Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
The US Army Troop test in 1964 that preceded the adoption of the M16 shot a lot of Pigs in the course of the tests; the lethality and range problems of the 5.56 round were quite apparent and were well documented. The result of the tests were that the Army recommended keeping the M-14 in 7.62 for world wide service (to include shortened Jungle, even shorter Parachute and a better automatic rifle versions) and buying a just few then Colt AR-15s for special purpose units (The USAF Air Police and Special Forces wanted the little rifle and light ammo). In the event, the Army was overruled and the US political decision by DoD and the White House was to buy the Colt rifle. The fact that Colt had contributed to the serving Administration's political campaigns I'm sure had little to do with that decision...
Actually, the US military rigged those tests to make the M14 look better. In reality, the M16 of the time was much more reliable and just as lethal as the M80 shooting M14. Kind of the reverse of what you just said.

Let me look for the actual test data; I used to keep it on my netbook, but it got fried last month.