The product line did not, however, start out with today’s result in mind.
Coming to the table with replicas of never-before-seen AR models and close to 1:1 copies of long decommissioned military weapons was risky, but it panned out instantly. There’s also a flourishing market for modern military replicas.īrownells surprised the industry when it, a well-known supplier of parts and tools, began to market a brand of retro-style AR parts under their own brand. Because of this constant remodeling, there are many variants of the design that appeal to different niches of collectors and shooters. It’s the progenitor of the most effective and common rifles in use today, most of which only bear a passing resemblance to the common M16A1.
The M16 eventually became a mature system after much trial and error. Where the American in WWII had a dependable, powerful and accurate rifle, the soldiers in Vietnam were left with rifles that fit none of those criteria. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case in the field, and the use of the M16 in combat proved to be a faith-shaking experience. It was the image of the new dawn, where Americans were graduating into a degree of combat lethality the likes of which had never been seen.
The early years of the Vietnam War saw the AR-15 as the Colt M16, a supposedly space-age rifle that rejected notions of wood and blued steel, and instead went for plastics and aluminum.
