Originally posted by AquaShrimp
I'm educated on military history, not a soldier. Its a bad assertion to link serving in the military or owning a ak-47/m-16 to being educated on small arms combat and philosophy.
I'll tell you what I do have. I have hundreds of first hand accounts, the opinions of many combat veterans, and facts and figures to back up my claims.
What needs to be remembered here is that many of these combat vets that complain about the M-16's poor performance, and countries rejecting the rifle due to performance failures of one sort or anouther were mostly based on the older M-16 design (M-16 / M16A1). The modern M-16A2 with all the improvments made to the weapon is a very reliable peice of hardware.
Also the situation in Somalia with the rounds not killing was due to the type of rounds the soldiers were issued. They were using "slap" rounds. Those are a plastic coated titanium round designed to penetrate body armor. Firing that round against the Somlians, it tended to go right through them without causing significant damage. Had the soldiers been issued standard ball ammo, those rounds would have been more effective.
I have a very good friend that served in Somalia and he has told me several times that the rifles performed great, it was the ammo that was the problem. Of course at the time the slap rounds were new and the military higher ups thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread so that's what they were issued, oops.
Now about your statement of:
"Its a bad assertion to link serving in the military or owning a ak-47/m-16 to being educated on small arms combat and philosophy."
Who is better qualified to make a statement about this subject? Someone who has used the weapon in question in combat and owns one for their personal use, or someone who has just read about it and seen some TV shows about it?
I do consider myself something of an expert because I have used it in combat, I do own many types of weapons, I have received professional military training concerning many different weapons. I maintain all my own weapons, I have a limited amount of gunsmithing experiance under my belt and that experiance is growing. I handload my own ammo for a majority of the weapons I own. I also do allot of reading to stay up to date on the current weapons that are out there.
So.....it is MY opinion based on MY experiance and knowledge that makes ME prefer the M-16 over the AK-47.
Academic study of a subject does not make someone an expert. That requires study and real world experiance with the subject first hand. I'll always trust the guy with 10-20 years experiance over the new guy with the degree. Education is only a foundation. Experiance builds the house.
