Our standard issue M16A4 and M4A1 rifles fire on single shot or burst. If you move it to burst, your fireteam leader or squad leader will hear it and promptly chew your ass for wasting ammo and pushing accuracy down. Only machine guns and the rifles special forces use have full-auto capabilities. Everyone else mostly uses single shot or …
Our standard issue M16A4 and M4A1 rifles fire on single shot or burst. If you move it to burst, your fireteam leader or squad leader will hear it and promptly chew your ass for wasting ammo and pushing accuracy down. Only machine guns and the rifles special forces use have full-auto capabilities. Everyone else mostly uses single shot or a crew-served weapon (machine guns and automatic grenade launchers usually mounted to vehicle turrets).
Fill me in here. During my time in USMC, our M-16's had a full auto option and single shot (I think we also have a 3 rd burst) You're saying todays M-4 doesn't have full auto, only 3 rd burst? That was 50 years ago for me.
Travis covers the technical side, but I suspect that some of the reason for the difference was the different types of combat US soldiers find themselves in in recent times vs. Vietnam.
The currently issued M16A4 and M4A1 service rifles are set to single shot 99.9% of the time, and if anyone switches to burst fire they get yelled at by people in their chain of command who know better. Been that way since I went in in 2004. Current M16s don't even have the full-send option on the fire select control. It stops at 3-shot burst and doesn't let you move the lever the extra click for full-send. The M4s that special forces use have shorter 10" barrels (the MK18 variants) and have full-send capabilities. The magazine goes to zero in about 3 seconds if you dump on full send, and most of the bullets land not where you were aiming, especially at distances greater than 25 yards. That's why even special forces doesn't use full-send at distances outside of 50y unless they are suppressing something but don't have an M240 or M249 to suppress it with.
Speaking of M249's. During the BLM protests one of the boogaloo boys gave his name to a journalist, for quotation. Looking at his Instagram, there was a page with probably 50 images of a semi-automatic only M249's for sale, $7 to 8k. Yikes.
Our standard issue M16A4 and M4A1 rifles fire on single shot or burst. If you move it to burst, your fireteam leader or squad leader will hear it and promptly chew your ass for wasting ammo and pushing accuracy down. Only machine guns and the rifles special forces use have full-auto capabilities. Everyone else mostly uses single shot or a crew-served weapon (machine guns and automatic grenade launchers usually mounted to vehicle turrets).
Fill me in here. During my time in USMC, our M-16's had a full auto option and single shot (I think we also have a 3 rd burst) You're saying todays M-4 doesn't have full auto, only 3 rd burst? That was 50 years ago for me.
Travis covers the technical side, but I suspect that some of the reason for the difference was the different types of combat US soldiers find themselves in in recent times vs. Vietnam.
The currently issued M16A4 and M4A1 service rifles are set to single shot 99.9% of the time, and if anyone switches to burst fire they get yelled at by people in their chain of command who know better. Been that way since I went in in 2004. Current M16s don't even have the full-send option on the fire select control. It stops at 3-shot burst and doesn't let you move the lever the extra click for full-send. The M4s that special forces use have shorter 10" barrels (the MK18 variants) and have full-send capabilities. The magazine goes to zero in about 3 seconds if you dump on full send, and most of the bullets land not where you were aiming, especially at distances greater than 25 yards. That's why even special forces doesn't use full-send at distances outside of 50y unless they are suppressing something but don't have an M240 or M249 to suppress it with.
Speaking of M249's. During the BLM protests one of the boogaloo boys gave his name to a journalist, for quotation. Looking at his Instagram, there was a page with probably 50 images of a semi-automatic only M249's for sale, $7 to 8k. Yikes.