For those of you with personal AR15s who have never had a problem, ask yourself the following questions:
1. Do you pay for your own ammo or does Uncle Sam pay for it?
2. Have you ever fired so stinking much in one day that you don't wanna fire any more but continue because some loud & insistent third person says so...and has the authority to make it stick?
3. Do you measure the round count though your AR in the thousands or tens of thousands?
4. Have you had to keep your AR15 up & running in a sandy/dirty/muddy/rainy environment for weeks with only the little 2oz bottle of CLP, a shaving brush, a few patches, the issue brushes and rods...while running through several thousands of rounds that create these huge chunks of carbon in your upper and all over your bolt, carrier, & chamber?
The implication being that if you don't have a drill sergeant yelling at you or if you don't count rounds by the 10k, your inherently flawed rifle will magically work better than it should?
No magic needed. Just metallurgy and design.
The implication is that those who can answer, "yes" to some of the above have used a particular weapon beyond the "shiny & new" phase. Springs are no longer quite what they once were when new and wear has begun to develop in other areas that effect reliable function. The weapon likely works just fine when clean & happily lubed. When it gets fouled with carbon, sand, & other detrius is when it fails...at a lower round count than when it was new.
I'm not aware of any mainstream military rifle that is so poorly designed that one cannot rely upon it to function if it's properly maintained and properly lubed. Cleaning is nice, but unless you let your rifle go many thousands of rounds between cleanings then it isn't strictly necessary, even for the AR.
Frequent cleaning is downright necessary for many/most high-round-count AR15s that have not had several of their more critical springs replaced.
The Indians might take issue with your first point.
If your rifle rifle isn't working for you, then you need to either stop abusing it or have it repaired. Blaming it on the design of the rifle is a cop out.
>>Alert: A painfully obvious point follows this warning.<<
Design has a huge effect on maintenence requirements.
Some of the maint is user-level, some goes to the unit armorer, & some can only be performed by higher. If one design has greater maint requirements over use than another, it is perfectly reasonable to state such, or "blame" the design.
What is abuse? Does that include IMT where the AR is used to break one's fall, causing the bolt & carrier's inertia to flip the ejection port cover to open & allow foreign matter to enter when the user flops prone? Issue weapons that are used are going to be used HARD, much harder than you or I would likely use our privately owned weapon at the range.
I was going to post but the Headless One said it best.
Again, 40 years' succesful deployment is hard to argue with.
Luckily, for most of those 40 years, we have not had to put many of our ARs to long term hard use...and got periodic replacements: M16 > M61A1 > M16A2 > M4 & M4A1 & M16A4.
I do not argue that it is a POS, any more than I would argue that the M4 Sherman tank (the tank that helped win us WWII, an undeniable success) was a POS, despite being a design inferior to most other major fielded designs. The deciding factor is not the AK or the Ar, but the user.
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FWIW, I used to maintian ARs of various configuration and age (ancient CAR-15s, M16A2s, M4A1s, & others) for my unit. Shiny new ARs worked as advertised. High round count weapons did not until I replaced several springs in the upper & the buffer spring. My
guess is that the extractor & ejector spring fatigued over time and gradually were less able to yank a cartridge out of the chamber after carbon built up in the upper. Also, the carbon & foreign material slowed down the bolt & carrier. Last (and least likely to effect reliability, IMO) , the buffer spring could not push home the bolt & carrier against the extra resistance of the carbon in the upper & chamber.
Unfortunately, I did not have time or funding to gather the sort of data I would like:
1. Precise round counts
2. Failures
a. Type
b. Total round count
c. Round count since last cleaning
d. Lube regimen
3. Corrective action (parts replaced, etc)
Pretty much , if any hooah was having reliability issues, I swapped out springs if no glaring deficinecy (in personal weap maint or mechanical) was apparent. Usually did the trick for the next range. Some weapons were problem children, however, and were true PITA to keep rolling.
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What we (USA, USMC) have done is adjust our training to accomodate the peculiarities of our chosen weapon platform. Most times, training can overcome non-optimal equipment.
