(HUN)Rud3bwoy wrote:Why did they need to introduce 3 round bursts besides ammo conservation in the first place? AFAIK the M16A1 was full auto and it was used by the US Army.
The earlier M-16A1 was a fairly new weapon when it was first fielded. There was not a lot of pre-combat unit testing with the weapon like many other firearms. So for the most part, it was an untested design.
The A1 variants were automatic because that was an option they wanted soldiers to have. But the rifle had a thin barrel, lighter construction, higher RoF, and in my opinion a light magazine capacity. And as mentioned by others, soldiers at the time were mostly drafted and sent off to combat quickly. There was little concern with proper marksmanship training over simply knowing how to aim and shoot.
It was the feedback from the Vietnam war that caused the many changes in the M-16A1 rifles and redesignated the A2.
[quote=""'[R-MOD"]Mongolian_dude;1309230']Ammo conservation I would think is the main reason.
Other reasons I could think of might be:
-Retain weapon discipline (once someone spooks and goes full auto, everyones gonna else will do it too)
-Weapon performance (+rounds in a shorter space of time means +jamming in a shorter space of time)
-Weapon durability (weapons get worn from extended firing periods)
-Firefight dynamics (massive luls in fire output could be caused by everyone reloading 7 seconds into a firefight. This would leave a unit very open to suppression)
-The rise of the SAW (SAWs are better designed to handle the stress and capacity requirements for sustained auto-fire)
...mongol...
...mongol...[/quote]
You pretty much nailed it as well. The weapon was still new at the time and so were combat tactics, especially those for jungle and unconventional/guerilla warfare. Once the military saw how the rifle performed under those conditions, the necessary changes were made.
[quote="Hotrod525""]i fired mine on Full Auto on range for Level 3... and its just... not a nice thing. Keep it steady is just so hard it dosent worth it.
[/quote]
Firing just about any weapon on full-automatic isn't impossible, it just takes a lot of training and practice. The M-16, M-4, and other 5.56mm weapons usually have a pretty "light" recoil compared to similar-sized weapons. The buffer system of the M-16/M-4 family actually works pretty well, and with enough training/practice you can fire any variant in automatic with ease.
But the same goes with just about any FA weapon. I have trained for many years to operate automatic weapons, so my ability to use sustained automatic fire is going to be much higher than the average soldier or LEO. But if you were to give GI Schmoe an M-16 or AK-47 and tell him to empty the magazine all in one go, chances are not even 20% of his rounds will hit the paper.
It's taken some time for militaries around the world to finally understand this, and their forces are either switching to burst modes on battle rifles or issuing full-auto only to highly-trained soldiers that can actually use them effectively.
Truism wrote:The reason I heard was because when people are killed their muscles often spasm and because Vietnam era GI's didn't have the battle discipline to space themselves properly a single dead GI's hand clamping on his trigger while he fell could mean half a squad dead to his M16's automatic function.
Just what I heard.
Who ever told you that needs to quit drinking the bong water.
DeltaCommando wrote:Hmm weird... I always thought the difference between M4 and M4A1 was the flat top, RIS and so on.
Another weird thing is that if you go to Colt website, you'll see they have the following:
AVAILABLE MODELS
RO977 : Flat top, Safe/Semi/Full Auto
RO979 : Flat top, Safe/Semi/Burst
RO777 : Fixed handle, Safe/Semi/Full Auto
RO779 : Fixed handle, Safe/Semi/Burst
Colt uses different designation codes for their firearms based on the intended customer. Military weapon systems have a prefix of RO, Law Enforcement/Government Agencies have LE, and civilian have AR.
The designation M4A1 is the military designation, which was not originally from Colt. Just like the M16 was originally the AR15, but termed the M16 by the military. Colt has since called the military family of the rifles M16's and the carbines M4's. They still use the AR designation for their civilian rifles.
The only M4 rifles to not have a removable carrying handle were the very first run of military carbines. Those were quickly ceased and the new models produced, so chances of even finding an M4 without a removable carrying handle will be very difficult. Most have either been destroyed, sold/transferred to foreign governments, converted to dummy/training weapons, etc.
As for America's Army using the M4 carbine, they do not. They use only the M4A1 (aka SOPMOD) variant, which was released as part of their Special Forces expansion. This is also why players needed to complete a special SF-oriented training mode in order to use the M4A1 and its various mods during games.
The ONLY difference between an M4 and M4A1 is the lower reciever firing rate selection, and the associated internal components. Both firearms are capable of accepting the same modifications ranging from a swap of the pistol grip all the way up to a whole new upper. Unless you can read the "BURST" or "AUTO" lettering near the selector, there is no other way to tell the difference (excluding the weapon stamping, duh).
