The selection of the M14 is the worst small arms decision the US military has ever made
>>65122939wrong
>>65122939I've owned (and built) FALs, M1As and PTRs. The M14 is fine. It has the best sights, its lighter than the FAL (I'll leave its alleged superiority in cold weather up for debate), and in my experience is accurate. From the perspective of an American design with a similar manual of arms to the M1 Carbine, M1 Rifle and BAR (all weapons it was designed to replace) it was the right choice IMO. People who say this shit likely have never used an M14 or its derivatives, and likely parrot the shit that these retards like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U11URice_cM&t=184s claim.
>>65122944thisthe M14 was an answer to the question, "how do we drag the Garand into the nuclear age?"the M7 is an answer that nobody likes, to a question that nobody asked
>>65122939M14 was a replacement for the BAR and Garand. M16 was the replacement for the M1 Carbine. Its kind of like how the soviets adopted the SKS to replace its infantry rifle, and AK to replace its submachine gun then realized that the assault rifle was more versatile.
>>65123037That's not quite right. The M14 was meant to replace the M3 and M1 (carbine) some how.
>>65123037that implies that the M14 and M16 were supposed to be used together. they were not, the M16 was a direct replacement for the M14.
The proto-FAL was immature and inferior to the proto-M14 at the time of selection.
>>65123092Finally someone who knows about what was happening at the time the T48 was selected.
>>65122978OPEN FUCKING ACTION
>>65122939No, the worst decision was rejecting .276 Pedersen.
>>65123152The worst decision was this bait thread, yet again.
>>65122939>The selection of the M14 is the worst small arms decision the US military has ever madeThe Lee Navy would like a word with you.
>>65123051>that implies that the M14 and M16 were supposed to be used together. they were not, the M16 was a direct replacement for the M14.The AR15 was essentially snuck in the back door to the military by being proposed to replace the M1 Carbine for the Air Force, because there was an immense amount of bureaucratic and political inertia against the idea of replacing the infantryman's full sized cartridge with a "tiny" round. Replacing the Carbine was much more palatable, and from there it went on to replace the M14
>>65123051but it started with the airforce, which just needed smaller rifles
>>65122939It was bad, but it wasn't that bad. It was inferior to the FAL, but the FAL itself wasn't that great in retrospect, and the other cold war battle rifles (e.g. G3, AR-10) weren't anywhere near ready for adoption when the army was. Trying to shoehorn a battle rifle into multiple different roles it was never suited for was also a dumb idea, but it was an idea everyone was trying to do at the time (an AR-10 LMB was heavily marketed and the LMG version of the FAL was adopted by many countries).tl;dr: we're in the midst of the "M-14 le bad" backlash to the "M-14 a best, M-16 a shit" consensus from decades past.
>>65123229*AR-10 LMG
>>65123202>>65123213the airforce wanted to get rid of their carbine in general and switch to rifles. the M1 carbine was deemed too small and old to do the job and the AR15 was a good fit for what they wanted. they also couldn't just get M14s because the army and marines were having trouble getting enough of them for themselves. the M16 is a rifle replacement, not a carbine replacement.
>>65122978Holy fucking faggot batman, please never link that bearded poof again
>>65123267Yeah they really suck. The video is just >UWAAAAHGH I'M A RETARDED VET BRO WHO NEVER LEARNED HOW TO SHOOT IRONS, UNIRONICALLY
>>65122939M14 is overhated at this point.
>>65122944only bad thing i've heard of this is that its heavy (lmao) and 20rnd mag. if thats all then i dont get what the fuck you are bitching about.t. buttmad reservist who got his g3 taken away and replaced with AR
>>65123317Not the greatest postwar rifle and was unsuccessful, but agreed that the directed-hate is overdone at this point.XM7 is the greatest post-WWII combat arms boondoggle by galactic magnitude.
>>65122944FPBP Op was right until this piece of shit slid through procurement there will be a new rifle or we'll be back on M4s by 2030
>>65122939the AR 10 with wood furniture is SEXO MAXIMO
>>65123322it's got two charging handles and the scopes don't work. it's built for some superman cartridge, but soldiers train with regular monolithic brasscase ammunition because the real stuff makes the gun disintegrate.
>>65123343i like charging handles, it only need a paddle mag release to make it perfect
>>65123322what the other guy said, but I also want to add that battle rifles are an obsolete concept, and they have been since the 50s.
>>65123348>i like charging handlesmilitary rifles should have just one manual of armswould it change your mind at all to learn that they're BOTH non-reciprocating?
>>65123356
>>65123343You reply to your own posts a lot seething about the M7.
>>65123356>would it change your mind at all to learn that they're BOTH non-reciprocating?im drunk and ESL, whats the issue?
>>65123375some people criticize the AR-15 for having a non-reciprocating charging handle, which means it's not directly attached to the bolt, and doesn't move back and forth as you fire the gun. That can be seen as bad because it means you can't push the bolt forward to force the gun into battery. Having a reciprocating bolt handle would at least provide a new thing you can do with the gun (for better or worse), but the new charging handle doesn't even do that. It's totally superfluous.
>>65122939>worst decisionUS acquisitions criminals have done all sorts of stupid shit since the beginning of the country. M14 was nearly fucking PERFECT for the time. It served well in Korea, a conflict which entirely too many plasticshit jerkoff queens on here either ignore, or are too stupid to know. It's amazing just how many M14s get pulled out of the back room of every fucking battalion armory when we have to it for real.
>>65123152logisiticslet
>>65123398>It served well in Korea,really? because Korea ended 4 years before the M14 was adopted.
>>65123051>direct replacementYeah, you're shitting on yourself with that. M16 was sold as a THEATER replacement for jungle warfare that the scumbags in McNamara's "business" centric defense department that magically blew up into a service-wide solution. Robert McNamara was a democrat-appointed "business" "whiz-kid" who set the tone for every shit-show dirty acquisition you dumbfucks don't seem to understand is entirely responsible for the AR being what it is today.
>>65123404>EndedDid it now? You wanna try again, smartass?
>>65123427Facebook-ass imageYou must be 60
>>65123437Tell me more about its service in Korea
>>65123398>>65123427
>>65123440>>65123444Samefagging isn't going to save you from a half century of DMZ "peacekeeping", dimwit. What is your problem anyway? You're obviously a dumbass raised in by an alcoholic, abusive single "mother" in a shitty apartment. You have some grasp of the history, why the fuck are you being a dick about it?
>>65123437>he thinks korea still exists
>>65123466Ah the arduous service of guarding the DMZ, a true trial of fire
>>65122939Imagine how fucking kino the surplus market would be with US-made woodstock G3 rifles.
>>65123472Go visit, asshat. I spent a year up there. Let's compare notes when you come back.
>>65122978>I've owned (and built) FALs, M1As and PTRs. The M14 is fine. It has the best sights, its lighter than the FAL (I'll leave its alleged superiority in cold weather up for debate), and in my experience is accurate.USGI M14s had atrocious quality control and most of them were 3+ MOA guns from the factory. Setting aside the qualities of the rifle itself, its development and procurement was a shitshow at every level.>It's going to be easy to develop and manufacture because it's based on the M1 and will have parts commonalitylol>This also means it will be cheap to manufacturelmao, even>Reee soldiers are shooting better with a low-recoil 8lb rifle that lets them carry three times as much ammoRigged trials and impossible standards go brrrr>From the perspective of an American design with a similar manual of arms to the M1 Carbine, M1 Rifle and BAR (all weapons it was designed to replace) it was the right choice IMO.The M14 is a replacement for the M1 carbine like an F-350 is a replacement for a 1996 Tacoma and the supremacy of belt-fed machine guns as squad-level support weapons had been PROVEN since WWII. Plus, you know, the M60 was adopted BEFORE the M14 so I would say "replacing the BAR" should come with a pretty big asterisk. The M14 was a passable (if marginal) successor to the M1 Garand, okay, but that could have been done in a fraction of the time at a fraction of the cost by just doing what the Italians did and slapping a detachable magazine onto a .308 Garand and calling it a day.As for the manual of arms itself - it was badly outdated and everyone knew it except the fucking army, apparently. Intermediate rounds had proven their value in both WWII and Korea on both sides of the conflict and yet with the third asian war in the last quarter-century coming into focus the army continued to drag their heels and bog down the M16 as much as possible because they had decided that they were going to have the M14 no matter what the tests said.
>>65123478I want an actual from-factory-select-fire HK33
Why wouldn't the M14's production/QC problems have happened if the factories were making FALs or G3s instead?
>>65123492>Intermediate rounds had proven their value in both WWII and Korea on both sides of the conflictpre-schv intermediate rounds were worthless turds for low tech monkeys who couldn't make an acceptable autoloading rifle otherwise
>>65123492>USGI M14s had atrocious quality controltrue, but rifles that failed QC were not issued, so that is largely irreverent outside of procurement.>3+ MOAnormal for the time (M4s can still be 2-4 MOA)>development and procurement was a shitshow at every level.true. it took longer that it should have and procurement was awful.>Rigged trialssimply wrong. that's all parroted boomer lore.>The M14 was a passable (if marginal) successor to the M1 Garandbetter in every way. you can say it wasn't better enough for the time, but that's a different argument.>what the Italians didI've yet to hear how the BM59 was actually better than the M14 other than muh cost. everyone says it was better but they never say why, and if they try they just parrot false statements about the M14 being inaccurate or unreliable.>As for the manual of arms itself - it was badly outdatedyeahthe M14s real problem was procurement and being a little out dated. the rifle itself was fine, not great, not terrible.
>>65123574being outdated is a fairly significant flaw for a new weapon
>>65123619that depends on how outdated and what the weapon is. standard issue M4s are outdated, have been for 20 years.
>>65123638>standard issue M4s are outdated, have been for 20 years.disregarding the fact that the M4 was adopted in 1994, completely supporting anon's argument: substantiate your claims
>>65123648>substantiate your claimsARs have advanced a lot but standard M4s are almost unchanged from the late 90s. also the block II is almost 20 years old.>pic from a article from 1999
>>65122939>FAL .280The above would have at least comported with adopting the hotness from the Last War at least, and justified itself on increased barrel life alone vs. .30 cal. Then again, the actual lessons from WW2 was: copy the fucking Germans (M-16). The heel dragging skulduggery of Ordinance Board to protect their fudd inertia paper punching range toys got infantry killed, that alone makes it an abomination. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mby4hOq-DpI
>>65123574>true, but rifles that failed QC were not issued, so that is largely irreverent outside of procurement.The rejection rate is pretty significant when discussing the quality of the rifles.>normal for the time (M4s can still be 2-4 MOA)Normal for the crop of WWII and post-war self-loaders while being considerably less accurate than both the Garand it was replacing and the AR-15 it was suppressing.>simply wrong. that's all parroted boomer lore.Bull. Shit.There's a memorandum from 1962 which states "the US army infantry board will conduct only those tests which reflect adversely on the AR-15" and the IG's report from 1963 details exactly how the tests were rigged. The AR-15 wasn't perfect but its superiority was self-evident.>better in every way. you can say it wasn't better enough for the time, but that's a different argument.If the AR-15 didn't exist then that might hold some water but the fucking things were tested side-by-side as early as 1958 and the ordinance board was fighting tooth and nail against anything else the whole time - including and especially the AR-15.>I've yet to hear how the BM59 was actually better than the M14 other than muh cost. Because the BM59 actually was what the M14 set out to be ("what if we made a .308 Garand with a box mag") and did it for pennies on the dollar compared to the M14. I'm not saying that they were better rifles in terms of performance but by every other metric - cost, development time, etc. - it ate the M14's lunch.>the M14s real problem was procurementAnd manufacturing, and accuracy, and QC, and retarding adoption of the AR-15, and...>and being a little out dated. the rifle itself was fine, not great, not terrible.Nah. It was dated, heavy, hideously expensive, mired in the worst kind of bureaucracy, killed Springfield Armory, stuck NATO with x51 and was rammed through for political reasons and personal gain. As a weapon in a vacuum it would be second-rate in fucking Korea, much less Vietnam.
>>65122939I feel that pic related is up there.
>>65123403>Producing a new stock of .276 is unviable>Supplying the army with .30-06, .30 carbine and .45 ACP simultaneously is totally viable
>>65123902>The rejection rate is pretty significant when discussing the quality of the rifles.the QC problems were fixed fairly quickly.>Normal for the crop of WWII and post-war self-loadersyes>while being considerably less accurate than both the GarandGarands averaged 3-5 MOA. M14s also averaged between 3-5 MOA.>and the AR-15 it was suppressing.M16s were (are) 2-4 MOA on average. better, but I'm not arguing it isn't.>"the US army infantry board will conduct only those tests which reflect adversely on the AR-15"the infantry board is the only reason the AR15 was designed in the first place, and were the biggest advocates for it.>If the AR-15 didn't exist you were talking about the Garand.>muh BM59 costsee what I mean?>retarding adoption of the AR-15by a coupe years at worst, and those couple years allowed Colt to refine in more and make it a better rifle.>heavyless than a FAL>hideously expensivenot really, it's contemporaries cost about the same.>killed Springfield Armoryno it didn't. private industry being better killed Springfield armory.>it would be second-rate in fucking Koreait would have fucked in Korea. in fact that would be the only time you could genuinely call it good.tldr I stand by my point, the rifle in ok. I don't know why it instills such vitriolic hatred in some people but they need to calm down.
>>65124678>vitriolic hateMuch in the way boomers stand by m14's and 1911's, later generations stand by the ar-15 and wonder nines, because those are the soldiers weapons of the time. It's gotten so wide spread because the military hasn't adopted a new rifle system in a long time so the amount of people who have bought and will defend their purchase of an ar-15 is huge. In the future people will dunk on the ar-15 for not being as good as the m7 and all the people having a melty nowadays about the gun will be seen the same as boomers calling the m16 a plastic mattel toy.
>>65124719I've always said that piston rifles, starting with the AR18 and ending with the ACR and all its clones, are better than the AR15. And I still think the M7 is a conceptional mistake.
>>65123902>Perhaps most blatant was the alleged statement by an unknown Army Colonel during a 1962 AR-15 planning meeting that “the U.S. Army Infantry Board will conduct only those tests that will reflect adversely on the AR-15 rifle plus other tests that may be considered appropriate.” Ichord noted that other records documenting the meeting included no such statement, and the quoted Colonel later claimed that this statement was “not a reflection of what he intended to say.”Not to rule it out, but that line seems questionable at best
M14 did nothing wrong
>>65123152>t. John I literally did nothing for years Pedersen
>>65123009If I was the russian bot farm, I would try to pretend body armor isn't a big concern for the US military.
>>65123322It's a modernized BAR whose role has been outmoded on both ends by assault rifles and GPMGs alike. 20 rounds didn't cut it in the 60s, and it's definitely no good today.
>>65125032Russian "body armor" is just sheet metal sandwiched by kevlar. 5.56 AP will tear through it like a dog eating an unattended burrito.
>>65125040If I was the russian bot farm, I would continue to try pretending body armor isn't a big concern even as people call me out.
