It's hit the fan, you are out the door,what are you carrying?

I had the same question and when I went to the Army Small Cal Weapons Lab at Picatinny Arsenal I was assigned to Product Engineering. That section gets to look at all the problems generated by each particular system in the Army inventory.

I learned quickly that troops will do things with weapons that were never contemplated by designers and got through testing at Aberdeen Proving Ground without showing up. We had to figure out changes that would make the systems more reliable.

Product Engineering also reviews contracts and pulls the latest drawings from Tech Data to go in the procurement package. CIP it is extremely rare that a part of a weapon does not have a design change throughout the history of the rifle that was needed to correct a problem that showed up.

By the time I got there I learned the M16 had sustained over 550 engineering changes in it's life cycle and by now I figure it is at least 600 if not 700.

For instance does anyone know why the barrel on the M16A2 is only heavy from the front sight to the muzzle?

Why it was fielded with a 7 twist barrel?

Why the flash suppressor was changed?

And it goes on and on and on.

There were guys in the section that had started work at Springfield Armory in the early 50s and were coming up on 30 years of experience.

The guy that trained me had 27 years in and started at Springfield Armory SA, transferred to Rock Island RIA in the 60s when McNamara closed Springfield Armory and then to Picatinny PA and he was a treasure trove of info.

The shocker was the expected round life was on weapons systems. For instance on the M16 family they do QA testing on lots delivered and they will select one and put it through the requirements. Anybody want to guess how many rounds one has to fire to accept the entire lot?

So I had access to about 500 years of Ordnance Engineering expertise and one day I went to every section and posed to them one question that went like this:

"If you knew you were going to be put in a potentially bad situation and your life depended on that weapon and you could take only one what would you carry?"

If I posed that same question today I would add, "Would you carry any spare parts for it and what would they be?"

In a survival scenario there won't be forums to ask questions, no spare parts available, no spare scopes and ammo is likely to be very scarce and you have to be there the "firstest with the mostest" (quote from Gen Nathan Bedford Forrest CSA"

Remember you are humping ammo as there won't likely be any available.

You can also build your own so you are not restricted to box guns.

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It's hit the fan, you are out the door,what are you carrying?