Yes. It is.
“Even in 6.5 Creedmoor?”
Yes, even in 6.5 Creedmoor.
Now, once again for the people in the back, the M14 or M1A rifles aren’t broken. They aren’t broken any more than the 7.62×51/.308 is ineffective. 7.62 is highly effective, and the M14 and M1A do work, they do run.
But they do not run as well as or conform easily today’s tech base and many many many platforms do. The M14/M1A was a heavy, wooden stocked, iron sighted, stripper clip fed, .30 caliber rifle that was made in an era where we knew it was suboptimal now. Even keeping iron sights and .308 we, the Americans, designed yesterday’s rifle and churned out what was a high maintenance piece of mediocrity compared to its peers.
The accuracy standard was 5.5 MOA and it was (is) a needy and expensive platform. That is the long and short of the story. Not that the rifle didn’t work but that there were already better ways to go about making the service rifle that the armed forces needed instead of the nostalgia piece they cobbled together with some lies about being able to make it on M1 tooling.
The services made it work because it was what they had. It did alright because it was built on sound past principles. It didn’t last because it was obsolescent the day it rolled of the line.
