The platform is very flexible ... and has a narrow range of “optimal”. Easy to make changes which drive performance to unacceptable, but not hard to adjust back to good performance. Other platforms are much more tolerant of changes, but simply can’t be adapted to what’s needed that the M4 can do. Keep the system balanced and it will work well. The Vietnam era M16 is the recurring prime case: right powder (as designed) would have run the system well, but some idiot decided otherwise without understanding the consequences.
Thought they were retrofitting it with gas piston uppers????
That’s a better and cheaper way to go than completely replacing it.
And it works.
I thought the other problem was that since the design was rushed, the chroming was inadvertently left out of the design, and when pointed out, the McNamara’s whiz kids referred back to the rushed design specs.
Yes, that would have been one of McNamara's "whiz kids" in the Pentagon, micromanaging the war in Vietnam because they (aforementioned whiz kids, that is) were the really smart people, and everyone else was a bunch of f'n idiots who didn't know anything about cost-benefit analysis, etc.
Just sayin'.