Ah.... For those of us who have foregone their usual coffee ration for the day, it might help to encase such comments thusly:

[sarcasm] ... [/sarcasm]

any combat weapon that sees moderate use ( needing to be fired in the field under combat conditions) that cannot reliably function under those conditions for days without having to be maintained & combine with a poor performance round is a p.o.s. in my book.
It took congressional hearings to get the military to adress the problems with the M-16, perhaps many are to young to know this fact. I also base my opinion on conversations with good friends from Nam in 65 right thru to Somalia and Desert Storm.Almost allhad a less than stellar opinion of the weapon under combat experiences. I don't care what it does at the range,IMHO in the field if it can't be used alot , dropped in the mud etc, be pi$$ed on to clean shook off and get back into th fray it's not worthy.
Govt issue 1911's and AK 's both fit that description, the M-16 doesn't.

I have owned a dozen AR-15's over the years and currently have two in my safe, and they are alot of fun and adequately accurate. But to call it "the world's most versatile rifle"; not in my little world.

I agree that the AR-15/M-16 are fun to shoot. But I certainly would never bet my life on one. Give me an M-14 for that.

The M1 Garand which Americans love to think of as the end-all be-all of battle rifles didn't hold up so well to the sand and surf in the pacific theatre- they usually required a complete strip down and cleaning to get them functioning again, and they didn't work so well in the Korean winter- The M1 needs to be greased to function properly and cold weather froze them up. The M14 wasn't really any improvement over the M1 either other than the larger magazine capacity and better gas system.

Point is, any semiauto is going to fail when its exposed to harsh climates or sand. The AK-47 fares better than most, but you have to give up a lot ofaccuracy, ergonomics, and versatility to downgrade from an AR-15 to a AK.

Any soldier who cannot maintain his/her rifle to make sure it functions isn't worthy the rifle they are carrying. I'd like to see evidence of the poor performance of the 556 round also.

Garands did not have alot of problems those in the Pacific,Normandy,the cold of theArden (father was tech sgt at bothand unit got a PUC) or Korea. Like you state any auto system can pose a problem but under combat M-16 's are awful compare to most anything else except that lovely squad weapon the French gave us to use in ww1 lol.
Poor performance ? Ask anyone about stopping power from the M-4 variants past 75 yards or nam vets in the thick stuff. Terminal performance dropped so badly in the M-4 they had to go to a different bullet and even that performance is only good at shorter range.

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AGreed