a days time. I am sure it has been done, but not very often.

355sigfan What do you do about the double stack magazines that don't function after a couple weeks when they haven't even been fired ? If the AR stops after flopping down on the ground all day and a pistol magazine fails after just being carried in a holster, which is more cop proof ?

 

[KW]

Actually I really wonder if anyone has ever fired off 1000 rds in a day out of their AR in combat. The largest mag total I ever read about anyone carrying was in book about Vietnam where a guy mentioned they would go out with 20 mags ... thats 400-600rds depending on whether they were 20's or 30's. Most tactical vests can't hold more then 6-12 AR mags. In Bravo 20 Andy McNab mentions they carried 10 AR mags each plus a box for the Minimi.

The PDF file that HK USA has on their site comparing the XM8 and the M4 mentions 6000rds "with regular cleaning" for the M4 so who knows that that means.

 

[Sunray]

"...You would think the U.S. military has bothered to test this and gather these statistics..." They very likely have but it's Classified. Mind you, what do you call a failure? Firearms, especially FA firearms jam due to a multitude of reasons. Operator failure being the biggest one. A rifle carried by a combat troopie is cared for much more carefully than that carried by a REMF. In any case, an M4 is a normal developement of the M-16. Same rifle with 40 years of developement and improvements.

 

[Oleg Volk]

Operator error examples: for the Uzi, it would be letting go of the grip safety. For the M4/M16, it may be chambering the first round incorrectly...both more likely than a mechanical malfunction.