16. A Perfect Storm of Screwups
A key drawback of the M16’s direct gas impingement system which blows the fired cartridges’ gas directly into the firing chamber, is that it also blows those cartridges’ residue in there as well. That residue fouls the chamber, which means that it has to be cleaned frequently. More so than earlier US military rifles. To make things worse, the M16 was designed to fire a cartridge that used a specific powder to minimize that problem. In 1964, however, the US Army discovered that the special powder could not be readily mass-produced, so it replaced it with an alternate that produced significantly more fouling.
To make matters worse, the Army billed the M16 as a self-cleaning rifle, when no such weapon has ever existed, nor likely ever will. The military then further exacerbated the problem with its failure to supply the troops with cleaning kits, or to instruct them on how to clean their new rifles. On top of that, the firing chambers lacked chrome plating, which made them corrode easily. When the inevitable jams resulted, the original M16s lacked a forward assist – a device to manually push the bolt fully forward if it failed to do so on its own. It was a perfect storm of screwups.