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Comment by CodingJeebus | Hacker News Reader

Certainly not the first time something like this happened. During Vietnam, the US Army sent soldiers into combat with the M16 knowing that it had major issues that often caused it to jam. We’ll never know exactly people were killed by such a bad decision, but it quickly became infamous early in the war.[0]

0: https://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/m16-rifle-viet...

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There was nothing wrong with the M16/AR-15; the Marines had been issued the weapon in Vietnam as well (with different ammo than the army received) and it worked fine.

The issue was that the Army Bureau of Ordinance insisted on making 5.56mm ammunition with a propellant composition different from the one that Stoner had specified when designing the weapon, one that was entirely unsuitable and led to jamming.

Yes but it was worse due to design problems with the gun as well, seeing as how they did change it - I.e. adding chrome plating to the chamber and barrel which reduced fouling, and actually including a proper cleaning kit.

The chrome lining was done to significantly increase the service life of the barrel and to reduce corrosion in some environments. Prior to the M16, chrome lining was only used on machine guns due to the volume of rounds that went through them.

Far more rounds were put through the M16 by soldiers than prior weapons like the M14. Despite the chrome lining, M16 barrels still wear out over time and have to be replaced.

"in some environments" being the Vietnam war the US was involved in, in reaction to casualty reports where a large number of men were killed with their rifles broken down for repair likely due to mid battle stoppages.

And the same applies to number of rounds: the entire point of a 5.56mm cartridge was to give soldiers more ammo so they could sustain volume of fire in the field: it was a design goal.

If design changes fixed a serious flaw with a weapon, then it was a flawed design.

There was nothing wrong with the M16, it worked very well for a number of years. Then the US Army unilaterally modified the ammunition to save money in such a way as to make it no longer within specification for the weapon. Predictably, the use of out-of-spec ammunition caused issues.

The Army never changed the ammunition back. Instead, the weapon was modified (M16A1) to be compatible with the formerly out-of-spec ammunition and the issues went away.

You can't blame the M16 for the US Army using ammunition that wasn't fit for purpose.

A dishonourable mention for the original A1 version of the British SA80, which required high levels of lubrication to operate properly, and as a result often jammed in sandy environments... like Kuwait and Iraq [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SA80

I seem to recall the A0 also used to yeet the magazine when you ran with it across your chest on the sling, because the mag release button had no guard (but that might be me misremembering it. )

And the Berretta slide failures. And many similar issues for all kinds of things.

I was going to mention this! I was on a range and watched a slide completely break in half after firing. The Beretta’s where terrible.

Are you referring to the M9/92? I don't own one but I've heard it's one of those guns that everyone who was issued one hates it, and everyone who bought one on the civilian market loves it - the implication being they just don't shoot it enough to run into any issues.

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