Military used 22lr for M-16 qualifying

Do any of y'all remember when they adapted the M-16 to use 22lr for training and qualifying? They figured it would save a lot of money. Well, it didn't work out as well as they hoped. The little 22 round just didn't generate enough gas to fully cycle the M-16 which caused malfunctions. So they turned over to us over one million rounds of Winchester Super X 22lr to dispose of. We cranked up the small arms furnace and fed it until there were none. What a waste.

If I remember right we put a different bolt in our m16s to fire .22lr and then would shoot indoors when it was 30 below outside in Fairbanks.

Back in the day, I could have got rid of a few thousand rounds of that stuff pretty easily. Spread the Lead !

That's what I qualified with. Rinkydink 22.

Friend of mine went through Army basic in the late 60s and they fired BB guns to learn instinctive aiming and shooting. Everyone wore goggles.

Qualified with the .22 caliber adapted M-16 during Basic at San Antonio in 1985…when I got to my tech school had to re-qualify with the real stuff…ahhh, the good old days.

The Mossad uses .22 caliber to take out it's enemies. That's what I read in @ least 2 nonfiction books. Just my worthless 2 cents.

Think some Russian snipers did too in the cities

M261 conversion kit, have a couple around here somewhere.

The optimum twist for a .22 LR cartridge is, what 1 in 16"? The m-16 A1s we had were a 1 in 12" twist for 55 grain bullets as I remember.
I always wondered how accurate those conversion kits worked pushing a soft lead 40 grain bullet down a relatively 'fast' twist barrel.
Looks like it would shave lead, or over stabilize a bullet that wasn't designed to have that many RPMs. And, what are these new m-16 variants that shoot 60+ grain bullets. 1 in 7" or 1 in 8" or so. That would make it even worse.
That may be why it didn't work and the military abandon the project.

1,000,000 .22 SuperX LRs. That'd be 2000 500 round bricks. That use to be my favorite squirrel round. Would make me sad to watch them go into the fire. .

The A teams in VN carried the High Standard Supermatic in 22LR as did most of the U2 pilots. The High Srandard HDM with integral suppressor. Made in Argentina

seen one of those that had a hole in the top of the slide to pin it closed to make it even quieter. pffft.

I think now they'll go back to 22LR because those high powered 223 rounds will give the gender neutral future troops PTSD .. they are working on a powder charge that smells like daisies before they issue the new ammo.

Great lakes was using a laser modified m16 with a micro switch trigger then once you qualified with that you shot with the 22lr adapted m16

the cietmer bolt and colt 20 round mag cietmer inserts then hold 10 rounds , they did work decently if kept clean
a friend has an original air force cietmer and he brought it to an Appleseed and could shoot a expert AQT every time his ran great.

I have the CMMG it really needs their 1:16 twist barrel to hold nice groups

the friend with the cietmer ran a 1:14 twist barrel in his M16-A1 build not actually a M16 but as close as he could get

We picked up some Code H 38 spl from the Air Force one time. Destroyed it one round at a time and then reloaded the brass. A million rounds one at a time would have been a pretty tall order, but we would have given it a try.

Starbits

We trained with regular 5.56 ammo, 76-79. Never heard of the .22 thing before today.