Many times I have been asked what destruction testing tells us and how we look at firearms afterwards in terms of quality and durability. This is a very involved question in that there are many factors that go into it.
First and most importantly, the question is what is the requirement of the firearm? In the case of the M16 and M4 carbine for the US government, it is a 6k round endurance test where the cooling and cleaning parameters are specified. Is this all the rifle is designed to do? Not at all. The rifles well exceed the defense departments requirements. Out of every lot of rifles provided to the US government by Colt or FN, they must have randomly selected rifles which go through interchangeability and endurance testing. Testing protocols must have parameters. You must fire X amount of rounds in Y amount of time with less than Z number of malfunctions. When testing concludes, the rifle either fails, meets or exceeds the specification. When one wants to make a generalization on what the durability of the M16 and M4 are, they must use actual M16 or M4 rifles! The plethora of AR-type rifles on the market are not what I consider proper representations of government built Technical Data Package rifles.
These rifles have drawings for every single component that specify what the part must meet for materials, manufacturing, heat treat and finish. If a part does not meet the drawing, the manufacture must reject that batch of parts. In fact, many of the manufacturers who make commercial firearms wind up with these rejected components. In the case of barrels, the manufacturing process, heat treat, chrome plating process are specified so the government knows exactly what the life of that part is. Most every video I have seen show AR-type rifles that all suffer from different forms of destruction and at different intervals. When you look at a Mil-Spec Colt or FN rifle, it is quite predictable of what will fail and when depending on the platform (M16A2/A4, M4, M4A1).
First and most importantly, the question is what is the requirement of the firearm? In the case of the M16 and M4 carbine for the US government, it is a 6k round endurance test where the cooling and cleaning parameters are specified. Is this all the rifle is designed to do? Not at all. The rifles well exceed the defense departments requirements. Out of every lot of rifles provided to the US government by Colt or FN, they must have randomly selected rifles which go through interchangeability and endurance testing. Testing protocols must have parameters. You must fire X amount of rounds in Y amount of time with less than Z number of malfunctions. When testing concludes, the rifle either fails, meets or exceeds the specification. When one wants to make a generalization on what the durability of the M16 and M4 are, they must use actual M16 or M4 rifles! The plethora of AR-type rifles on the market are not what I consider proper representations of government built Technical Data Package rifles.
These rifles have drawings for every single component that specify what the part must meet for materials, manufacturing, heat treat and finish. If a part does not meet the drawing, the manufacture must reject that batch of parts. In fact, many of the manufacturers who make commercial firearms wind up with these rejected components. In the case of barrels, the manufacturing process, heat treat, chrome plating process are specified so the government knows exactly what the life of that part is. Most every video I have seen show AR-type rifles that all suffer from different forms of destruction and at different intervals. When you look at a Mil-Spec Colt or FN rifle, it is quite predictable of what will fail and when depending on the platform (M16A2/A4, M4, M4A1).
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