While your disdain for the .223 may have
some merit, I believe that your prejudice against the AR platform is outdated. The current crop of ARs is a far cry from the 60s-era M16. You of all people should know that the combination of factors that resulted in those deaths (wrong propellant, non chrome-lined bores, poor training, etc.) have long since been corrected.
And in case you didn't know, they make ARs in your beloved .308 now too.
Hey, that baby is expensive to feed full time.
I know that I shouldn't get involved in this. But WTH. IMHO, the 223/5.56mm is very good as what it was designed to be, a short to medium range varmint round. But, people are simply too large an animal for it to be truly effective. Hollow point and soft point ammunition make it more effective, but the basic problem lies in the caliber. It is simply too small to be very effective. In combat, the light round lacks the range of a true battle rifle.
Let me move on to the AR-15/M16 platform. As it stands today, the AR is quite reliable and quite accurate. Of course, it took firearms manufacturers and the military nearly 50 years to get it to this point and there are still reliability issues that are constantly being addressed, particularly in the M4 variant. But, it is not a bad short range assault weapon.
There are better designs out there, including the AR-16/18 family of firearms that were available at the time the AR-15 was adopted. In 1960, the Air Force was looking for a weapon to replace the M1s, M14s and M1 carbines that their security police were carrying. They wanted something light and easy to shoot, like the M1 carbine, that would be capable of full automatic fire. The AF brass liked the futuristic look of the AR-10/15 and, not being dedicated ground combat troops, they liked the lighter recoil and the more controllable auto fire. The main function of the USAF security police was base defense, after all. So, they started procurement of the weapon. Along comes Robert McNamara [SecDef] and his "whiz kids". They had the bright idea that any new military hardware should have commonality among all of the services. It was decided that, to save on the expense of two separate small arms platforms and their attendant spare parts and ammo, all the services should be similarly equipped.
The two services that actually conducted combat ground operations, the US Army and the USMC, didn't want the AR-15. Simply because the caliber was untested, the range was half that of the current combat rifle, the M14, and these services had spent a significant amount of time and effort training their personnel to use controlled, aimed semi-automatic fire in combat. But, thanks to McNamara, they got saddled with the Black Gun Blaster in 1964. And they immediately had trouble with it.
First, the troops had to be retrained. Due to the fact that the bolt actually rides into the stock, upon firing, troops could no longer rest their weight on the stock when going prone or use the stock to butt stroke an enemy. If the buffer/receiver tube is bent, the weapon would not function. Then they began to have problems in the field with ammo expenditure. The troops found that they could use "spray and pray" full automatic fire and they were doing so. Ammo use skyrocketed. Next came the fail to function problems. Some of these were due to cartridge powder and these were addressed by changing the powder formula and lining the chamber with chrome. But, simple dirt fouling continued to be a problem [the weapon tolerances due to the direct gas impingement system used were simply too tight] and this was addressed by having the troops clean their weapons more often and on a regular basis. But, the problems continued. The weapon's range was adequate for a 300m killzone around a firebase or at heavy jungle and forest ranges, but in open territory it was sadly lacking in effective range. And, the round was not a good man stopper. It was found that multiple rounds were usually needed to neutralize the threat from an enemy soldier.
The USA and the USMC were not happy, but there was nothing they could do about it. Politics got in the way. As this weapons platform was in use in every service, it would not only have cost a fortune to replace it, but the political fall-out in the DOD and the Administration would have been totally unacceptable. So the US military was stuck with a weapon platform that only the USAF really wanted. They had to make it work. So a tremendous amount of money has been spent improving the M16, when they could have gotten a better weapons platform off the shelf at any time.
Now the popularity of the AR-15 family of rifles stems, largely, from the fact that it has been the main service weapon of the US military for 45 years. Most ex-servicemen, and women, are familiar with it. They usually feel comfortable with it. The weight is light, the recoil is light and it is handy. It is adequate for short range defense. And it is as iconic as the AK-47. It is not a bad weapon, there are simply better ones out there.
I apologize for the length of the post, but I am trying to avoid mowing the lawn.
