I apologize for my delay in posting but I've been sick and distracted by family issues lately.
Gunslinger said:
Hardly, Chopper. First off, the M-16 design, at its core (which means ignore the polymer body) is relatively simple. The direct gas system means there's less moving parts to break, key to any infantryman's weapon. Secondly, the M-16 is solely designed as an assault rifle (nevermind the aftermarket marskman upper receiver and barrel configurations). If we Americans had wanted the M-16 to be a sniper rifle, we would not have chambered it in the intermediary 5.56 round. Ironically enough, its the Russians who put more emphasis on sniper power, with a marksman equipped with a Dragunov rifle available at the squad level.
The mythos of the unreliable M-16 is only exacerbated by the uninformed. The usage of junk ammunition in the Vietnam-era has done alot to discredit the AR rifles. Junk ammo powder + direct gas system = gunked up rifle internals. Nowadays, the cartridges issued use cleaner powder and mitigates alot of jamming issues. Of course, you still have to clean the gun, as with EVERY other sort of gun. This is not something that is ground breaking. That is merely the cost of having a simple (and thus more reliable) internal configuration. Fortunately, the M-16 design is facilitated for breakdown, which can be done in seconds. After every one thousand rounds or so, the occaisonal rudimentary strip and rub down with a rag will keep your rifle going.
Uninformed? The
M16 doesn't use a polymer body at all. It has polymer furniture but that's it. The receiver is cast aluminum machined down to the proper tolerances. The M16 has more parts than an
AK-47 to break and it's more complicated. It has multiple lugs over the AK-47's two, a plunger ejector instead of a fixed ejector, a more complex hammer mechanism. It also has an idiot recoil tube extending into the butt that can be bent or warped and cause the rifle to stop working. The AK-47 can use any kind of stock or none at all. This causes "designers" to create monstrosities like
this whereas the AK-47 can be cut down into something handy like
this or
this. The Armalite designers, after selling the AR-15 design to Colt, went on to design the
AR-18 which shares quite a few features of the AK-47 and is cheaper and easier to make. It doesn't use the crappy direct-gas system but a simple gas piston.
The US military has had a tradition of marksmanship, one shot, one kill. The M16 does not fire the best cartridge for this but it's still expected of it and it's vaunted accuracy over the AK-47 is cut down when firing through foliage and when the military wants to go to the
M4 Carbine with a shorter barrel. The Russians simply know that an assault rifle is not a sniper rifle and that role should be delegated to something more able, like the Dragunov. Heckler & Koch supposedly have a
G36 that has fired 25,000+ rounds with no stoppages or failures and no cleaning. I want to see an M16 do that even with just "the occaisonal rudimentary strip and rub down with a rag". The G36 is a descendant of the AR-18 using the same gas piston. Yes, the M16 does have a bad reputation but frankly, it deserves it. It can partially be assigned to crappy ammunition but they had to change and add a lot of junk to the M16 just to somewhat alleviate that problem. It still jams more easily than it should when encountering grime and fouling and that is due to inherent design flaws that, if fixed, would result in something a lot like the AR-18.
I think the AR-15/M16 is a fine rifle. For sporting, I want one. I wouldn't trust my life with it in combat if I had a choice though. The US military has tried several times to replace it but due to political and funding reasons, has been stopped. The M16 was adopted in the first place because of politics and not very good military reasoning.
On the actual subject of this thread, some constructive criticism: I think you're heading in a good direction. The rear sight looks good, so does the receiver but I think you need to length it by about 1/4th of its present length so you can have a larger trigger guard and magazine well. You need to add the front sight and the ejection port, bolt handle. The flash hider should have larger cutouts in it but otherwise, you've got it pretty much right. Flash hiders and muzzle brakes have been around for a very long time so keep it. For the butt of the rifle, if you extended the receiver back some (leaving the sight and grip where they are), you could use a stock something like on the
G3 that fits over the rear of the receiver. - Colt
That's right. Now I don't want to add a gas tube, as it's not one on the reference picture. And I don't want to give it a Dragunov-like stock, again because it's not like that in falllout. But the other ideas were good, I'm going to roam worldguns.ru to find out how these things look 
.
unfortunatly, texturing isn't my strongest side..ahem....
