# The Army's new handgun already has some serious problems



## BackyardCowboy (Aug 27, 2014)

The Army's new handgun already has some serious problems - Business Insider


----------



## Steve M1911A1 (Feb 6, 2008)

Yeah, right...
And Browning's .45 ACP pistol design was perfect from the get-go. Not!
(It went through at least three iterations, before it was completely-foolproof acceptable.)

Every newly issued firearm has issues which need to be addressed.
Our military fought most of WW2 with a Garand M1 which had rear-sight problems. These problems weren't completely fixed until Korea.


----------



## yellowtr (Oct 28, 2016)

And lets not forget how many iterations the Colt M16 went through before it became reliable and morphed into the AR15 so many love today, and for good reason!


----------



## SouthernBoy (Jun 27, 2007)

yellowtr said:


> And lets not forget how many iterations the Colt M16 went through before it became reliable and morphed into the AR15 so many love today, and for good reason!


The problems with the M16 in its early iterations in Vietnam were not the fault of the rifle but rather politicians and beancounters.

Early M16's were shipped without chrome lined barrels. Why? McNamara calculated that not lining the barrels would save a lot of money and anyway, they didn't need to be lined. Guess he never had to use one in an environment one finds in the jungles of Southeast Asia.

They were not shipped with cleaning kits because it was felt that this rifle was self-cleaning. I guess the self-cleaning robot was left at home, too because the next item really messed up the deal with the lack of a cleaning kit.

The rifle was approved using rod-based powder. But when it came time to ship things off to Vietnam, ammunition with ball powder was substituted for the rod-based stuff. Ball powder can be temperamental in extreme climate and temperature swings... not to mention really high humidity. No cleaning kits and ball powder tend to made Mr. M16 not very happy.

Once all of this was corrected, the rifles functioned as designed.

For those intimate with this, please chime in if I have missed something or have gotten things wrong. My info comes from a documentary I have on this rifle.


----------

