Intermediate cartridges, while less powerful than full-sized rifle ammunition, provided superior performance to the pistol cartridges used by submachine guns then in widespread use among all the WWII belligerents. The world’s first viable assault rifle was the German Sturmgewehr-44 (StG-44), which was introduced toward the end of World War II and provided selective fire of an intermediate cartridge (7.92x33mm Kurz-German for “short”) from a box magazine. forces and other international customers well into the future. With continuing modernization, it is likely that some variant of the M-16 will continue serving U.S. Most modern military rifles since the introduction of the M-16 share at least some characteristics with the now-ubiquitous weapon system. Modern variants of the original M-16 rifle serve as a standard issued firearm across all services of the Department of Defense. Despite some initial reliability issues, evolutions of the design produced a highly- capable firearm. When the M-16 was first introduced, it revolutionized firearm design with its use of composite materials, intermediate caliber ammunition, and space-age appearance. Approximately eight million M-16-pattern rifles have been produced, with the rifle’s intermediate caliber helping make it one of the most popular weapons in today’s defense and civilian marketplaces. The M-16 rifle, first officially adopted into the American military’s inventory in 1964 and chambered for 5.56x45mm NATO ammunition, has served as the basic assault rifle of the United States for well over half a century. The “Mattel Gun” – History of the Venerable M-16 Rifle
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