As the chart is 13 years old, it is missing a lot of new companies like Daniel Defense, Spikes Tactical, PWS, Ruger, etc. I also wouldn’t be surprised if specs have changed on some of the listed companies. Nevertheless, it is a handy way to see what was Mil-Spec about a decade ago, and provides a basis for one to compare their current EBR.

I also linked to an article from American Rifleman circa 2010 that discusses the chart and Mil-Spec and what it means and doesn’t mean. For example, Mil-Spec doesn’t mean all that much when it comes to accuracy and endurance according to the NRA article. This raises several questions, not the least of which is have there been technology changes that outdate the 2010 Mil-Spec standards? If someone with more knowledge than me knows, please chime in.

Also if Mil-Spec standards have changed (perhaps to keep up with technology and experience), please chime in and update us all on this as well - AR15s are not my area of expertise.

Finally, I don’t anticipate a TEOTWAWKI scenario. So if your AR15 is reliable and accurate, I imagine you are more than fine in a HD scenario, regardless of whether it is Mil-Spec or not. But for those who want to know who has the fastest muscle car so to speak, here you go:





And here is the article from American Rifleman.

https://www.americanrifleman.o...he-specs-of-milspec/

Thanks! Never seen that chart before! It would be interesting to see a modern day chart with Aero, BCM Daniel Defense and the host of other top tier makers available today.

Tony.

^^^^
As my son who works at Chick
-fil-A would say, my pleasure.

In the days of the original "Chart", the field was already crowded. These days, there are countless more of AR manufacturers/assemblers with a gazillion models. Plus, these evolve quickly that there is really no point of doing another "Chart". Even rob_s, the originator of The Chart, eventually gave up updating and maintaining it. Just know what specs you want in your AR and go shopping.

"The Chart" while interesting, is somewhat of an anachronism of the compulsion to have the closest rifle to a military issued M4 carbine.

The most currently relevant tidbits are the points about the bolt material and manufacturing process.


To be frank, it was designed to stroke the ego of Colt 6920 fans.

The Colt 6920 is indeed an excellent carbine.


With the preponderance of modern optics, how many rifles currently sold today even have a front sight base to be 'F-marked or not?

1-7 twist rifling is fine. So is 1-8. For 95+% of shooters, the old commercial and demeaned 1-9 is fine as well. 1-7 was originally a military specification to stabilize tracer ammo, which had longer projectiles than M193 and M855. Now it turns out that you need a 1-7 to shoot ammo starting around 69 grains and going up, if you want it properly stabilized.

My point is, there are a lot of data points on that chart that, while they check a box, don't actually mean much if you have a rifle that deviates from the form factor of an M4.

quote:

Originally posted by BB61:


Finally, I don’t anticipate a TEOTWAWKI scenario. So if your AR15 is reliable and accurate, I imagine you are more than fine in a HD scenario, regardless of whether it is Mil-Spec or not. But for those who want to know who has the fastest muscle car so to speak, here you go:

A more accurate analogy would probably be 'who has the most reliable Toyota Camry'.

'The Chart' held the M4 as the absolute gold standard of reliability and durability. In many ways... it is, with a few exceptions, which I could go into if anyone is curious. But I would be picking fly shit out of the pepper.

Lube it properly, and feed it good ammo in good magazines and a properly spec'd rifle like the Colt 6920 will be boringly reliable.

The 'fastest muscle car' would be something like a JP CTR-02. A tuned race gun that arguably sacrifices a margin of reliability for improved shooting characteristics. Reduced recoil, improved trigger, etc.

In my personal sample set of building both race guns and plain jane carbines, if you know what they are doing, both run like scalded cats.

Some guys playing the gun games can't leave well enough alone, and will push the envelope too far, and turn their rifle into a jammomatic. Usually with excessively reduced gas settings in an adjustable gas system.

At 3 gun matches, which I have shot extensively for 15+ years. Rifle malfunctions with ARs are rare and usually ammunition induced. And that is in an environment where many if not most of the shooters are using rifles tuned for optimum shooting characteristics for a match rifle and fast split times.


If you want to buy or build a reliable AR15, the heart and soul is the barrel and bolt. If a part is going to fail on an AR15, it is going to be a cheap chinesium spring in a no-name lower parts kit, or a bolt with a manufacturing defect or improper material or heat treatment.



The real test at the end of the day, with whatever AR that you choose. Take it out to the range with a half dozen good mags and some quality ammo and shoot it hard. I don't mean mag dump 200 rounds into a berm as fast as you can. That kills barrel life and wastes money. But don't be afraid to put two or three mags down range, aimed fire at, preferably, an assortment of targets at an assortment of distances. As fast as you can make good aimed shots. Do this a half dozen times, at least. Don't just test the rifle, train while you do it. Work on positional shooting. Get off the bench!!! Shoot offhand, shoot prone, throw a backpack on the ground and see how it works as a shooting rest.

Once you have ~500-800 rounds through the rifle, you will have sussed out any parts that are likely to fail. Examine parts while you clean. Look for abnormal wear, peening, cracks, etc.

That's the best that any of us can do.

Ah yes, "the chart."

The available quality of ARs has surpassed it.

Simple as that.

$1350 in 2010 dollars for a 6920 (MSRP of course) and you can get them now for 1k or less without much effort, with much less valuable dollars

quote:

Originally posted by ElToro:
$1350 in 2010 dollars for a 6920 (MSRP of course) and you can get them now for 1k or less without much effort, with much less valuable dollars

Despite bearing the same model name, the 6920 of present day is not the same as one from years ago. I would buy the FN AR, instead.

That was a big deal back in the day.
Now it's common for PSA diy rifles to go as long as the almighty Colts thanks to the countless torture tests and side by sides on youtube. 10 years ago folks thought it was going to mean your certain demise and that your rifle would fail 2 times in the first mag.

quote:

The real test at the end of the day, with whatever AR that you choose. Take it out to the range with a half dozen good mags and some quality ammo and shoot it hard. I don't mean mag dump 200 rounds into a berm as fast as you can. That kills barrel life and wastes money. But don't be afraid to put two or three mags down range, aimed fire at, preferably, an assortment of targets at an assortment of distances. As fast as you can make good aimed shots. Do this a half dozen times, at least. Don't just test the rifle, train while you do it. Work on positional shooting. Get off the bench!!! Shoot offhand, shoot prone, throw a backpack on the ground and see how it works as a shooting rest.

This x10!!! I've never understood those "torture tests" where the reviewer just stands there and dumps rounds until the gas tube melts. IMO that's just stupid and not in any way a test of what you're actually going to ask the rifle to do in the real world.

Run the rifle with a variety of mags and ammo. I've encountered a few rifles lately that wouldn't drop-free certain mags, and even an older DPMS rifle that didn't have enough buffer spring to chamber the first round out of certain mags.

Shoot the gun from different positions, particularly non-traditional ones that don't give the rifle in-line support for it's recoil. Shoot with pressure (both lateral and vertical) on the magazine and make sure that doesn't induce malfunctions. Make sure your sights and optic/mount are staying tight and holding zero, same for your castle nut, gas block, and gas key. Shoot it fast and make sure it runs hot, and shoot it slow to make sure it's accurate and to see how much accuracy degradation you can expect as the barrel heats up.

Round count alone is pretty meaningless. I don't really care if the gun can shoot reliably from a static position until it melts down...I want to know that it will actually work in the manner that I'm likely to use it.

quote:

Originally posted by IndianaBoy:
"The Chart" while interesting, is somewhat of an anachronism of the compulsion to have the closest rifle to a military issued M4 carbine.

The most currently relevant tidbits are the points about the bolt material and manufacturing process.


To be frank, it was designed to stroke the ego of Colt 6920 fans.

The Colt 6920 is indeed an excellent carbine.


With the preponderance of modern optics, how many rifles currently sold today even have a front sight base to be 'F-marked or not?

1-7 twist rifling is fine. So is 1-8. For 95+% of shooters, the old commercial and demeaned 1-9 is fine as well. 1-7 was originally a military specification to stabilize tracer ammo, which had longer projectiles than M193 and M855. Now it turns out that you need a 1-7 to shoot ammo starting around 69 grains and going up, if you want it properly stabilized.

My point is, there are a lot of data points on that chart that, while they check a box, don't actually mean much if you have a rifle that deviates from the form factor of an M4.

Everything relating to the FSB is pretty irrelevant now, but if you consider the context under which The Chart was developed, there were some really under-specced guns out there and nobody knew. Correct barrel and bolt steel, individual HPT/MPI, proper staking, buffer tube compatibility, etc. were not givens and you had companies selling rifles for Colt money that were short all of these things.

You hardly ever hear about poor gas key staking or non-chromed bores (or equivalent as nitride is very popular now), or AR-15 carriers, or some of the other items on there because the guns are just built better now. A good percentage of the manufacturers on there are gone now and some of today's premier companies (SOLGW, BCM, DD to name a few) aren't even on there.

If you catch Mike Mihalski from SOLGW talking about "mil-spec" and TDP compliance and so forth, he'll tell you that it sets a floor and not a ceiling. He's also pretty reverent to "The Chart" and M4C essentially being a community that taught people what made a good rifle.

quote:

Originally posted by 92fstech:
This x10!!! I've never understood those "torture tests" where the reviewer just stands there and dumps rounds until the gas tube melts. IMO that's just stupid and not in any way a test of what you're actually going to ask the rifle to do in the real world.

Coming from a R&D background, torture tests absolutely have their place. When developing or testing a new product or an upgrade, we frequently put our machines through marathon runs whilst running the machine at max speed and max power to identify weak points in the system.

Computer chips are frequently run in hot conditions and sometimes without cooling systems to see how long the chip will last before failing.

At my last job, we had two HALT (Highly Accelerated Life Test) chambers which would subject our components to extreme heat, cold and vibration. We also had a hydraulic shake table that would expose our test pieces to extreme vibrations to see if/how long they would take to fail.

All that being sai, torture tests are entertaining to watch.

Tony.

quote:

Despite bearing the same model name, the 6920 of present day is not the same as one from years ago. I would buy the FN AR, instead.

No idea what FN customer service is like, but Colt c/s is a joke (in my experience).

quote:

Originally posted by benny6

Coming from a R&D background, torture tests absolutely have their place.

Oh I agree. But that place is at the factory or an independent testing agency. And yeah, it's fun to watch...when it's somebody else's rifle lol. It's not something that I as an end user want to do to a rifle that I plan to use for self defense.

The Youtube torture “tests” are sketchy at best. Kinda like the guy who tested a knock off SIG against a Legion and the knock off “won”.

Oh and he was also the sole importer of the “winner”.

Well, I only really watch the ones from iv8888. He seems to be pretty fair and unbiased. I don't really watch any others.

Tony.

The ones I find informative are a few I've seen where they crank 5000 or more rounds through a firearm in one sitting. This will show any accelerated wear or weak points in most platforms. Not 100% but good info none the less.
They guys who drop the guns from helicopters or dunk them in mud buckets (with the exception of Garand Thumb) are pretty much a joke.
High round count is a metric I like to determine reliability and quality but I know "high" is a subjective term.
No matter what number there always has to be that dork who needs to one up.
"5000? Those are rookie numbers! I don't begin to trust my weapon until it gets to 200,000 and 12 barrel swaps!"

Torture tests can have their place but for the most part I would rather see a side by side comparison using those 5000 rounds over a realistic firing schedule.

The most pertinent information would be gained from testing a maximum of the equivalent of a typical combat loadout at any one time.

For example, a website called Lucky Gunner did an ammunition side by side a few years back of 10,000 rounds of ammo on four identical rifles. But they simply mag dumped 10,000 rounds as fast as they could.

One of the ammos was steel jacketed with bimetallic (mild steel) bullets. The torture test of that ammo on the barrel, wrecked the barrel in short order. As we all know, heat kills barrels.

The information would have been far more useful had they utilized a realistic firing schedule. Say 120 rounds at a time and then let the barrel cool between strings.

Yes, it would have taken a lot longer to accomplish. They should have just taken those four rifle and ammo combos, and had four guys shoot identical rifle matches and training courses for however long it took to either exhaust the ammo, or toast the barrel.

As it was, I'm not surprised that mag dumping 10,000 rounds of mild steel through a hot barrel killed it faster than firing the equivalent number of copper alloy bullets.

There is/was a great thread on ar15.com started by a company called Henderson Defense that runs a company called BattleField Las Vegas, that rents machine guns.

They keep detailed round counts on all their weapons, and employ ex military armorers to keep their guns running, and place a high value on keeping them reliable because customers aren't happy if they rent machine guns that don't run.

So they have guns with extremely high round counts but that aren't tested to failure, they just get shot a lot, without all the ammo being expended in a single session.

Very interesting thread, with a lot of good information. Evidently it is almost impossible to kill an AUG.