the gun was ready, how he saved some money by elimination of the chrome in the bore before they started using them is part of history. Please post your sources regards how the gun was not ready, it was a choice on DOD's part to send the gun non chromed and with the wrong powder...low bid choice....just like the sig320.
Source is the book
The Black Rifle by Blake Stevens. It wasn’t ready in the sense that when they issued the rifle, the cleaning equipment hadn’t even been made. The contract for cleaning equipment went out AFTER they put the rifle in the field. Nor had they settled on a standardized loading of the ammunition; they were still experimenting with at least 3 different powders. The lots of ammunition that were identified as problematic hadn’t even been properly tested by the Army before issuance in the field. As it turns out, the port pressure was significantly higher (21k vs 16k), which resulted in a much higher cyclic rate (900 vs 650 as spec’d). That caused significant reliability problems because the bolt was traveling forward again before the next round in the magazine fully advanced, causing jams (and other issues). The Edgewater buffer was replaced with what is standard in all 20” AR’s today, and that solved much of the cyclic rate problems, but they had to go back to the drawing board and re-formulate the powder. If you don’t even have a standardized cartridge specification, then the rifle isn’t ready.
There’s a youtube video also with an interview with L. James Sullivan, the man who designed the AR-15 (Stoner actually didn’t have a whole lot to do with the design of the AR15 until much after the fact). In that interview he states that the AR worked, but they weren’t aware how on the edge of not working the rifle was as designed. Following all the crap that happened in ’66, they had to make a few changes, specifically to the ammunition, buffer, extractor and extractor spring.
As for chrome lining, the rifle was never spec’d for chrome lining, which was an oversight. Chrome lining was a new concept to the US military, with the M14 being our first chrome lined rifle. During the M14 program they had a good deal of issues with chrome lining which lead to a very high barrel reject rate, thus driving up the cost. Even barrels that were accepted often had high & low spots in the bore which wasn’t real great for accuracy. Vietnam era M21 sniper rifles all had air gauged standard M14 barrels that skipped the chrome lining. On the M16 could have skipped the chrome lining on purpose because of the issues they had with the M14 (pure speculation on my part). Still, the chrome lining thing could have been dealt with had our troops had cleaning equipment. There were oodles of M1 Carbines, Garands, Thompson’s, 1919’s, M3’s, various shotguns, etc. that didn’t have chrome lining and while they didn’t go unscathed, they didn’t experience anything near the disaster that was experienced with the M16…It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you’re given the tools to succeed.
ETA - The rifles issued were Colt 603's, and they were still stamped XM16E1. They didn't even call it the A1 until '67. XM is the designation for an experimental rifle.
