D.E. Watters

L1A1/SLR. He liked ergonomics compared to G3. Didn't had time to shoot.

 
 
 

 
 

https://ndiastorage.blob.core.usgovcloudapi.net/ndia/2018/armament/Holthe.pdf

FWIW:  The former document was part of the 12 volume report assembled by the US Army in response to the Ichord Subcommittee's report.  I linked all 12 volumes here.

http://sturgeonshouse.ipbhost.com/topic/104-documents-repository-small-arms/?page=3&tab=comments#comment-129310

Ichord Subcommittee Hearings Transcript

https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uiug.30112109164266

Ichord Subcommittee Report

https://hdl.handle.net/2027/umn.31951p00793094y

The M16 timeline is a bit rougher than that. The A1 isn't really a discrete variant, it's more or less just the name for the standardized Army variant, and rifles marked as such were rolled out beginning in 1967, like you said. However, The M16A1 got continually improved all the way through 1968, especially after the Ichord Hearings in mid-1967. The document you linked is Appendix 7 of the Ichord report, here's a not-so-great copy of the whole report. You can find better versions of all the appendices, and the report itself if I recall, on DTIC.
 
The M16A1 doesn't completely shake out until the end of the 1960s; for example, McNamara was still issuing directives and changes for the rifle and ammo just before he left the SecDef position in 1968. That same year, updated and improved drafts of the M16A1 rifle and ammo TDP were still being issued. @D.E. Watters excellent timeline of events helps us track this with more clarity.

Tokar-2

 
 
stolen from otvaga, which posted photos from here:
https://ru-ru.facebook.com/people/Andrey-Soyustov/100007544386931

https://www.kalashnikov.ru/po-motivam-alatau-pulemyot-ots-128/
OTs-128 based on Alatau LMG, now in 7.62x51 mm catridge.

OTs-128

@Sturgeon

I'm anxiously awaiting the Q-Bert and Frogger movies.

Loved the Rampage arcades games though...

In addition to what Collimatrix said, it's worth noting that correctly indexing guide rails is a giant sonnovabitch and requires a lot of skill and technical know how. Guide rods... Not so much (though RSAF Enfield still managed to fuck it up!).

History of Sniping and Sharpshooting
Colt 1911 Early Prototypes
Full Auto Conversion for Browning Pistols(Don`t DIY!)

https://vk.com/kalashism?w=wall-160278262_850

 

 
 

https://vk.com/kalashism?w=wall-160278262_830

 

Kalashism on rare GR3:
 

 
 
 
 

Oh I guess I can post these then, too:
 

 

 
What do we know about the 6.7x51mm round?

OTs-124 in 6.7x51mm, stolen from otvaga

 
OTs-123 and -124 are both in 6.7x51mm, design programm named "Alatau"

https://vk.com/kalashism
Kalashism got his hands on some old HK products.
 
25.04:

 
some other photos:
 

At the end of January, 2018 and after many false starts, the Russian military formally announced the limited adoption of the AEK-971 and AEK-973 rifles.  These rifles feature an unusual counterbalanced breech mechanism which is intended to improve handling, especially during full auto fire.  While exotic outside of Russia, these counter-balanced rifles are not at all new.  In fact, the 2018 adoption of the AEK-971 represents the first success of a rifle concept that has been around for a some time.

Earliest Origins


Animated diagram of the AK-107/108
 
Balanced action recoil systems (BARS) work by accelerating a mass in the opposite direction of the bolt carrier.  The countermass is of similar mass to the bolt carrier and synchronized to move in the opposite direction by a rack and pinion.  This cancels out some, but not all of the impulses associated with self-loading actions.  But more on that later.

Long before Soviet small arms engineers began experimenting with BARS, a number of production weapons featured synchronized masses moving in opposite directions.  Generally speaking, any stabilization that these actions provided was an incidental benefit.  Rather, these designs were either attempts to get around patents, or very early developments in the history of autoloading weapons when the design best practices had not been standardized yet.  These designs featured a forward-moving gas trap that, of necessity, needed its motion converted into rearward motion by either a lever or rack and pinion.
 

The French St. Etienne Machine Gun
 

The Danish Bang rifle
 
At around the same time, inventors started toying with the idea of using synchronized counter-masses deliberately to cancel out recoil impulses.  The earliest patent for such a design comes from 1908 from obscure firearms designer Ludwig Mertens:


 
More information on these early developments is in this article on the matter by Max Popenker.
 
Soviet designers began investigating the BARS concept in earnest in the early 1970s.  This is worth noting; these early BARS rifles were actually trialed against the AK-74.
 

The AL-7 rifle, a BARS rifle from the early 1970s
 
The Soviet military chose the more mechanically orthodox AK-74 as a stopgap measure in order to get a small-caliber, high-velocity rifle to the front lines as quickly as possible.  Of course, the thing about stopgap weapons is that they always end up hanging around longer than intended, and forty four years later Russian troops are still equipped with the AK-74.

A small number of submachine gun prototypes with a BARS-like system were trialed, but not mass-produced.  The gas operated action of a rifle can be balanced with a fairly small synchronizer rack and pinion, but the blowback action of a submachine gun requires a fairly large and massive synchronizer gear or lever.  This is because in a gas operated rifle a second gas piston can be attached to the countermass, thereby unloading the synchronizer gear.

There are three BARS designs of note from Russia:

AK-107/AK-108
 


The AK-107 and AK-108 are BARS rifles in 5.45x39mm and 5.56x45mm respectively.  These rifles are products of the Kalashnikov design bureau and Izmash factory, now Kalashnikov Concern.  Internally they are very similar to an AK, only with the countermass and synchronizer unit situated above the bolt carrier group.


 

Close up of synchronizer and dual return spring assemblies

This is configuration is almost identical to the AL-7 design of the early 1970s.  Like the more conventional AK-100 series, the AK-107/AK-108 were offered for export during the late 1990s and early 2000s, but they failed to attract any customers.  The furniture is very similar to the AK-100 series, and indeed the only obvious external difference is the long tube protruding from the gas block and bridging the gap to the front sight.
 
The AK-107 has re-emerged recently as the Saiga 107, a rifle clearly intended for competitive shooting events like 3-gun.
 

 
AEK-971

The rival Kovrov design bureau was only slightly behind the Kalashnikov design bureau in exploring the BARS concept.  Their earliest prototype featuring the system, the SA-006 (also transliterated as CA-006) also dates from the early 1970s.



Chief designer Sergey Koksharov refined this design into the AEK-971.  The chief refinement of his design over the first-generation balanced action prototypes from the early 1970s is that the countermass sits inside the bolt carrier, rather than being stacked on top of it.  This is a more compact installation of the mechanism, but otherwise accomplishes the same thing.


 

Moving parts group of the AEK-971

The early AEK-971 had a triangular metal buttstock and a Kalashnikov-style safety lever on the right side of the rifle.



In this guise the rifle competed unsuccessfully with Nikonov's AN-94 design in the Abakan competition.  Considering that a relative handful of AN-94s were ever produced, this was perhaps not a terrible loss for the Kovrov design bureau.

After the end of the Soviet Union, the AEK-971 design was picked up by the Degtyarev factory, itself a division of the state-owned Rostec.



The Degtyarev factory would unsuccessfully try to make sales of the weapon for the next twenty four years.  In the meantime, they made some small refinements to the rifle.  The Kalashnikov-style safety lever was deleted and replaced with a thumb safety on the left side of the receiver.


 
Later on the Degtyarev factory caught HK fever, and a very HK-esque sliding metal stock was added in addition to a very HK-esque rear sight.  The thumb safety lever was also made ambidextrous.  The handguard was changed a few times.



Still, reception to the rifle was lukewarm.  The 2018 announcement that the rifle would be procured in limited numbers alongside more conventional AK rifles is not exactly a coup.  The numbers bought are likely to be very low.  A 5.56mm AEK-972 and 7.62x39mm AEK-973 also exist.  The newest version of the rifle has been referred to as A-545.

AKB and AKB-1


AKB-1


AKB


AKB, closeup of the receiver

The AKB and AKB-1 are a pair of painfully obscure designs designed by Viktor Kalashnikov, Mikhail Kalashnikov's son.  The later AKB-1 is the more conservative of the two, while the AKB is quite wild.

Both rifles use a more or less conventional AK type bolt carrier, but the AKB uses the barrel as the countermass.  That's right; the entire barrel shoots forward while the bolt carrier moves back!  This unusual arrangement also allowed for an extremely high cyclic rate of fire; 2000RPM.  Later on a burst limiter and rate of fire limiter were added.  The rifle would fire at the full 2000 RPM for two round bursts, but a mere 1000 RPM for full auto.

The AKB-1 was a far more conventional design, but it still had a BARS.  In this design the countermass was nested inside the main bolt carrier, similar to the AEK-971.

Not a great deal of information is available about these rifles, but @Hrachya H wrote an article on them which can be read here.
 
 

Here are links to all 12 volumes of the US Army's "Report of the M16 Rifle Review Panel" written in response to the Ichord Subcommittee Hearings and Report. DTIC has finally made the entire set available online for free download.
History of the M16 Weapon System

http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a953110.pdf

Small Arms Test Policies and Procedures
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a953111.pdf

Audit Trail and Analysis of M16A1 Weapon and Ammunition System Tests
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a953112.pdf

Review and Analysis of M16 Rifle Training
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a953113.pdf

Ammunition Development Program
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a953114.pdf

Procurement, Production, and Distribution History of the AR15-M16-M16A1 Weapon System
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a953115.pdf

Review and Analysis of M16 System Reliability
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a953116.pdf

M16 Surveys in the Republic of Vietnam
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a953117.pdf

Review and Analysis of the Army Organizational Structure and Management Practices for the Development, Testing, and Product Improvement of Small Arms Rifle Systems
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a953118.pdf

Audit Trail of Chief of Staff, Army Actions and Decisions Concerning the M16
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a953119.pdf

The Army Small Arms Program
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a953120.pdf

M16 Product Improvement Modifications
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a953121.pdf

Here are links to all 12 volumes of the US Army's "Report of the M16 Rifle Review Panel" written in response to the Ichord Subcommittee Hearings and Report. DTIC has finally made the entire set available online for free download.
History of the M16 Weapon System

http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a953110.pdf

Small Arms Test Policies and Procedures
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a953111.pdf

Audit Trail and Analysis of M16A1 Weapon and Ammunition System Tests
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a953112.pdf

Review and Analysis of M16 Rifle Training
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a953113.pdf

Ammunition Development Program
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a953114.pdf

Procurement, Production, and Distribution History of the AR15-M16-M16A1 Weapon System
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a953115.pdf

Review and Analysis of M16 System Reliability
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a953116.pdf

M16 Surveys in the Republic of Vietnam
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a953117.pdf

Review and Analysis of the Army Organizational Structure and Management Practices for the Development, Testing, and Product Improvement of Small Arms Rifle Systems
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a953118.pdf

Audit Trail of Chief of Staff, Army Actions and Decisions Concerning the M16
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a953119.pdf

The Army Small Arms Program
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a953120.pdf

M16 Product Improvement Modifications
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a953121.pdf

AK-12s are already in Museum!
 

Early Chrysler XM-1 validation phase model with a coaxial Bushmaster weapon system :
 

Walter, 
I have the blueprints for the Canadian 7.62 NATO M37retrofit if you want them let me know.
Sidenote: the Browning 1919/m37 is just outright an awesome gun that you can get to run just about any round between .22 lr and 8x63 Bofors...
Including 303 & x54r... I helped a buddy do a x54r version...
Fun fact: the Finns even figured out a really simple push feed link to convert mg42's to x54r... Aimo Lahti was a genius.

One of Russian subs have interesting crewmember