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The .223 round testing on animals and, ahem, other things, are covered.

NPR: You tell a story that I'm not sure if it was told before, about how the M-16 was tested and how that testing was covered up. Tell us about some of the very odd, maybe even bizarre ways that the M-16 was tested.





Mr. CHIVERS: In the 1960s at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, on very short notice and with very little supervision, a group of scientists in this - what was known as the biophysics division, set to work on a number of tests to determine which rifle, the AR-15, the M-14 or the Kalashnikov, was the most lethal. Now, measuring lethality is not easy, right? I mean its kind of a concept that is very, very hard to replicate without killing things. And so they set about killing things.





They got a bunch of goats and shot them at different ranges and then they tried to observe the way that the goats died. But they also wanted to figure out how these different weapons would have an effect on the human body. That's a little trickier. So they got a bunch of cadavers, they got them from India, and then shot them at different ranges. They also shot human heads - 27 in all. Now, these tests didnt tell them much. They kind of expected it wouldnt tell you much. They shot them at fairly short ranges and every bone that was struck by every bullet, no matter which rifle fired it, no matter which range, shattered, and every head that was struck broke into pieces. So there really wasnt much practical difference between these tests.





The test did have one value, which was that there had been a previous field report of the M-16 or the AR-15, as it was called at the time, that seemed to report that the M-16 had a spectacular effect on struck Vietnamese guerrillas and that it would cause traumatic amputations, literally tear off limbs that were struck. [The ARPA report we've read so much about.]





The value, if there was any, to this secret test that was conducted at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, is it pretty much demonstrated that that field report was false. They could not replicate that in the laboratory no matter how they shot, no matter what range. Even if they took soft tip bullets and shaved the bullet tips further to try to create more dramatic wounds, they were unable to create these traumatic amputations. That might have helped in the conversation happening in the Pentagon about whether the M-16 was really all it was built up to be. But there was a problem, which was that the Pentagon became so ashamed that it had held these tests, so embarrassed and so worried about the repercussions, you know, the sensationalism, as they called it, in their secret memoranda of the time, that they covered the whole test up and it was hidden for just about 50 years.

That might have helped in the conversation happening in the Pentagon about whether the M-16 was really all it was built up to be.

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Awww, dude, you spoiled it! I wanted them to actually read the book to find out about the heads!

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I find it interesting that he suggests this.  The ARPA report's recommendations include none that suggest that it should become the standard issue infantry weapon of the US military.  Nor do they even suggest it is a suitable replacement for weapons in anything other than a jungle environment.  They do suggest that it become the standard infantry weapon of the RVNAF because of its suitability to the Vietnamese both physically and environmentally.  Perhaps ironically, the recommendations appear to be based more on the conclusions drawn about the AR-15's durability and reliability than anything else.

These recommendations seem to be in line with the initially issuance of the M16 within the US Army.  Most of the people who get "blamed" for the adoption of the M16 in fact viewed it as an interim solution, until the "futuristic" Special Purpose Infantry Weapon (SPIW) could be fielded.

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I think the old Thompson-Lagarde tests that gave us the .45 ACP were just about as gruesome.  
Ralph

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The chapter on the development of the M16, "The Accidental Rifle" is worth the price of the book by itself.

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I cant say very much but recently I was able to treat a patient that was shot multiple times with 45 grain HP fired from a 604 . The wounds would have been fatal but they fragmented on impact before they could deliver the energy . The guy basically walked away . This comes from ME not a report.

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That's very interesting, but I am not as surprised as I would have been. However, one of the last times I was at the range, I chronographed my UMC yellow box 45 grain HP loads fired through one of my retro ARs. I was shocked to see the velocity up around 3800 fps! At that speed, and at close range, the wounds, I believe, would be the classic ugly, but not deep type.