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
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