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From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re:  Using the rifle suited to the previous war?
Message-ID: <1991Jan22.020543.21351@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 22 Jan 91 02:05:43 GMT
References: <1991Jan17.054212.29838@cbnews.att.com> <1991Jan19.041929.5345@cbnews.att.com>
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Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
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From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
>From: bxr307@csc.anu.edu.au
>Perhaps the powder we were using in the rounds that I fired through the weapon
>lead to excessive fouling but quite often the weapon would suffer a stoppage
>every few rounds fired.

The original AR-15 design was carefully matched to its original ammunition.
The US Army changed the ammunition drastically -- substituting a more
powerful but much "dirtier" powder -- and this turned a rifle that was rather
more reliable than the then-current issue rifles into one that was (and is)
conspicuously less reliable.  (The very high reliability of the original
design was established in the Army's own trials.)  The design was "fixed"
to cure some of the other problems of the substitution, but the reliability
problems were blamed on the soldiers' not keeping it clean rather than on
the Army's bad judgement.
-- 
If the Space Shuttle was the answer,   | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
what was the question?                 |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry